The further I go with our mission project the more important the practice of relationship seems to become.  It’s a subject that keeps popping up and has played a significant role in some of the Christians who have been involved in our community not hanging around for long.

This subject is very much related to the concept of community and mission, especially the kind of community the writers of the New Testament envisaged when they talked about relational things - i.e. the church.

The funny thing is, when it comes to mission, or church or community, many of those we meet and are involved with who have little or no church background or who have come to Jesus through strenuous, difficult paths (drug addiction, sex abuse etc.) seem to intuitively accept the deep relational aspect of community.   That willingness to be involved in each others lives, for better or worse, over the long term.  Maybe, through experiencing bad community (unhealthy relationship) a picture of healthy community, like that taught by Jesus, is easier to grasp?

For Christians, particularly those with fairly solid, regular church, backgrounds, the concept appears elusive and divisive.

I’m not talking about co-dependant communities though.  That is communities where personal well-being (and contentment) are dependant upon the emotional state of others.  Not the kind of relationships where everyone expresses a loving fluffiness that is ultimately shallow and unable to withstand the pressures of life or deal with the crises that come along.  But relationships built on and through the agape of God the Father.

The Greeks knew what they where on about when it came to love.  In the West we tend to abuse the one word we have to express all of our positive emotional feelings (even if they are not always expressed through positive action).  “I love my team”, or “I love jogging!”, or “I love you”, or “I love chocolate”, or “I love my kids”, or “let’s make love”.

The Greek’s had a suite of words to describe almost every aspect of love.  They were able to clearly differentiate in their conversation the kind of positive emotional feeling they were talking about.  When it came to God and expressing love for his creation, the New Testament authors almost exclusively use the Greek word agape.

Agape is the deep, relational love Jesus expressed for his followers in laying down his life for them, it is the deep relational love the Father expressed for his creation in sending his son into it, it is the deep relational love that Jesus said would characterise the way his followers related to one another and the world around them.

Simply put, you cannot have agape without relationship.  If you can’t have agape without relationship then you can’t truly be the church  (at least the church in practice) and you can’t begin to understand mission from God’s perspective.

At the end of the day, agape formed relationship is hard.  It means entering into lives with a commitment to share the ups and the downs for the longer time.  It is a commitment akin to that of the marriage commitment (”husbands love your wives as Christ loves the church … being willing to die for her” - my paraphrase) and it is a commitment paralleled by the Father’s own unconditional commitment to redeeming his creation, no matter the cost (back in Genesis 15 God seals the deal with Abraham by putting him to sleep and walking between the covenantal elements himself, and in so doing relieving Abraham of all responsibility for upholding the agreement - the covenant.  The covenant was, and continues to be, the Father’s responsibility).

Len Sweet describes relationships like this:

Relationships are more complex than math problems.  Forget about all the romantic celebration of ‘community’ found in some Christian circles today.  17th century Dutch Jesuit saint John Bergmanns got it right, when he described community life as; ‘my greatest mortification’.  Relationships are hard, exhausting, unpredictable and time consuming.  Which is one reason why too many of us enjoy relationships  with the life span of fruitflies.  Relationships don’t come to us like Christmas packages, all neatly wrapped with ribbons and bows.  Relationships come more to us like an abused package from the post office.  Ripped, torn with its guts spilling out, the contents often broken.
(Leonard Sweet. Transcribed from the audio book version of  So Beautiful, 2009).

And he’s not far wrong.  They are difficult and dirty - particularly when practiced well.  But they are also an essential part of the kingdom of God, of being the church and living out the gospel in our world. Resulting in lives and the world around us changed and  fruit of fulfillment and purpose and belonging being experienced.   If we can’t get our head around this then we are not going to properly tap into the way of life God intends for us to live.  Christian life will simply stay centred around a day of the week, or a meeting,  or the stuff we know.  It will stay in doors, and outside the community.  Unable and ill-equipped to play a part in God’s mission of redemption in the world.