The Gap Between Us

Transcript

Grief And Community Care

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, good morning. Before I dive into my message, I have some difficult news I need to share with all of you. On Friday night, we received news that Caleb DeVries passed away unexpectedly. He is the husband to Hillary and has two young boys, Cash and Jude. You may know Hillary because she owns Roots, alongside her sister Heidi and Jason, who also attend our church. They've been part of our community for a long time. Caleb is on our trustees. So it's a really just shocking and devastating. The exact cause is unknown at this point. He was on a fishing trip with some buddies and they found him unresponsive. The best guess at this point is it was some sort of a cardiac episode. He had been having some heartburn, took some tums, and was feeling better, and then was found unresponsive. When we received the news, my wife Josie and I are friends with the DeVries, we went over to their home immediately. They were already surrounded by family and other friends. So we were able to sit with them for a while and pray with them. Katie Ignitowski, who is our executive pastor, has been friends with Hillary since high school, a long time. And her and her husband, Alex, are close friends, and so they've been on the front lines of serving. But I wanted you to know, because they're a very important part of our community, and there's a few things I'm gonna ask of you. Um one is just to pray. So we're gonna pray here in a moment, but oftentimes when something like this happens, um you can't get it off your mind. It just keeps coming to mind, and just use that as a prompt to continue to pray for Hillary and her boys and Heidi and Jason. Um, the other piece that I'll just ask is that you would respect their privacy. Um, I've been through some hard things in my life where, because I'm a public leader, you know, everybody wants to help. Um you can help by just giving them privacy and space and allow the people who are closest to them to love on them and care for them. And then my third thing I'll just say is as a community, and this is more long-term, uh, we're gonna need to surround this family, not with short-term care, but long-term care. It's easy to show up, friends, and in the immediate aftermath. You know, when everybody's present. What really matters is a month, six months, a year from now, and we're continuing to step in and be that caring community because that's who we're called to be. Yes? Let's pray together. Well, God, I know um so many of us are hurting right now. Um it's just our hearts are broken as we've lost a friend. And I pray for uh Hillary right now that you'd be with her. God, you are a God who mourns with those who mourn and you weep with those who weep. And we know that you enter our grief and our pain, um, not just to validate it, but then to bring healing. And so I pray that you would bring your healing and your comfort over the entire family right now. Give them your strength, help them to fix their eyes on you, knowing that you are there with them every step of the way. And I pray that you'd help us as a community to be present in love, to avoid saying hurtful things that bypass emotions, um, but rather to be attentive to your spirit and to be rooted in care and support. So we ask that you would wrap your uh loving arms around all of us today and be there for the DeVries family right now. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Uh, there is no good way to transition from that into a into a sermon. Uh, there's just not. I should probably introduce myself if you're a visitor. My name is Mac, and I'm one of the pastors on our team, and I am glad that you're here. Um, so I'm just gonna do my best to get into it. Uh we're we just started um a new series called Maturing in the Mess, where we're going through the book of 1 Corinthians. And the the big idea, I hope you kind of grab a hold of this and and and carry it with you from here on forward. The big idea in the series is that we don't grow as followers of Jesus by escaping the mess of the church. Uh we grow as followers of Jesus by maturing in and through the mess. No church is perfect. All right, I know I know that full well. Every church is messy because it's full of messy and broken people like you and me. Okay? Um, we're all into together. No church is perfect. But this is the context in which we grow and mature. The mess that is the church. Our maturity level, friends, is rarely exposed when life is going easy and smoothly. It's exposed when life gets hard and stressful. And in fact, if you consider it, uh the times where you'll grow the most in your faith is actually when life gets hard and difficult. Your maturity level is revealed under pressure and is often refined under pressure if you'll lean in. Doing life though with other people, messy people, people in the church, I want to name is not an obstacle to your growth. It's essential to it. Being part of a community like this, a messy community, is the crucible of formation. Sometimes people have this over-idealized and romanticized version of the church. I often hear comments like, hey, Mac, we just need to get back to being a New Testament church. I appreciate the sentiment, but I often want to ask, oh, which one? Like the churches in Galatia? Because they were a mess. The one in Philippi or Colossae? I mean, because they were a disaster. What about Ephesus, right? Like which which one are you talking about? And oftentimes you'll you'll people or Schwab might say, uh, they'll quote Acts 2 in this short and beautiful description of how the early church was doing life together. And