Take a journey back a few years with me. In fact, not years, but centuries. Imagine you were one of the earliest members of that strange group of people called “Followers of the Way,” the first name given to what later became known as the Christian Church, or more accurately, the resurrected body of Christ in real time. Something drew you there; it’s hard to say  what, but there was something operating in your life. Things were happening. There was an excitement in the air as a new day was dawning. You cannot explain it, but you know deep down God is moving through these people and it is good.

That’s important, because to be a member of such a group of people, who worshipped a carpenter and not a real god (or so it was said), and who believed God had raised this man from the dead so that now his presence in the world is their presence in the world, was to be shunned and sought out as one who wants to overthrow the government.  Subversives. That is why they met in secret, sometimes in caves, or in people’s homes. The fish you see on many bumpers today was actually a code sign that said to those who knew what it meant, here is a group who worship Jesus the Messiah, who are being formed into the living body of the resurrected Jesus.

There you are, in all your glory. On your knees, saying the Lord’s Prayer. There is a mystery to it all. There is meaning to be found here. People being people, living with each other with the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ as central to their life.  They had their disagreements. They had their power vacuums. They had their leadership crises. They had their arguments over what a Christian should believe. Remember, the scriptures were only those of the Old Testament in the first century church.  But Jesus was there. Really. You could see and know him, there in the lives of those people. It made a huge difference in the quality of your life. No matter what happened to you, there was this body of people whose ways were the ways of the Risen Lord Jesus Christ.

That was then. This is now.

But it is still the same.  When I went north to bury my mother whose final days were torture, I could feel the prayers of the faith community gathered at 8700 State Road 72. It made a difference --- let me tell you. Then when I came back and resumed my responsibilities here, just being connected with a group of people who find something valuable in being the risen body of Christ made all the difference in the world. Through all its trials and tribulations, through all its squabbles, often petty (in my opinion), Jesus Christ is risen and has gathered together groups of people to receive that risen presence and give it flesh in the real world today.