fellowship

In the early evening, my friends and I almost curl around a table scattered with puzzle pieces.  We gently share loose bits of our lives while we look for patterns of color and shape, our voices meandering lightly with our fingers, picking up topics and discarding them—laughter tinkling, or a sigh of concern drifting through the air around us like smoke.  I glance up and smile, tucking an unruly hank of hair behind one ear; smile, because I feel content; smile, because here I sit with my fresh-scrubbed face and my slippers dangling from my feet, just being with my friends.

There is this clause dangling from the second chapter of the book of Acts that honestly, I used to ignore—and they devoted themselves…to fellowship, used to ignore it but now simply can’t, the Holy Spirit lighting it up with fire.  One English translator wrote it, they kept on being together.  Others say they committed to community, and I like that too, the repetition of that prefix com-, the with intention applied to their union.  The early church chose double the together, double the one, double the with, inspired as they were by Christ’s two-fold application of love—for God and for each other.

I have known for some time, learned it young, that we overcomplicate hospitality, that as usual, we human beings find a way to confuse the priority and make being together burdensome.  I learned, informationally, but that didn’t really change the weight of the details at the time, still more, it left no dent in my own sinful desire to present myself impressively.  And what weary mama, what broken down girl, really has any energy left to worry over all that?  So, I was always too tired for any sort of devotion to fellowship, too busy, but really, that was at least partly due to my own mixed-up motives.

Puzzles really aren’t my thing, one of my friends says casually now, waving off the offer to slide the frame of the thing over in front of her, her fingers absently reaching for another piece.  This is not an editorial comment, though, except to say that she is only neutrally involved in the activity, that of course it wasn’t the puzzle or the location or the snacks that would be gently deposited on the kitchen counter that made her climb in her car and drive over.

She came for the fellowship.

At our age, we sometimes manage to remember that what we really need is to keep on being together, that it doesn’t matter much where or how.

I know it’s not wrong to have preferences about the details, but I’m learning, experientially now, an awareness of how often it’s the details that make me want to say no to an opportunity for fellowship.  I’m learning to ask myself to consider to what, or to whom, I’ve given my devotion.

I wiggle my finger toward a spot under my friend’s elbow across the table, interrupting the conversation long enough to ask would she please pass me those two branchy looking pieces, which of course she does easily, without thinking much about it.  Partly, I have Riley on my mind, anyway; how she’s a branch God brought from the stump that is Kevin and me;  how ironic it has always been that she, who struggles with connections, can sometimes be so wise about relationships.

She had spent the weekend with the Bell side of our family, the time having been planned and calendared for weeks, but their plans to take a little trip together had changed.

My sister-friend Camille, her mom-in-love whom she calls Mom B, had texted me in advance, because she knows Riley can struggle with changes.  We might just stay home, Camille had written, and I don’t want Riley to be disappointed.  To which I had replied with some confidence that as long as Riley still gets to be with them, she’ll not be disappointed. At this point in her life, Riley’s already devoted to fellowship, not to locations or party platters, and certainly not to making any sort of presentation of herself.   Camille had responded in kind that Josh had known this, had already given her exactly this same reassurance.

Not for the first time, I am thinking as I carefully fit one of those branchy puzzle pieces into place, that we’ve got it all wrong if we think our social awareness, which really often amounts to a greater captivity to cultural ills, gives us any enviable position or capacity over exceptional people.  On the contrary, Riley’s challenges seem to give her an uncanny ability to zero in on what really matters, that is, that we keep on being together; that we keep on showing up for each other; that we keep on offering each other a most humble sacrifice of self.

I arrived at my friend’s house and her kitchen table tonight carrying nothing in my hands, asking only for a glass of water, looking only for fellowship with my friends, and here I am now, feeling full and grateful.

Fellowship is an old word anymore, one we quickly recognize as part of the scrolling title of Tolkein’s fantasy novel-turned-movie epic more than a term we use colloquially, even though I think it describes something all of us seem to be looking for these days in one way or another, now more than ever, as we watch our culture divide and cancel.

Although the word fellowship eventually became part of the unique vernacular of the church, the ancient Greek word koinonia, derived from another Greek word meaning “common” or “shared,” was not initially some sort of high-minded “church word,” referring simply to what is shared in common as a basis for community.  So, neighbors and friends and businesses and civic offices had koinonia, and we can all in this nation, regardless of belief system, strive for it.  We can choose the wisdom to be devoted to it.

The early church co-opted the word, having such a powerful basis for their commitment to community, that is, a shared faith in Jesus Christ’s resurrection and in their mutual participation in Him, that they redefined it for their culture.  Their fellowship led them, by way of God’s conquering love, to a kind of mutual benevolence, a self-sacrifice, a sharing of life that literally shocked the world in which they lived, and these facts only clarify for me that the key, really, to any sort of fellowship will always be a laser focus on the true object of our unity, and also, that whenever that focus is Christ, the implications of our devotion to fellowship will be nothing short of revolutionary.

I look around the table at my friends, feeling thankful that we can just be together as our fresh-scrubbed, soft-pants selves, soaking up the powerful abundance of a simple focus on friendship, but especially in light of Christ, I can’t help but recognize that our with-ness will always carry a sacrificial cost.

All the way back in the ancient Hebrew law, God ordained not only sacrifices for atonement, but sacrifices for thanksgiving and fellowship with Him, because, and we know this, love and union are always a costly proposal.  I find it interesting that the word used in that language when referring to these fellowship offerings was often the word shalem, which is directly related to the word shalom, ultimately referring to the harmonious peace and integrity for which God created mankind and all the earth, that being precisely what He intends to redeem in His Kingdom, when, as Isaiah prophesied it, the wolf will live with the lamb…and they will neither kill or destroy…for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the LORD.

So, if in these turbulent times I long for a restoration of community, the restoration God desires and has promised and is already working toward, then a devotion to fellowship, first with God and then with each other, with all the sacrificial giving of self that requires, indeed, the love for God and others modeled by Christ, makes both a good step with Him for those apprenticed to Jesus and a worthy endeavor for others.  All of us resolving to move together, to keep being together, if only in defiance of disunity, seems to be the most excellent way forward, and we can begin in the most simple of ways, with the relationships we already have.

But where’s the last piece, my friend says, lifting her arms and scanning the table, sitting back from our conversation to recognize what, in just a few hours, we have managed to do together, the picture at last whole and complete before us, reassembled with our fingers, beneath our gaze, our words, our breath, like a shared exhale.

Maybe look here?  Another friend says, her smile wide and kind as she lifts her napkin to reveal that she has saved a piece, having hidden it for this very moment, so that our friend, who offered us her home and her table could have the joy of putting the last piece into place.

So we clap our hands, laughing and sitting back from the table, admiring our work, but what we are actually celebrating, finally, is the gift of being together, and the promise, at least, to be devoted to that.