it is an amazing description of how the early church was relating to one another. But even in Acts, that's just like a short description, and right after that, you'll notice all kinds of tensions and dysfunction. I mean, right after that, there's a story of Ananias and Sapphira, and after that, there's some widows that are being mistreated, like even the church in Acts quickly became a mess full of tensions to attend to. Every church, this is actually why we have most of the New Testament. Much of the New Testament uh are epistles or letters to churches, and the entire reason why those were written was to address problems in those churches. Without if you got a letter from Paul, it was usually because there was a problem. I imagine when someone showed up with a letter from Paul, everybody's armpits started to sweat. Okay, because they're like, oh, oh great. Um, we've got some issues, and he's gonna talk about it, all right? Now, the by far, uh with there's not even a close second, by far the messiest church um in that we know about in the New Testament is the church in Corinth. Paul spills more ink on this church than any other. We've got two really long letters written to the Corinthians, like 16 chapters, then 13 chapters. There's actually other letters and correspondence that he had with them that we don't have on hand anymore, but we know about it because it's alluded to in these letters. Like they were a mess, a total mess. They were divided, so there were like fractions and divisions among them. They were totally dysfunctional. Uh the rich were mistreating the poor. Many of them had like big egos and they were trying to outdo one another. They were theologically confused, especially on the resurrection. Um, they were um at odds with one another. They were like suing each other, bringing each other to court. They there was rampant sexual immorality throughout this community. One guy was actually sleeping with his mother-in-law and uh bragging about it, okay? So, like, this is which New Testament church do you want to be like? That not Corinth, not Corinth. This was a this was a like, it was like a melting pot. Like, there's a reason for this. It was a highly urban area. Gordon Fee, a famous New Testament scholar that Cameron quoted last week, he describes the location of Corinth like this. Corinth was at one time the New York, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas of the ancient world. Okay, so this is a it was a cosmopolitan city and sort of a religious melting pot, and the church gets started there. And as we read through this letter, here is the central problem. Okay? This is the problem. Uh Gordon Fee says the problem was not that there was a church in Corinth, but rather that there was too much Corinth still in the church. The problem wasn't that there was a church in Corinth. That was a good thing. The problem was there was way too much Corinth still in the church. So these folks in Corinth who were following Jesus were actually living like Corinthians rather than followers of Jesus. They were uh living like Corinthians with a little bit of Jesus sprinkled in on top. And Paul is not going to have any of this. He's going to write a charged letter that's highly combative and confrontational, um, but also full of grace. And he's going to calibrate this grace and truth, this invitation and challenge to call them up and into the way of Jesus, to stop living as Corinthians and start living as followers of Jesus. He's going to challenge them to mature in the mess. That is Corinth. Now, if we're honest, um we're not that different. And I'll just speak about the American church at large for a moment, rather than picking on any one of us. Um man, we're a mess too, aren't we? Uh we're divided. Uh there are our estimates around that we have around 30,000 denominations. How did that happen? Well, I'll tell you, disagreement, divide. Disagreement, divide. Disagreement, divide. That's how we get 30,000 denominations. We're fractured along socioeconomic and racial lines. Studies show that most churches are homogeneous, they're not diverse places. Um this is what led Martin Luther King Jr. to say that Sunday morning is the most segregated day of the week. Think about that. I once had someone tell me that the reason why the church is racially segregated or divided is because of different different worship styles. And I thought to myself, as if that's a good reason to be divided, like worship styles. But come on, open your eyes. There's more going on than worship preferences here, right? The American church is deeply divided or along socioeconomic and racial lines. Um, we are theologically confused and at odds with each other. You see, the problem isn't that there's a church in America. That's a good thing. The problem is there's too much America in the church. And as we get going into this letter, we're gonna see the problem isn't that there is a church in late country. The problem is there's too much of late country in the church. Many people who claim to follow Jesus are actually just living like Americans with a little bit of Jesus sprinkled on top. I want my life, I'm gonna live my life, and I'm gonna take Jesus, add Jesus on top, have Jesus on my own terms. And the reality is, is we want church on our terms as well. The vast majority of people approach church as a consumer. So church is sort of treated as a vendor of religious goods and services, and when you want to figure out which church to go to, you ask the question: which church has the best spiritual goods to offer? Which church meets my preferences? Which church checks all of my boxes? And then when you find that church, most people engage