Thicker than Water...

My mother, father, and I returned home to their house in New Orleans yesterday morning around 4 a.m. after a long drive to Houston for the funeral of a close family friend.

Usually I find myself on the officiating end of funerals. This time I was part of the congregation - listening, singing, and looking for a reminder of God's presence and hope through loss and heart-ache.

One has to be intentional to be able to see God when they're hurting. It doesn't come naturally to us. And that's where the support and encouragement of others becomes so vitally important. It's when we can't see and don't feel that others can do the seeing and feeling for us until our vision clears and our hearts cease to ache.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in his famous book, Life Together, "The physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy and strength to the believer." He wrote these words as the German government of the thirties became increasingly antagonistic to any Christianity that resisted Nazi power. For Bonhoeffer, community wasn't optional, it was the very life-blood of the Christian experience.

Listen to what Bonhoeffer says as he looks for encouragement and support realizing that his own Christian witness may put him at odds with the culture of his day (and ultimately result in his execution in 1945). "God has willed that we should seek and find His living Word in the witness of a brother, in the mouth of man. Therefore, the Christian needs another Christian who speaks God's Word to him. He needs him again and again when he becomes uncertain and discouraged, for by himself he cannot help himself without belying the truth. He needs his brother man as a bearer and proclaimer of the divine word of salvation. He needs his brother solely because of Jesus Christ. The Christ in his own heart is weaker than the Christ in the word of his brother; his own heart is uncertain, his brother's is sure."

When our emotions become so overpowering against the backdrop of life's pain that we can't think or even pray clearly, it's our sisters and brothers in Christ who pray us through, perhaps even think us through.

My vision for our church is to be this kind of community. We are bound together not by history or tradition or doctrine or even always by "agreement" - we are bound together by Jesus himself who transcends (and infiltrates) all these things. Not a bad binding that. Truly the blood of Christ is thicker than water.