Fleshed Out

THE MODEL OF COMMUNITY 

Everyone wants to be part of some community. There is an undisputed, internal need to have others in our lives, preferably those who will provide us with one thing we all strive for: love. 

But have you ever stopped to ask why we have this need? Where did that awareness of community come from? 

The opening verse of John’s gospel states, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The Darby Translation goes on to say, “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us” (v. 14). 

I’d like to suggest that Jesus’ appearance on the scene exhibited a glorious by-product of God’s heart for humankind—to model the original community embodied in the Trinity, and what people could expect that community to look like when divinity is fleshed out. 

Jesus gave us a sneak peek of what heaven on earth would look like in His prayer in Matthew 6. It starts off simply enough: “Our Father which art in heaven” (v. 9 KJV). Then it takes off from there to reveal something truly profound. 

This simple prayer gives us a glimpse of the heavenly modus operandi for enjoying a quality of life here on earth. 

In effect, earth becomes the temporal training ground for the eternal. And Jesus came to model what true community would look like. He demonstrated that community does not work without communion—others intersecting with each other in loving, giving, sacrificial relationships. 

The Word became flesh in order that it would be fleshed out. It must be unpacked to be evident, and then be shared. Most often, people find out what they actually have in common only by shared experiences that are not planned or coordinated. They are spontaneous and serendipitous. We find out we like someone because we have intersected with them in some way, and who they are is revealed in the context of interaction, personal struggle, work, and play. 

Much of the shared experience necessary for building true community is now lost in the social-media conscious world that has evolved. We now even begin to think in terms of behavioral patterns consistent with social media. For example, when people think or act in a manner that we disapprove of, we simply “unfriend” them in the blink of a cursor. We can easily dismiss someone when we remain separated by a firewall of emotional detachment. Harder to do when we have a relationship that must confront life daily and deal with differences, difficult behavior, and emotional pain. 

If we simply “unfriend” someone when struggle inevitably occurs, we never learn this important lesson: The struggle between two people is often the determining factor in bringing them together, not separating them. 

Jesus was trying to show us that God wanted communion so much with His creation that He was willing to step outside of Himself to achieve that. In a sense, to model that, we must similarly embed ourselves in others’ lives to find community as well. 

Unfriend yourself from the grip of social media anonymity and unpack yourself to another person to flesh out the real meaning of community.