by giving as much as is convenient. Not often going much beyond that. This is the state we're living in. The moment the church stops meeting my preferences or meeting my needs, the moment the church no longer checks my boxes, the moment things get difficult or relationally challenging, the moment the pastor says something I disagree with, what do we do? We jump ship and we go searching for the next church that has better religious goods and services to offer. I submit to you this is not a sign of maturity, it's a sign of deep immaturity, and it's the nonstop influence of consumer Christianity. Just being honest with you. And while we're on it, I'll just be honest with you about this. My job as a pastor is not to validate your perspectives. It is not. If I'm here primarily to validate your perspectives, what you think, and already what you believe, I cannot lead you. I'll just be placating you. And my job is actually to lead you closer to Jesus, which means that I will oftentimes say things that disrupt you. For a reason. For a reason. To help you grow and become more like Jesus. You don't read the New Testament and look at Paul and go, oh, he's just placating his listeners, do you? So why would you expect anything different from me? This is where we are. We want Jesus on our own terms, we want the church on our terms as well. And yet, the more we push the uh escape button, the eject button, the more immature we become. We grow not by escaping the mess, but by maturing in and through the mess that is the church. And that's what this series is gonna be all about. It's about going deeper into our discipleship with Jesus and going deeper into community with one another, learning how to grow even when it's messy and difficult. Today we're gonna look at the opening greeting of Paul's letter to the Corinthians. Paul has a lot to correct in this letter. He's gonna confront the Corinthians on a whole bunch of stuff. But before he corrects them and confronts them, he greets them. And here's what he says. Let's take a look. He says, Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God and our brother Sosthenes. So just a quick note. Um, some people have asked me, Sosthenes, you can read about him in Acts 18. He was the synagogue leader in Corinth. He was actually beat up in front of the pro-council. He clearly became a follower of Jesus and now is serving with Paul in ministry. Okay, so he's traveling with Paul, serving alongside Paul. And the reason why he his name is being dropped here is because he's well known and a leader among the Corinthians. The Corinthians know him. And so they're writing this letter together as a unified to present a unified front. Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God and our brother Sosthenes to the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord, and ours. Grace and peace to you. From God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Oftentimes we just read past this section really quickly, this introduction, just ready to get into the letter. And I want to submit to you that is a big mistake, because there's a lot going on here. Actually, way more than I can uh uh give a time and attention to in just a short sermon. A sermon is just a snapshot. Um here's here's what I want to explain to you is that there was a standard way to open a letter in the ancient world, a very predictable way that everybody followed, and the basic structure went like this from A to B, greetings. So if I was to write a letter to Cameron, I would say, from Mac to Cameron, greetings, and then I would start the letter. Make sense? Okay. So here's what I want you to notice is that Paul is following that basic structure. From Paul to Corinth, greetings, but he loads it up and fills it with a ton of meaning. So he adds to it. So for instance, just notice Paul is not just the author, he describes himself as an apostle of Jesus by the will of God. He's not just an author, he's an apostle. And he's not just writing to the recipients, i.e. Corinth, they're the church of God in Corinth, part of the universal church. And he describes them as being holy and sanctified. The word holy means set apart. Um, so he's saying, look, this isn't just the author, this is Paul, an apostle of Jesus, and he's writing to the church that belongs to God, who's been set apart to join God's redemptive work in the world. Before Paul corrects them, he greets them, and in this greeting, he's reminding them of who he is, he's an apostle called by God, and who they are. They belong to God. They're the church of God, holy and set apart. Before Paul addresses their issues, he affirms their identity. You are a community that belongs to God. You're part of the universal church. And then he says this grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Again, typically we just breeze right past this, not giving it much thought, and we jump right into the letter, but I think this is a mistake. This is not a throwaway line, it's not a perfunctory well-wish. There is deep theology going on here that I want to attend to with you. Paul takes the standard way of greeting and he supercharges it with theological significance. Okay, so follow me on this. It's gonna get a little heady for a moment, but it will pay off. The standard greeting for Gentiles in the ancient world was the Greek word karin, and it meant literally to rejoice or be glad, but idiomatically it just meant greeting. So if you were out and about in Corinth, which was mostly a Gentile community, and you saw a friend, you'd say Karin, and that would mean greetings. Make sense? And so most letters would start with from A to B, greetings, Karin. Paul does something