Outlive Your Life_ You Were Made to Make a Difference - Max Lucado [16]
“You, John, will be my witness . . .”
“You, Mary Magdalene, will be my witness . . .”
But rather, “You [the sum of you] will be my witnesses . . .” Jesus works in community. For that reason you find no personal pronouns in the earliest description of the church:
All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer.
A deep sense of awe came over them all, and the apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders. And all the believers met together in one place and shared everything they had. They sold their property and possessions and shared the money with those in need. They worshiped together at the Temple each day, met in homes for the Lord’s Supper, and shared their meals with great joy.
(Acts 2:42–46 NLT)
The cameo contains only plural nouns and pronouns.
“All the believers.”
“Devoted themselves.”
“Awe came over them all.”
“All the believers met together . . . and shared everything.”
“They sold their property and possessions and shared.”
“They worshiped together . . . and shared their meals.”
No I or my or you. We are in this together. We are more than followers of Christ, disciples of Christ. “We are parts of his body” (Eph. 5:30 NCV). “He is the head of the body, which is the church” (Col. 1:18 NCV). I am not his body; you are not his body. We—together— are his body.
But his body has been known to misbehave. The brain discounts the heart. (Academics discount worshippers.) The hands criticize the knees. (People of action criticize people of prayer.) The eyes refuse to partner with the feet. (Visionary thinkers won’t work with steady laborers.)
A clear case of mutiny on the body.
If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I am not of the body,” is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I am not of the body,” is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where would be the smelling? But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body just as He pleased. (1 Cor. 12:15–18)
The early Christians surely chuckled at these word pictures. What if the whole body were an eye? If you were a collection of eyeballs, how would you function? Five eyes on your hand, which is an eye, attached to your arm-sized eye, affixed to a torso eye from which extends your neck eye, and . . . The thought is ludicrous! You’d have to bathe in Visine. But, then again, you couldn’t bathe, for you wouldn’t have hands.
“The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’” (v. 21).
We cannot say, “I have no need of you.” The megachurch needs the smaller church. The liberal needs the conservative. The pastor needs the missionary. Cooperation is more than a good idea; it is a command. “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:3 NIV). Unity matters to God. There is “one flock and one shepherd” (John 10:16 NIV).
What if the missing ingredient for changing the world is teamwork? “When two of you get together on anything at all on earth and make a prayer of it, my Father in heaven goes into action. And when two or three of you are together because of me, you can be sure that I’ll be there” (Matt. 18:19–20 MSG).
This is an astounding promise. When believers agree, Jesus takes notice, shows up, and hears our prayers.
And when believers disagree? Can we return to my Guatemalan memory for a moment?
Suppose our group had clustered according to opinions. Divided according to doctrines. If we had made unanimity a prerequisite for partnership, can you imagine the consequences? We wouldn’t have accomplished anything. When workers divide, it is the suffering who suffer most.
They’ve suffered enough, don’t you think? The Jerusalem church found a way to work together. They found common ground in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. Because they did, lives were changed.
And as you and I do, the same will