It's not a simple passage, but it's thorough in describing our previous condition and our current status - at least the status of those who have believed and received Christ. We used to be separated from God and without hope beyond this life. His promises and lasting benefits were for others. But we were brought near to God by Jesus and the barriers of sin and rebellion are being torn down. Hostilities put aside, we enjoy peace with God and citizenship in the everlasting kingdom.

We're also members of his household. This household is being built on the foundation of those who've gone before us, with Christ as chief cornerstone. It says that the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by the Spirit.

Western Christianity has made a lot of noise in recent decades, about the importance of a personal relationship with Christ. This is good, in the sense that this personal focus pushed us beyond institutional faith, or cultural Christianity, or a nominal embrace of our parent's religion and into something that's authentic and intimate. The downside of this "personal relationship" talk is that it feeds right into the hand of American rugged individualism. We have fed too well the notion of private and personal faith that depends little and contributes little to God's bigger purpose.

While your relationship to Christ is personal, God never intends to be private. We are all parts of a bigger building with little or even no, independent capacity apart from the other parts. We are members or parts, of a body, and no organ functions independent from the other organs and the whole body is crippled if all organs aren't functioning and contributing according to God's design. The church, the body of Christ, limps and struggles and sputters because we behave in disjointed ways.

I've watched Christians come and go, grow and shrink, flourish and falter, and this is one obvious reality: Lone wolf Christianity accomplishes one thing - proud, self-absorbed, shallow pseudo-Christianity. Individualized faith harms the whole and harms the parts. This was never intended to be an individual sport - always and only a team sport. As Rick Warren says, even the Lone Ranger has Tonto.

Why? Because "life isn't about love." Or as Paul puts it, "Without love, I am nothing." We are on this earth to love and be loved. We are loved by God and the greatest commandment is to love him back. We live in relationship to many neighbors and the second commandment is tied into the first, "Love your neighbor as yourself."

We are told to love our families. If we don't provide for our families, the Bible says we're worse than unbelievers. We're told to love people in need, the weak, the poor, the defenseless, the widow, the orphan. We're even told to love our enemies, astonishing them by answering enmity with interest and kindness. In truth, God wants us to love everyone, since He does. He never gives up on anyone, and He wishes we wouldn't.

Still, God's priority is that we love one another in the household of faith. "By this shall all men know that you are my disciples," said Jesus. "If you have love for one another." Our devoted mutual interest and united witness to the world is what wins the day. In the eyes of the world, we are more credible. In the eyes of God, we're getting it. We were "formed for God's family." Adopted by God and pronounced to be more than mere created objects, we're His children, with huge benefits coming our way. But you're not an only child, and neither am I. While things might seem simpler, in a sense, and cleaner if it were all about me and only about me, it isn't. Besides, each of us has deficits and all of us have needs that can only be fulfilled in meaningful relationship with others.

I know there are many temperaments and types. I know that for some people, living in isolation feels natural and living in community takes enormous commitment. Still, this is God's will for God's children. "Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves."

If the church, its people and its mission, is of nominal interest to us, then we're being dismissive about God's agenda for changing us and for changing the world. The church is critical to my development and your development. And the church is the most important agency for positive change in the entire world. [Not governments, they come and go, and the best ones have been based on ethical and societal understandings that have been fundamentally shaped by Christians in dynamic fellowship with each other... business... research... medical... education... protection...]

Now, if we, together, are going to be such a powerful agent of transformation in persons and in the world, then there are many values we need to embrace. One is authenticity, which involves a level of honesty and vulnerability that blows out every shallow, polite, stiff notion of church where people march in, sing a few songs, have an ethical snack from the pulpit, and march out again, relieved that the preacher finished in the allotted time. Some of us have experienced church that way. Some of us even like it that way. But there's not a dot of evidence in scripture that God intends it to be that way.

There's a kind of mutuality that should characterize our gatherings and our investments into each other. There's a kind of sympathy that requires more than polite, surfacy fellowship. There's a kind of mercy that demands putting it out there - our quirks and our pains and our doubts and our fears, and finding in the household, the family, the ship of fellows, that someone or many are ready to listen, embrace, heal, help and impart courage. And possibly admit to the same struggles so we don't have to face it down alone.

This is how God wants this set apart, dearly loved family of faith to operate: clothed in compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience. Rather than getting frustrated with each other, or giving up on each other, we're told to bear with others and forgive whatever grievances have been stacking up.

Here is the truth. Church can be messy. First and foremost, church is messy because it's made up of people. Even more, it's messy because family always is. Outside of family, friendships aren't really messy, because we walk away from them when they stress us. But in the family, there's no walking away. We're stuck with one another. Family.

Oh, I know, we can always jump churches when things get messy. And sometimes, we really should. When we're dying on the vines, or causing harm by our perpetual discontent or cynicism, some might benefit from transferring to a new division in the company. But as a whole, the consumer culture in American churches is an embarrassment and a hindrance. Each of us should find a church that is emphatic about God's values and then stay with it until God call us away for good reason.

And when it gets messy, we must remember that messy usually means meaningful. Messy usually means that we're breaking through to real heart issues and reading people in authentic ways.

Obviously, if we're gong to experience real community and authentic, mutual fellow ship, this takes commitment. And commitment means disentangling from a host of things that threaten to bog down our best intentions. Busyness, according to Warren, is the enemy of relationships. And the list is long of various activities, good and bad, that are virtually sinful in their capacity to distract and detain us from fulfilling higher purposes - like meaningful relationship and furthering God's church.

What ends up happening is a kind of partial immersion, or a Christian life that never gets past wading in the shallows of discipleship, leaning, service, fellowship, mission. At this church, our constant quest is to push, pull, plead, prod, poke, and persuade every Christian to move toward deeper waters. To dive in, step out, risk, dare and believe enough to try a life immersed in the things of Christ. Not as dabblers but as disciples. Not as hobbyists, but as hearty investors. Not as duty bound religious types, but as enthusiasts, who grasp more each day how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ; who know that this love surpasses knowledge, and who are on a quest to know what it is to be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

This immersion is so beautifully represented by baptism. Baptism basically says, "I'm in. Not just up to my toes, or my ankles, or my knees. I'm in. The word "baptize" means immerse, or submerge, or dunk. No matter how much water we use, baptism means "I'm all wet. Count me in." It is an outward sign of some rich inward realities. What are those inward realities?