Do you realize that you and I have just participated in a minor miracle? You are wondering what it is, right? Here’s the miracle: several hundred people have voluntarily gathered together in this one place, at this one time, to do one thing together. Every single one of us could be doing something different right now. And at any point in time, any one of us could simply get up and walk away. But that probably won’t happen. What’s the miracle in this, you ask? After all, it happens every Sunday in millions of places. The miracle is that it does not have to happen but it always does happen. And that’s something you and I need to think about today.

Our Sunday sermon time in this season is organized around a general theme of “life in the world.” In other words, we are asking God to teach us about the dynamics of our spiritual lives as they play themselves out in the rest of our lives, in the “real” world, so to speak. One huge part of life for each one of us is the simple fact that there are other people in the world besides ourselves, and their presence presents both obstacles and opportunities in our overall experience of happiness and well-being. I want you to take just a second or two right now to look at the other people who are seated around you. As you do that, I want you to realize that their existence in your life is a fundamental part of God’s plan for your own life, and you and I need to learn to deal well with this fact.

An awful lot of what Jesus talked about in his earthly ministry was about the intersection of our faith with our relationships with other people. In the little snippet of conversation that we read a moment ago, he made two profound observations on that topic. The first is that when a handful of Christians agree on something down here on earth, then God the Father pays special attention and makes happen what those Christians decided needed to happen. We don’t have time today to fully unpack that statement, but we do need to recognize that this was not a simple formula for just getting what we want. What we can say, though, is that there is certainly a form of spiritual power present when people are of the same mind. Perhaps it has to do more with the fact that the Holy Spirit is being heard in the same way by more than one person and therefore they are simply more aligned with what God wants in the first place. Or perhaps it has to do with the fact that God so highly values the peace and unity of his children that when they can find a way to come together about something, he gives that particular care.

Maybe this first observation should be understood in the context of the second, that Jesus is present when two or more Christians have come together in his name. That phrase is used quite often in Christian circles because it is so important. From the very beginning, Jesus gathered a group of people around him, and in that group they learned about him and his way of life in the continual presence and power of God. It is in the company of fellow believers that Jesus’ continuing presence is experienced most powerfully. In our relationships with each other as brothers and sisters in one family is where God has decided we will live into the blessing and joy and delight of fellowship with him.

I realize that I cannot talk for very long about the joy of Christian fellowship without every single one of us thinking to ourselves, “Well, yeah, that’s just fine, but not every Christian I know is such a wonderful person. And when it comes down to the nuts and bolts of getting along with each other, it’s not always so easy.” And you’re right. The relationship between one person and another is so prone to dysfunction and disaster that Jesus had to spend a great deal of his energy helping us learn how to get along with each other. Amazingly, though, when we begin to learn to get along with each other, we are also learning how to get along with God. And when we begin to learn to get along with God we are also learning how to get along with each other. That’s why Jesus is so real to us when we are with other people: It is only through him that we can successfully relate to each other and only through relating to each other that we can learn what he was all about.

There are lots of ways that two-way street of spiritual learning takes place. One of them Paul discussed with the Corinthians. The Corinthian Christians were notoriously bad at the business of getting along with each other, and so Paul had to write a lot about that topic with them. One of the examples he used to try to teach them about the divine design for getting along was the example of the human body. When he did that, he was actually giving a new translation and meaning to an example that other teachers from antiquity had used. In Roman and Greek society there was a common understanding that each person had a particular role to fulfill, and everyone needed to know their place. Some had a higher place, some lower. Just as in the human body, with some parts having a higher function and others a lower function, the philosophers of Rome and Greece argued that every person—especially the lower classes—needed to know their place and not try to challenge or escape it. But Paul took that image and changed it radically, according to the Spirit of Christ.

Paul began by reminding the Corinthians that they had all come into a relationship with God through the work of the Living Spirit of Christ; therefore all were equal to each other. No one was higher, or better. All were part of the one body of Christ. Christ had died for all. Christ lived again for all. Christ erased any and all distinctions between classes or races or genders. And then, he went further, claiming that even though each member of the body had a different role, no role was necessarily better or higher than another, because the body needs all its parts to be a complete and whole body. What may seem superior is in fact not because it depends for its life on that which may seem inferior. What may seem inferior is in fact not because it is just as important in the function of the whole as that which may seem superior. There is diversity within the individual members, but also interdependence. That is the way God has made it to be. There is a fundamental unity and equality built into human society as God intended it, and anything less is inadequate and dysfunctional.

A successful relationship with God depends upon our learning about things like forgiveness, grace, humility, hope, and joy. God has made the world so that you and I learn the inner reality of these gifts as we experience them in our relationships with each other. With each other is where these spiritual realities take on flesh and blood, where heaven and earth intersect. When one person forgives another, loves another, teaches another, encourages another, challenges another, then God is present, working his miracle of teaching us about himself. As we learn these things from God, we learn to apply them in larger and larger circles of influence and relationship, for they are the fundamental dynamics not just of interpersonal relationships but of international, geopolitical relationships as well, and all others in between.

One of my favorite lessons from history is of a comment made in the meeting rooms of Independence Hall in Philadelphia as the Declaration of Independence was being signed by the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. It is said that when all had signed the document, wise old Benjamin Franklin said, “We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.” As far as the British King George was concerned, the Declaration was an act of treason that would be punished most likely by execution by hanging. Ben Franklin and the others knew what they risked. And they knew, too, that their only hope of escaping that fate was to hang together, to get along with each other, to become and to remain a unified force for what they believed to be a defining moment in God’s design for the future of a new nation.

At every level, human society simply does not work unless we follow God’s plan and hang together. Life together in a common faith in Christ is life that understands both the diversity and interdependence that God built into us. It is life that understands our essential equality before God and God’s design for our unity because of it. We cannot have successful families, successful marriages, successful friendships, successful schools or businesses, successful towns or cities or states, and ultimately, a successful world community, without these spiritual dynamics in place. We have such a long way to go to put these dynamics into play. If our marriages are to stop failing, our families to stop hurting their individual members, our different interest groups and factions to stop fighting, our world to stop standing on the brink of destroying itself, either through nuclear annihilation or environmental destruction, then we simply must learn from God and be filled with the Spirit of Christ as we learn to get along with each other. To have the life that you and I want to have, we must have it together, or we will have it not at all. God has shown us the way, but we must make it happen. James Luther Adams once said, “No matter how good an idea, if it does not incarnate, it will dissipate.” Just as you and I can gather together successfully every Sunday, in peace and harmony and true Christian fellowship, we need to take this spiritual blessing—this little miracle—out into the world. God has shown us the way, but we must make it happen.

Amen.