A place safe enough for enemies

Church is not a concert or a classroom. It’s not a social club or a non-profit organization. It is a community -- but not one of common interests. In fact, it may be more accurate to say that the church is not made up of natural friends, but natural enemies.

So here’s what that means for us today. Church has to be a safe space -- a magic circle where anyone and everyone is welcome to enter and participate. Even our enemies (or uncomfortables). But we are also open to the promise of being changed; being a nuclear reactor of a different kind of humanity.

For the time we are gathered, we are suspending the reality -- the rules out there don’t apply here. We might be of different and opposing races, class, education level, ability, politics, gender, sexual orientation, etc. out there. But here, those rules and limits don’t apply. Here, Jesus rules. This is a safe circle -- safe enough for your enemies, but also a dangerous place to be friends, because real friendship is costly and binds us together and to Christ in very unpredictable and unsafe ways. This is what it means to be a church