Sermon Tone Analysis

Scripture Reading

Our focal passage today is from Hebrews chapter 10, verses 19-25.

If you are able, will you please stand for the reading of God’s Word.

Brief pause as people stand.

19 Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, 20 by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.

24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

Hebrews 10:19–25 (ESV)

This is God’s Word.

You can be seated.

Brief pause as people are seated.

Community in the Age of Authenticity

Part of what I like to do is help you make sense of the cultural water you’re swimming in.

Ask a fish: How’s the water?

Fish: What the heck is water?

If I asked you: How’s the expressive individualism treating you?

You would probably respond: What the heck is that?

The Age of Authenticity (Philosopher Charles Taylor)

We’re living in what philosopher Charles Taylor calls “The Age of Authenticity.”

You might recognize some of the core beliefs of our culture through these popular phrases:

“You do you”

“Be true to yourself”

“Follow your heart”

“What’s true for you is true for you, what’s true for me is true for me”

Australian pastor and social commentator Mark Sayers summarizes "The Age of Authenticity” in these statements:

1.

The highest good is individual freedom, happiness, self-definition, and self-expression.

2. Traditions, religions, received wisdom, regulations, and social ties that restrict individual freedom, happiness, self-definition, and self-expression must be reshaped, deconstructed, or destroyed.

3. The primary social ethic is tolerance of everyone’s self-defined quest for individual freedom and self-expression.

Any deviation from this ethic of tolerance is dangerous and must not be tolerated.

4. Humans are inherently good.

5. Forms of external authority are rejected and personal authenticity is lauded.

This is a complete reversal of the beliefs of the great ancient cultures which have shaped Western civilization for thousands of years.

It would have been taken for granted in the ancient world that people are intricately enmeshed with other people — that we are the product of our relationships, the community around us.

That your identity is not something you create or curate based on “following your heart” so much as it is something that is given by the authorities external to you.

We are two thousand years and many more thousand miles removed from this original context: the context in which the author of the letter to the Hebrews was writing.

In other words, we’re swimming in different water.

What happens to our notions of community, of relationships, in this cultural setting?

In our current cultural context, having a tight knit community isn’t really necessary, but it’s a nice addition to your life if you can find it.

You can do life just as well on your own if that’s your thing!

You can become the best version of yourself with or without other people around you.

In fact, if you do it alone, we will celebrate you as the self-made American man or woman - the vision of the American Dream!

In other words, community is not a necessity but more so a commodity.

As such, in our age of authenticity, community - if you have it at all - tends toward becoming a place where you are never disagreed with, but only affirmed in who you are and what you already believe and do.

After all, who has the right to disrupt or disrespect my individual pursuit of self-expression and self-actualization?

Anyone who would ever question my desire to be true to myself must not actually care about me.

What do you do with people who don’t care for you — who sin against you by interfering with your ability to “just be yourself”?

Call ‘em toxic, drop ‘em, and move on.

Committed relationships in the age of authenticity are hard to come by.

This is the water we’re swimming in.

You’re swimming in.

This is the air you’re breathing.

It’s around us.

It’s in us.

It’s forming who we are and our thoughts towards community.

It’s not just “out there” — it’s influencing all of us.

In some form and at some level, each of us is effected in our relationships to other people (or lack thereof) because of these cultural tides.

And yet — I don’t have to tell you what you already know: we’re drowning.

Rates of isolation and loneliness have become endemic in the global West — to the point that the United Kingdom, one of the most powerful nations in the world, was prompted to start a loneliness task force.

Suicide rates amongst teens are at all time highs.

It’s nearly a law of the universe that depression and anxiety increase as our relational connectivity decreases.

We should affirm what is taken for granted in our cultural moment: that we are all individuals uniquely made and loved by God, with a unique identity and purpose and calling on our lives.

However, we also need to see this morning that while we were all created unique individuals, we were never created to be isolated individuals.

We were created to live in a web of interdependent relationships.

This is being proven over and over again in the fields of neuro-biology and -psychology, and even in sociology.

Our brains develop by attaching to other people.

There is no healthy development or growth as a human being without other people.

But we see this especially as we consider our souls.

We are made in the image of God, and God has eternally existed in community.

The Trinity.

“Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”

Genesis 2:18

Before sin ever entered the world, and there was perfect harmony through all of creation, perfect peace for Adam — there still was a sense of ... loneliness?

An individual human created in the image of a Triune - hear: eternally communal - God must have community.

Prior to the creation of Eve, Adam could only look out over the animal kingdom and say, “Not like me.”

No relationship.

No shared experience.

No vulnerability.

No intimacy.

With the creation of Eve, Adam exhales a sigh of relief, astoundment, and joy: “This at last is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.”

There’s no escaping this fundamental aspect of being human: we need deep relational connections to other people.

Purpose of Today’s Message

My goal today is to convince you that God’s will for your life is that you live in authentic, Christ centered, grace-saturated, biblically encouraging, love-oriented biblical community with other believers.

That’s my primary goal.

As a part of that goal, I also want to do something else:

I want you to consider how you might participate in cultivating this kind of community by joining a Bridge Group (what we call small groups) at Forest Hill Church.

No surprises.

No bait and switch.

That’s what I’m doing today.

But in talking about community today, because of the cultural waters I just described, I feel compelled to go about it a certain way.

You see, it would be easy for me to also get swept up in the cultural tide.

What question do we expressive individuals tend to ask when faced with an invitation to do something new or challenging?

What’s in it for me?

It would be really easy for me to just give you the benefits of community and lead you to the sign ups page.

Up the ante on my salesmanship up and just pump sunshine about how much happier you’ll be in community, how much healthier you’ll be.

And there’s merit to that approach.

These things are true:

One researcher named Robert Putnam has concluded from his studies that if you have horrible health habits (bad food, no exercise), but have great relational connections, then you are less likely to die than someone who has great health habits but is isolated.

As my friend Scott says: “It’s better to eat cake with friends than kale by yourself.”

Putnam says that if you make no other changes to your health, but join a small group of people in the next year, you cut your odds of dying in the next 12 months in half.

Which led John Ortberg to quip: “Join a small group or die!”