really interesting here. He changes the Gentile greeting and then adds to it. So here's the change. He changes Karin to Karis. Same root, but different word. And the word karis or caris means grace. So he takes the Gentile greeting, changes it, and adds a theological word, grace. But then he doesn't stop there. He adds a greeting that wasn't part of normal Gentile greetings, which is peace, aren't they? And of course, this is the Jewish greeting. Most Jews would greet each other with peace. That's where we get the extend back to Hebrew, shalom. If a Jewish person was walking around, they saw a friend, they would say, shalom, which doesn't just have to do with inner peace, it has to do with right relationship, the restoration and right relationship, right relationship of all things. So Paul changes the Gentile greeting to grace and he adds the Jewish greeting, peace, or shalom. In just two words, uh Paul is closing the gap between two totally different worlds, Jew and Gentile. He's using the Gentile greeting to point to God's grace, and he adds the Jewish greeting to bring these two groups together. And already he's casting vision. He's calling the Corinthians into what God is creating among them, which is one new humanity, a new people group that is unified, is no longer divided or separated, but is unified under their allegiance to Jesus. And then don't miss this. Notice where this grace and peace comes from. It comes from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, there is an order here. In order for grace and peace to mend or bring back together this divided congregation, they first need to receive it from God because they don't have what it takes. They don't have the grace and peace on their own to mend or uh bring back together what's been fractured among them. They need to first receive it from God. The kind of grace and the kind of peace that they're going to need to mature through the mess, to live like Jesus, to repair what's broken, is entirely dependent upon God's activity among them. In other words, they can't achieve it on their own. And so there's an order here. They need to drink deeply, receive God's grace and peace if it's going to be at work among them in the way it needs to be. Before anything's going to change horizontally, something needs to be received vertically. In just one verse that we often breeze past, Paul is doing a ton of work here. Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. In Greek, it's just 12 words. And in 12 words, Paul is literally setting the foundation for the next 16 chapters. Everything he's going to cover is summed up in just these 12 words. He's setting the agenda for everything they're going to talk about. He's showing us that God's grace and peace closes gaps. And as we progress through this letter as a congregation, we're going to see that God's grace and peace ends up closing three gaps. So I'm going to name these for you. The first gap is the vertical gap between us and God. There's a vertical gap. And this really strikes at the core of the gospel. God bridges the gap between us and Him by way of grace and peace. Grace because it's unearned, it's unmerited favor. We can't earn it. God moves towards us while we're still sinners and don't deserve it. And peace because this is the result. When you receive what God has done for you, you have peace with God. This is how Paul explains it in Romans 5. So I'm going to step out of Corinthians for a moment. And this is how Paul is trying to explain it to a different community. He says, Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. Let's keep that up there, Jonathan. I want to go through this passage backwards and show you a few key words, three key words. The first is grace. Paul uses it in verse 2. He says, You have access through all of this by grace in which we now stand. So this justification, this right relationship we have with God, this peace we have with God, we have gained access to by grace. It's all grace. Grace is God's initiating work towards us. That God moves towards us when we were moving away from God. This is God's posture and disposition towards us. He leaves the 99 in order to chase after us, every single one of us, and it's all grace. You can't earn it, you can't achieve it, all you can do is receive it. And then once you receive it, it's still all grace. Notice what he says that it is grace in which we now stand. So this is God's settled disposition toward us. God's permanent posture towards us is one of grace. Notice the second word that's big in this passage, which is peace. The purpose of God's pursuing grace, God chasing after us with grace, is to establish peace with us. That means there was a disruption of peace. We were at odds with God. Our relationship with God was fractured, and God in grace wants that relationship to be repaired. So he chases after us, he moves towards us with grace, and as we receive that grace, we experience peace with God. A peace that was absent when the disruption was there. And notice the way we enter into and receive that is by way of faith. The word faith is used once in verse 1 and verse 2. He says, We have been justified through faith, and then he says, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace. The way you receive God's grace in Jesus is through faith. Faith in the New Testament is not just believing the right things. James says that even demons believe the right things and shudder. It's not a mere believism. A faith in the New Testament has two components to it. One is you put your faith in Jesus, you trust what Jesus has done for you. That's the first component. The second is you then pledge your allegiance or your