“Fellowship Lite”  I John 1:5-10  8/30/09

You have heard of Coors Lite, Bud Lite, In South and Central America Diet Coke is called “Coke Lite.  There is Lite ice cream, and lite yogurt, lite internet service, lite FM.  But my own personal favorite that is the fad of our day is something called “exercise lite” that is designed supposedly to increase your metabolism without wearing you out.  I think a lot of this L-I-T-E stuff is a way to have our cake and eat it too- only the cake is fine for you because it is sugar or fat free.   Many have said that since we have introduced over 5,000 lite food and drink products, America has grown in obesity by 20% and by diabetes by 1/3- because people think that lite is good for them.  But a lite food with high calories can be worse   I really wonder if exercise lite- though I like the idea- is really that healthy for you.   Lately there has been an effort to have what I call Christianity lite.   It comes in different forms- but it can be unhealthy for us. 
            The worst form is the so-called New Age religion which is spirituality lite.   Basically, they say you can get close to God by magic formulas, crystals, potions.  Jesus is a help, but he’s pretty much regulated to way down on the list.  They say God is in you, and that you are God.  So whatever you say goes, and no one can tell you with authority you are wrong.   It leaves out the idea that there is a holy God who is outside of us and cares about whether we love people or not, and whether we try to avoid things like lying, stealing, ethical things.   It is spirituality lite in that it emphasizes there is another, spiritual dimension to life, but it requires nothing of us except some kind of magic or exercise.  It is very similar to the old paganism.  In fact, when I was flying back from Peru I sat next to a lady from Australia who was an advocate of this kind of spirituality.  She was covered from head to toe in tattoos, was intelligent, but was coming to the Amazon rain forest to get potions, drugs, and learn from the local pagan shamans.   Paganism didn’t work in the past, and it doesn’t work today.  It leaves a trail of broken people and broken relationships and hearts.   But this is the fastest growing faith in America today- almost neck in neck with Islam.   John says that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.  That is, God is holy, truthful- valuing what is real and honest.   If we value drugs and sexual immorality – as new age religion does then we value darkness over light.  Verse 6 says, “If we say we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true.”   It is important not to fool ourselves.  We are not the creators of the universe.  We do not create our own reality.  God is the creator of all that is, and He alone is worthy of our worship, and we need to listen to Him.
            There are some who believe they can live however as long as they go to church.  This is fellowship lite- for John says “If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness we lie and the truth is not in us.”  There are too many in our culture today who believe that it doesn’t matter if they live in darkness as long as they have said sometime in their life “Jesus is my Lord and Savior.”  Talk is cheap.  We cheapen the cross when we walk in darkness yet claim to be in the light.   I was talking to a friend of mine in college who said they were discouraged by their friends who sat in church on Sundays, but lived like the devil on Friday and Saturday night.   I asked, “Do you think they shouldn’t be in church at all?”  They answered, “No, but it discourages me in my faith, and I wish they would take God seriously.”
            But there are also those who are forsaking church because they don’t want to hear that they’re doing anything wrong.  They are a little bit like the New Age person in that they want to do their own thing.   This is the person who has had their hand caught in the cookie jar of life and are embarrassed.  There are times when we are all embarrassed about what we have done.  Maybe it’s financial embarrassment, or ethical embarrassment, or something stupid we have said in church or in the community.  If we closed the church doors to everyone but people who had not ever embarrassed themselves, then the churches are empty.  Yet there is an illusion that the church is for only people who have it all together.  Yes, we are here because we want to be better.  But we are here because we don’t have it all together.   Many want Jesus to save them without loving him, trusting him, or following him.  Old theologians used to draw a distinction between faith and saving faith.  Saving faith is not just believing there’s a god up there- James says the demons believe that.  Saving faith means loving, trusting, following Christ- walking in the light as he is.
            THERE IS A BALANCE- between being embarrassed about your sins, and thinking your sins do not matter at all to God- it is the way of fellowship in the light.  It is living out what you believe- not perfectly- but striving.  Calvin said, no one is perfect but it is important that we strive to follow Christ.  There is a balance between abusing grace by going to church but not living the life; and avoiding grace- by not trying to follow at all.  The middle way is living for Christ- living in grace.
