The New Testament describes the church in many ways. For Paul, the church is a body, with Christ as the head and we the members. Matthew’s gospel pictures the church like a community of learning disciples who are being trained to go out into the world. John imagines the church like a community of light contrasting with the dark world. In Acts, the church is a Spirit-led community fulfilling God’s plan to gather people from every nation. The church in 1 Peter is a group of Christians who, like living stones, are being built up into a spiritual house. Revelation sees the church as a community of persecuted believers who refuse to submit to the powers of greed and violence, while waiting for the day when God sets the world straight again.
The church in Hebrews, which I want to focus on here, is a community on the move. Brothers and sisters find themselves on the same journey to God’s good future: “Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (Heb 13:13-14). The success of this journey is not guaranteed, though. Hebrews calls all of us to be faithful to God and to one another if we hope to enter this city that is to come. Like the wilderness generation, who failed to enter the Promised Land when God told them to, we must “make every effort to enter God’s rest, so that no one may fall through such disobedience as theirs” (Heb 4:11). The good progress of the community is dependent on our unity. We are called to be united in trusting obedience to God. And this means that we must look out for each other: “Take care, brothers and sisters, that none of you may have an evil, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But exhort one another every day” (Heb 3:12-13). We as a church are on the move in obedience to God’s calling, and we must make sure not to leave anyone behind. When we see our friends slipping, it is up to us to pick them up. It is up to us to “See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God” (12:15).
We can only fulfill this vision if we commit to one another. This means diving deeper into the church and connecting with our sisters and brothers: try sitting in a new place, try attending a different service than usual, join a Sunday school (if you aren’t in one already), serve in a ministry, attend a social event, etc. We can only watch out for one another if we know one another. None of us can follow Jesus alone. We are all bound together on this journey to the Promised Land, to the city that is to come. Thanks be to God for our community of fellow believers.