Some of us are old enough to remember the days of the Lone Ranger. He and his sidekick Tonto would gallop on the radio waves into the imaginations of small boys and girls with a “Heigh Ho Silver – Away!” He conquered the “bad guys” of the Wild West all alone, with Tonto his only backup. He was a one man show.
Some years ago I was dismayed to hear a “gospel song” with the unsettling title “Me and Jesus”. Here are the lyrics:
“Me and Jesus, we got our own thing going,
Me and Jesus, we got it all worked out.
Me and Jesus, we got our own thing going,
We don’t need anybody to tell us what it’s all about.”
Well, what about that? Warning lights are flashing. The problem here is that Christianity is a “group” thing. We are the body of Christ, members in particular, but One Body. We would find it ridiculous to cut off a little finger and expect it to function. Jesus repeatedly addressed his disciples in the plural. “When YE pray…when YE fast…YE are the light of the world”. All of you together, one light. The epistles of the New Testament pick up this bedrock truth. “Know YE not that YE (plural) are the Temple of God (singular)?” writes Paul. How can the Body of Christ minister to each other if we don’t gather together? TV preachers don’t know your name. They won’t come when you call in crisis. How could they?
Oh, how imperfect we all are. And yet, how desperately we need each other. Someone has observed that when the shepherd boy David faced the giant, he went to the brook for his ammunition. Why? Because those stones had been jostled against each other in the water until their jagged edges were polished to smoothness. David knew they would fly straight. This is what fellowship does for us; it knocks off our rough edges. It makes us accurate and useful in God’s Kingdom. It’s often painful, but this is where we grow to be more like Jesus.
And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, 25 not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
Heb. 10;24,25