‘The great gift of God’s incarnation in Jesus is that we are all
invited into the beloved community of God’s family.’
“May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to
live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus,
so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ. Welcome one another, therefore, just as
Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. For I tell you that
Christ has become a servant of the circumcised on behalf of the
truth of God in order that he might confirm the promises given to
the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for
his mercy”
Romans 15:5-9
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This week’s topic of community in God invited us all to be in
fellowship with one another because of our faith. The gift of fellowship is a
gift from God that we must share with all persons. I want to reflect on how
important it is to invite others into the community with God, and also how
an interfaith community is essential to partake in.
Over fall break I was in Washington D.C. for an interfaith conference
focused on creating interfaith groups on campuses across the U.S. with a
mission of service. The conference was set up to provide the students at
each campus with the support and knowledge to start interfaith groups that
brought people of all traditions together to work on a project they were all
passionate about. More importantly though was after the project, the
students would reflect and share with each other about why community
service is important to them in pertaining to their faith or tradition. While I
learned a lot of the training sessions at the conference, the conversations I
had with other students were the most beneficial.
I want to tell you a story I heard from my friend Grant, a student from
the Univ. of Rochester at the conference. Grant is a Chinese-American
student and has an interesting story of becoming Christian. It is very
common in China to be apathetic to religion until one is retired and has time
for such things, which is the case for Grant’s family. He moved to the U.S.
when he was 6 after living in China and Japan. In his neighborhood
community, some Christians saw the need to reach out to the large
population of Chinese youth and teach them about God by forming a youth
group. Grant joined the youth group and was brought into a specific
Christian community with these people. He was taught about the love and
power of God, but he was also taught about the homosexual agenda from a
negative viewpoint. The youth group went on walks through the town to
cast out demons from buildings; and the most striking thing to him at age 13
was that the leader said Pokémon were demons. As a young kid in the
1990s, who lived in China and Japan before coming to the U.S., Pokémon
were very popular, and being told that Pokémon were unchristian turned him
away from this youth group and the teachings they were instilling.
The demonic teachings of Pokémon were the turning point for him,
and he also realized that most of the other teachings didn’t fit with his
beliefs either. I think the easy thing for him to do would have been to reject
Christianity and rejoin his Atheist family in their beliefs. But, through this
initial community with God that he was invited to, Grant learned of God’s
greatness and sought out a different youth group that taught him to love
everyone, they didn’t cast out demons, and where he could still play
Pokémon. An initial invitation to take part in a religious community brought
Grant into God’s community from then on. I am still so impressed with how
he dealt with reconciling his first Christian experience and how he chose to
remain in community with God.
What I have learned from this, and I hope that we can all do in our
lives is realize how important it is to invite people into our community
because it will glorify God and unite us in fellowship. The people we reach
out to should not just be other Christians, but people like Grant who didn’t
have a faith until after joining in fellowship, or members of other religions,
and people who don’t believe in God. Reaching out to people who don’t
already have a faith or have different religious beliefs than us is just as
important in forming community. An interfaith community encompasses
more than just our need to share the good News, it extends its arms to
welcome everyone, it provides a group that will work together for the greater
good, and it fulfills our desire to be in a mutual fellowship where faith and
tradition are rooted strongly, but the traditions also can vary.
I learned what it means to be in an interfaith community is while at
the conference because the community I was in was not just Christian, but
Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, and Atheist among many more traditions.
This diverse group of students formed an energetic community that wants to
do good because we were all passionate about how our faith or philosophical
tradition calls us to serve others in need. From our common passion of
social justice, I saw the importance of working together in an interfaith
community to welcome all people to be in a harmonious fellowship with one
another. I believe that we are all called by God through Jesus Christ to be in
fellowship with God, and also with God’s people; we are to love and care for
them and show respect to all. Interfaith communities bring many different
faiths together, but we can remain strong in our faith and also be sensitive
towards others as we fulfill our calling to love our neighbor.