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Last evening, I spent some hours with a dear couple and who are dear friends to me. Especially after we sat at table, I began experiencing a deep and joyful, even mystical, fellowship. This happens often to me, when with other persons who are enjoying a deeply authentic and vital relationship with God, free of the strictures of fundamentalist and cultural religion. Who was the I that I speak of experiencing that fellowship, that koinonia last evening? As I reflect, there was no I, there was only Communion. Now, yes, I consciousness does often arise in such contexts, but it arises from the koinonia, rather than the I creating the unitive awareness.
6If we say we have fellowship with God while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 7But if we walk in the light, as God is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus God’s Son cleanses us from all sin. 8If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. (I John 1, ESV, Inclusive)
The theme of light and darkness in St. John now appears in the Epistle of John. St. John 1.5 reads: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it [or, has not overcome, cannot overcome]” (NRSV). In St. John “light” and “life” are divine energies, expressions of the being of Being sustaining creation.
Basically, then, sin is the state and action contrary to sustaining creation. Sin entails saying, “I will do what I want, regardless of how it affects other creatures, the human environment, or agrees or not with universal principles.” Even religion, in whatever form, that contradicts universal principles is sinful, errant. Every act or thought of a person either is in agreement with this sustenance or oppositional to it. Every act and thought has universal significance, joined with the state and thought of all other persons. This significance entails our being in the Divine Image, a relational Likeness. Therefore, nothing we do is only personal; everything we do is communal.
We must answer one question, before proceeding. What is this fellowship? This koinonia in the New Testament? This fellowship is not conversation or mere human association. This fellowship is not a religion. This koinonia is the deep substratum of Oneness that all arises from and returns to. This koinonia is that level of cosmos, unseen by us, wherein we are all arising from a single Source and which makes us One in the Sacredness, the Life-Giver. We can grow into awareness of this koinonia, but the fellowship itself is already present: awareness of it does not make it, lack of awareness of it does not mean it is not present. But, to “have” or “not have” this koinonia among us is, essentially, to say that this fellowship can be experienced on this level of reality or not. Our actions determine that matter, and this includes beliefs and thoughts. What I believe facilitates or not fellowship.
Therefore, while the Universal Spirit loves each of us equally, and the koinonia at both the mystical and phenomenal levels arise from the Word, Christ, we have freewill to “have fellowship with God” or deny it. Confession is not the chief evidence of the fellowship, and may entail no evidence at all; rather, to “practice the truth” and not “walk in darkness” is the key evidence. Practicing the truth is practicing whatever agrees with the communion of creation, the koinonia of all living creatures: this Scripture calls “righteousness,” or “right relations.” To even attempt doing personal good apart from communal good is unrighteous. To be “in Christ” is to disown personal rights, is to be in the Energy, the Light, the Love that includes, not excludes, does not disown, but pursues, and this shapes us inwardly and outwardly. St. Paul writes, “And because we belong to Christ Jesus, we have killed our selfish feelings and desires. God’s Spirit has given us life, and so we should follow the Spirit” (Galatians 5.24-25). The true Christian belongs to Christ, which entails the loss of individual belonging. Individual belonging cannot coexists with be-longing, for the former is a contradiction.
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Christ is joined to all; the true Christian is joined to all. Belonging arises within the context of connection, universal belonging, in the Sacred One. Then, to have fellowship with God implies loss of the identity that denies the deeper fellowship, a connection that underlies all other human connections, like marriage, family, friendship, … This is walking “in the light” and “fellowship with one another.”
Oswald T. Chambers writes of our becoming a “sentimental Christian” by not continuing to walk in the light. Then we live on our memories of past experience with Christ, and our testimony does not ring true. (My Utmost For His Highest, An Updated Edition in Today’s Language, Ed. James Reimann, “Do Not Quench The Spirit,” August 13) Sadly, more than not, Christianity in the States seems to have become insubstantial and sentimental, making it progressively more difficult for persons living in the light to find nurture and true fellowship among many so-called Christians who fill the church rolls of membership.
Ironically, could it be that the churches are becoming one of the least likely places that true Christians are attracted to for Christian fellowship, true koinonia? If so, there must be a new emergence, a return to the basics of patristic Christianity and its profound mystical insights into being “in Christ,” and this must be joined with the latest understandings of the world in which we live. So, a return is not a simple negation of the ongoing journey of discovery and change.
Let us not become sentimental or inauthentic Christians. This does not honor the Spirit of Christ. Inauthentic Christianity is cut off from the Large Story of fellowship, which is the Story of Creation. This Creation-Koinonia is our natural habitat: remember, the Son of God became soma, or "body, flesh, meat," Son of Man, and resurrected in the same way.
When we live apart from koinonia, we feel a deep something-missing. That sense is the Voice of our Designer calling us back to connect with the substratum of Fellowship, that we might live in communion among all creatures, loving them each and all “in Christ.”
Reflections
What encouraged you in the writing today? Explain.
Did you disagree with something in the writing today? If so, explain.
Do you have a spiritual group with whom to enjoy koinonia?
How do you discern the difference between authentic faith and inauthentic faith?
What does sentimental faith look like to you?
How do you discern when you are living in koinonia and not living in it?
Does your community of faith enjoy koinonia? Explain your answer.
Spiritual Exercise
Meditate and pray about I John 1.6-8.
Make sure you have a sacred space in your home for time alone in prayer and spiritual reading.
Make sure you are in a covenant group. For more information on covenant groups, write me at the address below.
Consider, if you are not already, sponsoring a child through Compassion International. You can find out more about Compassion International by going to www.compassion.net to read about sponsoring, in the name of Jesus, children living in poverty. Thanks! Brian K. Wilcox
Brian’s book An Ache For Union can be purchased at major book dealers.
To contact Brian, write briankwilcox@comcast.net .
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