February 09, 2011
Captured
Every week I interview a member of the congregation and then write a mini-biography about them for a newsletter. I try to capture the subject’s voice and I’m always pleased to hear others comment, “That sounds just like him/her.” I think believers do something similar when we are in fellowship and yet we hear the voice of Jesus woven into our fellowship. In the role of the Good Shepherd Jesus said, “…His sheep follow him because they know his voice.” (John 10:4b NIV)
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Gail;
-----Jesus is as real as you and I. His resurrected, human body is in heaven, too. So He does have an actual voice. We will all know what it sounds like soon. I’m not one who relegates Jesus and His Word to nice ideas. That isn’t what I mean by saying His voice is heard in those of others. But this is an aspect of it. “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to me.” (Matt 25:40)
-----His voice calls out in many ways. In our country, it increasingly calls out for food within a collapsing economy. Within a system seeking fat sheep to shear for victims of leanness, it calls out for simple justice between individuals, and for recognition and welcome as personal souls having distinct problems, interests, and ambitions of unique importance. So much about our society is raising a voice against His. It cries out for a meld into some sort of social organism alive in its whole but murderous to the personal, an organism in which food from some ethereal source is freely distributed and justice is a mere social concept of making everyone impersonally equal. Unique problems, interests, and ambitions are scraped away and punched back into the whole like dough trimmed off by a cookie cutter. It is not just a political gaff, our churches also have mistaken it for unity.
-----Yet His voice speaks personally to the individual and through the individual. It teaches. It inspires. It shapes. And what is formed of one piece of human dough is formed by His personal fingers as much as what is formed of another. Fellowship does not look to a book of denominational order for the punching of these pieces of dough back into a uniform whole. It looks to the Word for good sense and, through that, listens to the individual. When His voice is heard, welcome is the only order with honor for unique interests and ambitions and with effort and concern for unique problems. Fellowship is the conversation of His voice happening in individuals doing good to one another - good being done to the Lord. I’ve always regarded the many years you have written about your brothers and sisters as writing about our Lord‘s interests, ambitions, and problems.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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