            Can you be a Christian by yourself?  Can you have fellowship-lite and still get to heaven?  Augustine said no- he said, “No one can have God as their Father who doesn’t have the church as their mother.”  I am not so .  I do think it is harder to keep the faith when you don’t come.  I have known many people who get mad at the church and think they are holy enough to not need the church, but years after they have dropped out they are either stagnant, floundering, or dead in their faith.  See the church is there to encourage us- sometimes with rebukes, and sometimes with an arm around us.  The Bible says, “Let us not forsake the assembling of ourselves together as some are doing- but let us encourage one another- even more when the day is approaching that Jesus comes.”  (Heb. 10:24,25).   But there is something about gathering together.  Jesus said, “where two or three are gathered together in my name there I am in the midst of them.”  If we walk in the light- John says, as he is in the light we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin.   We come, you see to be cleansed, to be encouraged, to have fellowship with him and each other.   You can play soccer all by yourself, but it is better if you have others.  You can play football by yourself- but it is much better as as team.   Our faith is designed to be together.  Today there are new tools to enhance our fellowship- cell phones, email, web pages, facebook, and twitter provide instant forms of communication for many.  Christians should not allow these gifts of technology to be dominated by darkness- but they could be means to enhance our fellowship and the light.
            The other thing that John refers to that plays on this idea of fellowship-lite is the cost of discipleship.   Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Christian minister who was imprisoned for standing up to Hitler, talked a lot about the need to not abuse Christ’s grace.   He said many were abusing the grace of Christ.  Christ gives us grace so that we are forgiven, but to take what Christ did on the cross and to say it doesn’t matter what I do anymore- because I am forgiven- makes a mockery of Christ and shows we do not care about Jesus and the pains he endured for us.   Jesus said if anyone wants to follow me they must take up their cross daily and follow me.  The fellowship of the light that John talks about in this passage is a fellowship of suffering- a fellowship of the cross- as well as the fellowship of the resurrection and heaven.  I have known some Christian ministers who want to hide the cross, not speak about the blood of Christ, or the need to sacrifice.  They just want to talk about God blessing us.  Health, wealth gospel. God does bless us- but sometimes He blesses us through the crosses of life.  When God sustains you through a trial, forgives you of a sin- it is a lot more meaningful than a temporary worldly blessing.  We can pray for safety, comfort, and help- but that’s not all there is. 
            What are the consequences of thinking we don’t have to take God seriously?  Why can’t we just be half-Christians?   The old joke is of a fellow living during the civil war and he was scared of being shot by both sides.  So he put on confederate pants and a yankee shirt.  The confederates shot his shirt, and the Yankees shot his pants.  You can’t be a half Christian- you won’t make God happy that way.  There are those who want to be half alive to Christ and half alive to the world- but it’s like trying to mix death and life in the same body.  I have more than once seen someone have a limb die because of poor circulation.  The limb turns gangrenous and infects the whole body with poison-- threatening death to the whole body.  We must fully live for Christ- the abundant life.  We are designed to live for Him.  Why can’t we just avoid the hard things of learning about our faith, and challenging ourselves?   The danger is that you think that you are well when you are not.  It’s a bit like a friend of mine who lived in McClellanville and thought he could ride out Hurricane Hugo because he had a house that had never been hurt before.  He ended up riding out the hurricane, but most of it was holding on to debris and trees in the middle of the night.  It’s thinking you have arrived but you haven’t gotten there yet.   I remember trying to visit one of you down a dirt road not too long ago.  I thought I was at the right house, stopped, knocked on the door, but the person told me I wasn’t there yet.  Christians recognize we need to grow in the knowledge and love of God.  People who are in love with God want to be around Him- we are not in heaven just because we believe.  It is a bit like the person who thinks they are cured of their illness but are not.  When I visited Cuba in 1993 they had great doctors, but they had no medicine- very few antibiotics for their people.  So the doctor would take a ten day supply and turn it into a two day supply.  The people thought they were getting great treatment, but all the two days of antibiotics did was make them resistant to the antibiotic, it didn’t really help them get over their infections.   A little bit of Christ doesn’t work well.  A little dab of Christianity won’t do ya.  It is a bit like when gas was over $4.00 a gallon last year and people were putting just a little bit of gas in their tanks.  But people were running out of gas, because they were thinking they had enough.  If you think you have enough God in your life, maybe you are not in love with God.  Because a person in love doesn’t say, “I’m not going to do this for her because I’ve had enough of her (or him) in my life.”   Fellowship Lite- doesn’t work.  But fellowship in the light- works best- it is our way- the Lord’s way.