loyalty to Jesus as a disciple. So faith in the scriptures is about faith in Jesus and faithfulness to Jesus. This is the first gap that God closes by way of grace and peace. The gap between us and God. God's bizarre is one of grace towards us. He moves towards us with grace. And as we respond in faith, we experience peace or right relationship with God. So you receive it and then you enter into it. If you're here today and you're not a follower of Jesus, I encourage you to really take this invitation seriously that God wants a right relationship with you. He does. And his settled disposition toward you is grace. His permanent posture is one of grace. God is moving toward you, despite the mess in your life and all of your mistakes, God is moving toward you with grace. And peace. And the way you gain access to that peace with God is simply by receiving what Jesus has done for you. He's forgiven you of your sin. He frees you from the power of sin in your life. You receive and you put your trust in what Jesus has done for you, but it doesn't stop there. You then pledge your faithfulness to Jesus, and you become a committed follower, and you learn and grow alongside other people. This is the first gap that is bridged by way of grace and peace, the gap between us and God. Here's the second gap. It's the horizontal gap between us in the church. So the grace that God extends to us, the grace that God gives to us to restore peace between us on the vertical, that grace that we now have received becomes a catalyst, establishing and maintaining peace among one another. And this is not, friends, secondary to the gospel. It is central to the gospel. So often people think the gospel is just about being saved and going to heaven when you die. It's just about the vertical being made right with God. But the New Testament gives us such a bigger picture of the gospel. In Ephesians 2, Paul makes it clear that through Jesus' shed blood on the cross, he not only makes us right with God, but reconciles us one to another. And so the gospel is all-encompassing. It's about being rightly related to God, but it's also about being rightly related to one another, which is why divisions in the church and relational fractures are such a big deal. Because they're an affront to the gospel. Here's our bottom line for today, and we probably could just make it the bottom line for this entire series. The grace and peace God gives to us closes the gap between us. The grace we receive from God, then we need to extend to one another. And you're gonna need it because people are messy, and so are you. The peace we have with God is the peace we're supposed to pursue with one another. Grace and peace don't stop with us. The grace and peace God gives to us is then to me is meant to work in and through us and define our relationship with one another. Is this making sense? It's making sense to Vicki in the back. Thank you for listening, Vicki. I appreciate you. Uh we have a church podcast called Praxis, and we just finished up a series. It was a short series on disability in the church. If you haven't listened to it, I'd encourage you to do. But we got to interview a few different guests who know a lot in this area. One of them was Emily. Emily Enixon. Will you raise your hand, Emily? You're you were awesome on our podcast. Um we got to interview a few guests, and the last guests we had was a woman named Nilda. And she lives in Milwaukee. Um, she's a minister and has a disability. She has spina bifida. And so it's really an interesting conversation to talk about being a leader in a church while you have a disability at the same time. And she used this phrase in our podcast that has been sort of uh it's just stuck with me ever since. She said, Don't be a stinky sponge. And what she we were doing, I just thought that was such a funny throwaway line, but what she was talking about was like what you've received from God can't stop with you. It's meant to be given to other people. And a sponge is a great sort of object lesson because the whole point of a sponge is you fill it with water and soap and then you squeeze it out and you use it to sort of clean things up, right? And she's going, but if you just fill up a sponge and then let it sit there, it's gonna smell bad. And I just thought it was the perfect line because it's like, you know what? Don't be a stinky Christian. A stinky Christian is someone who claims to have received God's grace but then refuses to extend it to other people. Don't be a stinky Christian. The grace we receive from God, the peace we now have with God, isn't to stop with us. The evidence that you've actually received it and understood it by necessity means you extend it to other people. You pursue peace in your relationships with others. You allow God's grace and peace to transform you and flow through you rather than stop with you. This is exactly what Paul is going to invite and challenge the Corinthians to attend to together. Grace. He modifies this Gentile greeting and changes it to grace, right? Grace to you and peace, Jew and Gentile coming together to be rightly related. And that is the biggest fracture in the ancient world. And so if that fracture can be repaired, then any other fracture can be repaired by attending to God's grace and peace together. So you've got the first gap that is closed by way of grace and peace, the vertical between us and God. Then you have this horizontal gap that often happens in the church when we're in disagreement with one another. And then the final gap is the gap between Paul and the Corinthians. Paul's gonna try to close this gap in this letter, and this is really important. So I want to explain