We know what “authentic community” clearly is not… what exactly is it? Does it exist? Is it something even attainable or does it just hover like a small butterfly, out of our grasp.

Authenticity is something that Soma as a community holds in high esteem. We believe it is to be one of our core values. What in Christ’s life gives us that idea? The early church has some stellar Authentic Community and in all honestly that is the church we hope to emulate. Well we want to emulate Christ, but the early church was less removed from it than we are… they are a very good picture of what living like Christ should look like. Just as an overview… They were of one mind and they spent so much time together that they couldnt help it. It seems that everything that the early church did was for Christ, and they did it together. Just take a gander at the passage that encomposes that earlier verse! They were so set on the spreading of the gosple that they couldnt help but be of one mind.

How do we do it?

In John 13 Christ made himself below everyone who he was clearly not below. Some People claim that this whole feet washing episode is even more culturaly shocking and strange than even going to hang out with the leppers! After this there is a strangely intimate picture that a dicsiple “was reclining next to him” and later “Leaning back against Jesus“. Other even more riskay translations refer to this disciple reclining into his ‘bosom’. How can we achieve this sort of intimacy within our own community?

In John and in Acts there is a real attitude of service.

In John and in Acts there is a real attitude of intimacy.

How can we as Soma have both.  Doesn’t it just sound awsome to be a part of that kind of community, an authentic and christ centered one?

John 13:14 “Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet.”

This portion reads like a poem, like a psalms specifically. Keep that in mind… Why don’t people pray in poetic form any more?

Click this bit of underlined text to read Jonah 2!, nifty ain’t it.

Now after that remember…

2nd Timothy 3:16-17 – All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

God talks to Jonah fairly directly and up to this point this is the first time Jonah has talked back to God, despite his many and ample opportunities. His path has been a down hill domino train of reasons to turn to God; starting with receiving and comprehending Gods voice directly to finally being swallowed alive by a fish and staying that way for three days.

Jonah recognized that God has placed him in this situation, he was “Hurled” by God; and like Psalms 51 he (in the end) finds reason to rejoice. He has seaweed wrapped around his face( the original seaweed facial… har har), he is inside a fish, and now he looks for God to help him.

Since this is Jonahs response to total banishment from God, I wonder how many people would have enough will power to not be broken completely by this point in the story. I assert that ninety percent of humanity would turn to God by now. There was documented church growth after the September Eleventh fiasco and most of those people were not directly effected. If in fact they had been thrown to the roots of the mountains, I am sure they would have had similar responses. The point is, most every one knows that they are under the command of a higher power, it is just a shame that God is forced to take drastic steps in order to grab our attention.

Often it is easier to cling to ‘worthless idols’ I.e our cleverness, our intelligence, our money, our skills and our positions. Question: would any of these things create a fish that we could live in for three days?

One thing that I truly don’t understand, what good is Jonahs life to God if he dies? What motivation does God have to take this dying man and save him… God could easily get another prophet, a better one I might add, and use that man. I am sure somewhere there is a dude with a plow behind an ox that would love to yell at Ninavites. But God wants Jonah…? The being that truly benefits from Jonahs bargain is Jonah, what’s in it for God?
The only answer I could find for this question shocks me truly; God cares so much about each and every one of us that he is willing to roll his eyes at the pathetically fleeing and now dying among us and offer his endless power to save us. People hoard power and only use it so many times to help people, God is willing to bend over backwards, and even create situations where we need saving, just to give us ample opportunities to recognize our puny-ness. He even John three sixteened us.

Jonah is also used as the perfect image to explain Christ to the Pharisees and teachers of the law. The end of Matthew twelve has an amazing bit of dialogue. Read that and think what Jonah must think of it! The fact that God could take such a rebellious moron and make such a wonderful sign out of his life is just further reasons why we should spend our life shaking our heads in disbelief at the love God has for us. I don’t fully understand why the sacrifice of his Son is not enough to make us do this any way, but, why do we still expect more proof? the truth is we do. So he gives us endless pictures of people royally screwing things up, and God taking that mess and making the most amazing things out of it. My God is truly a God of endless amazement and awe! God uses Jonah, the same guy we have been thinking is such a bungalow to be a physical representation of himself.

It is hard to come at Jonah from a modern angle… seriously, who gets eaten by a fish? The one constant theme, however, that one could pull from this story, is the character of God, and our reaction to his commands.

Often when the phrase “the character of God” is mentioned it is actually referring to His attributes, however I also want to use this phrase to talk about God as a character, a being in the story that interacts with the other characters, and as amazing as it sounds, this character is present today interacting with us!

God the being, the one who in verse 1 Commands Jonah to leave his home and travel to a place infested with wickedness and tell them that they will be judged for that lifestyle, is very well commanding the same sort of things from us today.

I totally janked that image from another site, but as you can see basically Jonah goes in completely the opposite direction of where he is commanded to go. It is easy for us to condemn and call Jonah names like ‘doober’ or ‘moron’… however, think introspectively and decide if you would have gone to Niniveh. I, personally, would have just stayed put in good old Joppa and watched Lost or something, completely ignoring the voice of God.

Any who… I think the most interesting point about the first chapter of Jonah is what God does in reaction to Jonah’s complete betrayal of God’s will. God chases him around and even uses Jonah’s disobedience to demonstrate His power to the sailors on the boat.
Look closely halfway through verse 6… Jonah falls a-freekin-sleep! In the middle of the God breathed storm! This just proves Jonah’s ambivalent attitude toward Gods wrath, I am not sure if, at this point, he believes himself to be out side of Gods power (because he had left Judah) but God certainly convinces Jonah of His far reaching and always present power.

You know that feeling in the back of your mind that you might just be the one responsible for something.. i.e. a huge storm… well it takes a game of chance and well pointed questions to convince Jonah that the nagging suspicion in the back of his mind is true. Finally Jonah comes clean to his shipmates about the truth… and the truth of his God and God’s power over everything. Ironically his shipmates believe as soon as the truth hits their ears.

Now Jonah needs to convince them to throw him overboard, he does and to the relief of the other shipmen (and for further proof of God’s sovereignty) the storm subsides in to clear weather.

Oh ya, and a fish eats Jonah and he stays there for three days… ????

Now feel free to discuss in the form of comments regarding anything here or all the things not mentioned!

This blog is for comments, the posts will be created with thoughts and questions in mind that are geared for conversation, but if the thoughts are uninteresting then bring up things you want to discuss or questions you have!!! I hope that the posts will ultimately be inspiration for discussion, not restrictive walls meant to focus… but picture a smooth piece of fresh pored concrete and on that smooth ungrooved surface there is a vast number of marbles. Those marbles are YOUR thoughts and in the middle of this landscape a small hill starts to rise upwards, slowly scattering the marbles in every which and any way. The hill is the blog, causing your thoughts to start takeing action and colliding, skidding and squirting with others thoughts. Anywho please comment, conversation is best when two plus ways

with love — Michael