I love hearing the stories of newcomers to church. Stories of what draws them to a church like ours, of what discoveries they make spiritually when they realize they might have come initially for one reason but something else takes over. Time and again I hear about how this is a healthy church, and how hopeful it is for people who have had bad experiences before. Thank you, and you’re welcome.

I was on a national conference call this week of pastoral care providers— mostly hospital chaplains, I the lone parish pastor. The subject was counseling with people around issues of genetic disorders. What I heard was despair over churches not being safe places for people to open up about tragic and personal matters for fear of being told up front what they ought to do. The chaplains spoke of frustration with ministers who have all the answers before they know the questions. And I thought, Wow, wonder what that would be like?! I sometimes feel like a man who can’t take his own side in an argument. I know a few things with bedrock confidence—God is good, the Bible is trustworthy, I am a sinner, Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. Beyond that, I know life is a journey of discovery after a truth that is lodged in flesh and bone. As a church then, we are a company of spiritual pilgrims. God is the ground beneath our feet and the heaven overhead. Christ is one step ahead calling us forward. The Spirit is a whispering friend nudging us onward when the will is weak.

Today we begin a series of four sermons looking at the church from the book of Colossians. For the sake of banal cleverness (which is my forte, don’t you know?!), we’ll call the series, The Church as a Colossal Community. Before you groan over the colossal pun, let me assure you that no, I haven’t sold out. This isn’t about how Wilshire can become a colossal church in the sense of huge or enormous. The word also means exceptional or to an astonishing degree. It can refer to the power or effect approaching the stupendous or incredible. That I like. The question is how can church be an incredible community, one that seems too good to be true? What marks of an outstanding church can we find in the Bible that guides us toward being an authentic community of faith?

The first chapters of Paul’s letter to the church at Colossae, give just such hints and pointers. We begin today in chapter one looking at the church as “a community of roots and fruits.” [Homiletics (Jul 2001):31-35.]

A Community of Roots

I recently searched the Ellis Island web site and found that my paternal grandfather George Mason came over with his mother Minnie from Scotland on a Liverpool ship called the Celtic. They arrived when he was a 9 year-old boy on March 28, 1908. I found my mother’s grandfathers also, both of whom immigrated from Norway. It was a search for my roots, for a deeper connection and sense of belonging in my family story.

We all want that. We all need that. A feeling that our lives fit into a long story that gives the world some sense. There’s something about knowing where you are from, who your people are, where you belong, that situates you in the world. It gives you a sense of who you are. We live in an increasingly rootless society. So many broken families. So much mobility. How many of you grew up in Dallas and have deep roots here? See, most of us are transplants from somewhere else.

Church is a spiritually transplanted community. Look at the way Paul puts it in verses 12-13. We thank God our Father, who has enabled us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son.

Something dramatic and deep has happened to us through Jesus Christ. We have been dug up from a rootless existence, in which we felt we were withering away in barren soil, and transplanted in a rich garden of grace, in which we can grow and thrive. To be part of a church is to be planted in a community with roots that go deep enough to sustain life under any and all conditions. You can’t be any more secure than to know that your life is connected at the deepest places to the very life of God.

But how will you experience that when you try to live apart from relationships to the community of Christ? Listen, you can’t be a Christian alone! This is a community effort. You need other people to help you become the unique you God is calling you to be in Christ. And others need you to help them for the very same reasons.

Many people worry that when they join a church they will lose their autonomy, they will have people making them feel guilty all the time for not being around, for not committing to this or that, until gradually the church will have taken over their lives. Some people think of church as a confining coercive collective of Christian clones. Who would want to join that? Not I. But what if we are a kind of family with roots deeper than blood? What if the language of the church—Paul talks of his brothers and sisters in Colossae, and God their Father—is not the language of clubs and cliques but points instead to something so profound and hopeful we can hardly imagine its truth? What if water turns out to be thicker than blood? What if family of spirit is more enduring than family of flesh? And what if the only way you can really find the unique you you are meant to be is with spiritual brothers and sisters who help you discover that for yourself?

When Rabbi Zusya was an old and reflective man, he said: In the coming world, they will not ask me: ‘Why were you not Moses?’ They will ask me: ‘Why were you not Zusya?’ the church doesn’t want clones, even clones of Christ; we only needed one Christ. The world needs the one and only authentic you, which can only be seen when you have a relationship with Christ and to his people.

Paul reminds the church at Colossae that they believed the word that came to them from their founding and faithful pastor, Epaphras. The gospel took root in them, sinking them into the good soil of God’s garden. This is the divine element in church that makes it more than just a do-gooder organization or a place to meet people or a group that might have a good influence on the kids. We find our connection to the divine in church, among and through other humans beings. A preacher speaks God’s word of salvation in Jesus Christ. A Sunday school teacher helps the Bible come alive. Christian people model faith for us. You simply can’t do without the church if you are to find spiritual roots and bear fruits for God.

Kathleen Norris a poet and writer, talks about her journey toward community in church. She remembers what she thought about church from the outside, and what she feels about it now from the inside. From the outside, church congregations can look like remarkably contentious places, full of hypocrites who talk about love while fighting each other tooth and nail. This is the reason many people give for avoiding them. On the inside, however, it is a different matter, a matter of struggling to maintain unity as the ‘body of Christ’ given the fact that we have precious little uniformity. Then referring to her own church, she says, We are not individuals who have come together because we are like-minded. That is not a church, but a political party. We are like most healthy churches, I think, in that we can do pretty well when it comes to loving and serving God, each other, and the world; but God help us if we have to agree about things. [Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith (Riverhead Books, 1998), pp. 272-273.]

As your pastor, I find it downright annoying that you don’t always agree with me about things. I also find it good for us both. We don’t have to agree about things; but we have to be rooted in one and in the same garden of the gospel. The Quaker theologian Elton Trueblood once described America as a “cut flower civilization,” a culture cut off from its spiritual roots like a flower cut off at its stem. A church that will be vital and fruitful must have its roots firmly sunk into Christ.

A Community of Fruits

If the church has its roots in Christ, something else will be true of it: the church will have fruits; it will flourish. More people will find their life in the garden of God. And those who live together in it will grow in strength of faith, beauty of love, and power of hope.

One of the primary things people ought to look for in a church is what kind of people it produces over the long haul. People usually choose a church by what attracts them at first, instead of by what kind of people they want to become over time.

I’ve kept a Garry Trudeau Doonesbury cartoon in my tickler file for years. A father and mother sit their young son down to announce they’ve decided to begin attending church as a family. The boy protests that church is boring. The parents reply that they thought that too as kids but their parents made them go and it was good for them. You may end up hating church, too, the father says, but you have to come by that feeling honestly. You have to put in the pew time, like mom and I did. The boy then asks, What if I like it? His parents are unprepared for that. We’ll cross that bridge when we get there, Honey. They don’t really expect to ever get there, though.

You should find yourself liking things about church over time that may surprise you. If you came looking to meet people and find friends at church, fine. Later you may discover you have more than friends—you have brothers and sisters that are closer than blood. If you joined because you like the preaching or the music, fine. Over time the Word of God will lodge in your soul and the music will draw you closer to the heart of God. If you came because you needed help and care, fine. The crucial thing is that you become a helping and caring person yourself.

Paul prays for the church that they may bear fruit in every good work as [they] grow in the knowledge of God. We are not interested in filling our church garden with cut flowers. We want to grow together in grace.

Of course, you have to have roots to bear fruits. And the church is just the kind of community garden that will allow you to flourish. Are you planted here? Want to be?