to you what's going on right now in Paul's letter. What you need to know is this is that Paul is deeply at odds with this church in Corinth. Their relationship, Paul's relationship to the Corinthians, is sort of hanging on by a thread. It is significantly strained. Um, it is tenuous at best. Paul had planted this church and had led this church for some time, but then moved on to start new churches. And over time that relationship began to sort of dissolve. Tensions began to creep in. And you can tell from both of the letters that there's actually an anti-Paule sentiment that has started to develop, and the church is sort of displacing Paul's leadership in favor of other leaders. This is part of the reason why during the introduction, Paul doesn't just say, hey, Paul to Corinth, he says, I'm actually an apostle of Jesus Christ called by the will of God. In other words, he's reminding them from the very beginning, I'm not someone you can dismiss. He's asserting his apostolic authority. I planted this church, I started this church, I led this church, do not dismiss my voice. But this is a tough spot that Paul is in. He's in a really difficult position because his relationship with the Corinthians has eroded. Not open hostility, they're still sort of talking to one another and corresponding via letters, but it is significantly strained. And so on the one hand, Paul has a ton of things he needs to challenge this community, confront this community about, but the problem is that there's trust issues. Have you ever been in that spot before? Where maybe it's a friend or a family member and you've got something difficult you need to talk to them about that they might not want to hear. And what makes it even more difficult is that your relationship is experiencing some tension, there's some friction there. What do you do? Well, notice what Paul does. Notice what Paul does. Paul goes first. Before Paul corrects them, he extends grace and peace to them. Before challenging them and confronting them, Paul offers grace and peace to them. In other words, Paul goes first. Paul models the way by going first. He doesn't wait for the Corinthians to extend grace to him. He doesn't wait for the Corinthians to pursue peace with them. He moves first. He's the first mover. The grace and peace that Paul wants to see between the members at Corinth and the grace and peace he wants to have with those in Corinth, he pursues first. He's the first one to move. Paul isn't just talking theology here, he's living it. And in living it, he's going to invite the Corinthians to live it with him. Remember our bottom line: that grace, the grace and peace God gives to us, closes the gap between us. There's a gap between Paul and the Corinthians, and so he starts by moving towards the Corinthians with grace and peace. The grace we receive from God is the grace we extend to one another. The peace we have with God is the peace we're supposed to pursue with one another. Here's the rub, you guys, is that we often want other people to go first, don't we? We want other people to go first. So we experience some sort of a fallout with someone. There's some sort of relational tension, some hurt or wound that's there. And in that relational disruption, we sort of sit back waiting for the other person to move towards us. We want them to go first. And then oftentimes what happens is when they don't move toward us, we actually use their lack of movement towards us as a justification for not moving towards them. If they don't move towards me, well then why should I move towards them? Well, think about it for a moment, friends. If both people are doing that, what's going to happen? If both people are waiting for the other person to move towards the other and using their lack of movement as an excuse not to do so, what's gonna happen? The fracture is gonna remain. Josie and I have been married for almost 21 years, and this one time, it's only happened once, we got in this thing called a fight. Um it's happened more than once. This one, though, was like within the first few months of marriage, and I remember it because it was really, it's become a really funny one to talk about. Uh so at the time we lived in Chicago, uh Josie was a nurse, I was in grad school, and we couldn't afford much. We had this tiny uh sort of townhouse apartment thing. And so uh literally you walk in and it was like this the entryway, living room, dining room, and kitchen were all this one little tiny room. And then there was like this flight of stairs that went upstairs to a loft where our bed was. That was it. Okay, really small place. And we got in a fight, and I don't even remember what the fight was about. That's how important it was. Um, it was probably Josie's socks. I noticed early in our marriage she got in this habit, she'd get home from work and then she would kick off her socks and shoes right by the entryway and then just leave it there for a few days. And I was like, who that's disgusting. Like, who does that? Our place isn't big enough for that. So it was probably the socks. It was Josie's fault. Um, and we got into an argument, okay, about her socks. And uh it wasn't going well. Um, it wasn't going well, the fight wasn't going well. Um Josie's very stubborn. That's what you need to know. Josie's very, very stubborn in arguments. Um, sometimes I can be that way too. And in this case, we were both being stubborn and we weren't making any progress. And at one point, Josie had had enough of me, and she stomped upstairs. We were downstairs bickering, she stomps upstairs. And I remember going, I'm not going upstairs. No way. So I sat down on the couch with my arms folded, you know, and