4?19 I John 1

The lectionary readings push us in a decided direction this week. All of them deal in some degree with community, about life together. Easter life is life in community. We celebrate the new life in Christ together. We may dream of being Robinson Crusoe on an island, but the biblical dream is one of sharing Easter life together, where togetherness is realized. Community gives more targets, more space, for the grace of God to touch, as it gives us more space to love God. Isolation is a lonely place. I realize that one can be lonely in a crowded room, but we all need places to be together. This is vital for worship. Yes, we can pray on our own, but it is encouraging, even needful, to be together in worship.

I John takes the spiritual aspect of community very seriously. John organizes around polarities: light and dark, truth and lie, sin and good. He sees the community as a mixed one. While it stands against the forces of darkness, the forces of darkness are within its members and within its community. It is not al on its own. It derives the source of its light and life from God’s own light and life that lived in the One named Jesus.

We may be more comfortable with John’s words about the church. The passage from Acts chills us to our American bones. We believe in private property. Our possessions matter to us. Years ago, we had more concern with young people being lured to cults. The biggest complaint parents had was young people were not keeping all of their possessions. Here we have the church as a community where they share what they have in common, a little commune in Jerusalem, this follows the section in chapter two, after Pentecost, where the people worshipped together regularly. These people could have what little they have taken from them, so they decide to share. If they can share their possessions, my guess is that they can share their lives with each other. They can become spiritual friends, as well as finding affinities in other areas of life. Spiritual friendship can look past the issues we all share to some degree and look past them to the better, true self within.

Community helps keep us in line. We can check out our thoughts and our actions with other people who can be more objective about what we do than we can. Too often the church is pictured as a group of killjoys, judgmental people determined to take the joy out of life. Instead, the church at its best is a light-hearted place, because its source is the light and life of Jesus Christ, and it is not weighed down by the burden of sin as it knows forgiveness. Not that it is superior to other organizations, but it does know the freedom of forgiveness.

After Easter we get signs of heavenly life through the risen Jesus. We also get signs of the kind of life we are meant to lve after Easter. Jesus does point us toward heaven, but Easter draws heaven closer to earth. The renewed life of Easter has elements of Eden in it. Easter light continues to shine after Easter Sunday. As I John reminds us part of that light is forgiveness. To live in sin is to live in darkness. To tell that truth lets the light pour in. We enjoy the new life of forgiveness in Jesus Christ. Forgiveness allows us to live together. When we worship together, we draw the disparate parts of our lives together for a brief [period. When we worship together, Easter dawns anew. In Christian community, God shares life with us, as we share our lives with God and God’s own..