I'm just like, well, this will be interesting. And time started to tick very slowly. So I'm sitting there and nothing's happening, right? And then all of a sudden I hear Josie's feet come to the top of the stairs and she says, Well, are you gonna come up here, you jerk? And uh I, to this day, I don't remember if I came up to her or she came back down. She probably came back down because she's a better human than me. But um that became a really funny moment. Like, yeah, that makes me want to come upstairs, you jerk. Like, it just became a really funny moment. And actually a good moment for us to go, hey, here's how we fight fairly. We don't walk out on each other, right? And we learn how to talk to each other so we don't get to that point, right? So it was it was a catalyst for growth for us at the time. But it also perfectly illustrated for me here's what happens when two people are at odds and they blow up in conflict, so they're trying to change and win over the other person, just like Josie and I were doing. And then when that doesn't work, we distance from each other, right? And then in that distance, we sort of fold our arms stubbornly and we try to wait for the other person to come to us. And then when they don't, we sort of use that as an excuse or a justification not to move towards them. See the problem? Here's the question is will you be the first one to move? Will you be the first one to move? Now I get it. Um there are situations where you need to stop chasing other people. If you're in an abusive relationship, if there's really toxic patterns and pursuing this other person is just gonna expose you tomorrow, I get it. There's caveats. But I would say, as a pastor, 90% of the relationships, relational issues that I'm invited into, it's two stubborn people whose hearts have become hard and they're not willing to move towards the other person. Will you be the first one to move? Notice that you doing the right thing, you doing, you being the first one to move doesn't depend on the other person. Again, when we stubbornly outsource us doing the right thing to other people's behavior, we excuse ourselves from doing the right thing. Jesus said the opposite. He said, Hey, if you know a brother or sister has something against you and you're on your way to worship me, stop what you're doing and go be right with that person. And he says nothing about their attitude, their disposition, what they did right or wrong. He doesn't qualify it. Paul says, so far as it depends upon you, be at peace with all people. So, yes, as far as it depends on you. Takes two people to be at peace. Got it. And yes, there are toxic and abusive situations you shouldn't run into. But I'm telling you, about 90% of the time, the relational frictions in the church are not resolved because people aren't willing to move first. Insofar as it depends upon you, be at peace with all people. And the reason why this matters is because this is what it means to live into the gospel. Jesus moved towards us with grace when we didn't deserve it. If you're only gonna extend grace to people because they deserve it, you're not gonna extend grace to anybody. Jesus moved towards us with grace when we didn't deserve it, and he did so to be at peace with us. If we're gonna grow and mature as a church, we're gonna have to learn to extend grace to one another. You're gonna have to extend grace to me because I'm not a perfect leader. And you're not perfect either. It's gonna get messy. And if you find a perfect church, go there. And then you can mess that one up, okay? That's how it works. It's all a mess. So let's just normalize it's gonna be messy, and then we mature in the mess by learning how to extend. Grace to one another and pursue peace. Here's some action steps for you this week. Some things you can pray through with Jesus. Where are you resisting God's grace towards you and the peace God wants with you? In other words, this is the vertical. I want you to spend some time going, God, am I receiving the grace and the peace you want with me? Where is there a relational gap between you and someone else? Maybe someone in the church, a family member, a friend, and what would it look like for you to go first? Maybe it's a simple text or an email or let's get together and have coffee, whatever that might be. What would it look like for you to be the first one to move? Here's the practice, okay, and this is one big practice, it's not five of them, okay? So it's just here are the steps. Um, if there's someone that you need to move toward with grace and peace, name the gap that exists between you and someone else. Write it out, journal it out. Here's the gap that I sense is there. Pray before you move. Ask God to soften your heart. Take one small step towards them this week: a text, an email, a phone call, extend grace and peace to them, and then trust that God will be at work. God is in the business of restoring and reconciling things. When you, full of his spirit, step into this work, you can trust to do God more do work that you can't do on your own. Amen? All right. Um, let's stand for closing prayer. God, we thank you that you close the gap between us and you by way of grace and peace through Jesus Christ. We want to be people who live into the gospel, the good news, and the way that we um do life together as a community. We acknowledge that we're a mess. And we know that that is not a deterrent to you. You embrace us in the mess, but you also want to transform us in and through the mess. So help each one of us to lean in as disciples of Jesus and to pursue more mature relationships with you and with one another. For we ask it in your name. Amen. Go in peace.