Koinonia is the New Testament name for church. Koinonia means the fellowship of Christian communion through personal, intimate participation. The Day of Pentecost is celebrated as the birthday of the church. On the Day of Pentecost God poured out his Spirit on all flesh creating a new people of God who are called to higher vocations of life that is lived in between now and forever more as compassion.
Koinonia manifests the union of The Holy Spirit and human spirit. It is the outward reality of an inward spiritual, communal consciousness. It is an ever-present community that feasts constantly in the company of the risen Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God and the Son of Man. Koinonia’s communion is a table fellowship whose feasting lives within circles of love and service among its members who move to encircle the whole world. No one is left out. Nothing in all creation is beyond its embrace.
Therefore, Koinonia is a people of God revealing its Spirit as Christian communion. This fellowship is a new people inhaling God’s Spirit and exhaling His charity and truth in the world. Koinonia is a people on fire with a Holy compassion that heals human life.
The Christian church then, understood as Koinonia, is a people born in the spirit on the of the Day Pentecost who become family members and citizens of a community that lives between worldly kingdoms and the spiritual Kingdom of God. The church seen as Koinonia is not a physical structure, or a social organization, or a corporate association. It is the living body of Christ. It is a human community with holy and spiritual dimensions. Koinonia is a people who live in solidarity through solicitude between the kingdoms of this world and the Kingdom of God.
What does it mean to live in solidarity through solicitude? What does it mean to live between the kingdoms of earth and heaven? What is life for a people who inhabit a world present, and a world eternally “be-coming”? We are a people conceived as a body perpetually moving in directions of a Kingdom that is eternally coming into being. We live between kingdoms, seen and unseen.
During the 26 weeks that mark the Sundays in the liturgical year after the Day of Pentecost, we will seek to understand our lives as a fellowship in communion that is lived out between heaven and earth. We are a people with feet in the kingdoms of this world, but who have a mind and heart aware that it is out of place here, and that we have an urgent call and pull to reach out to unknown places. We have an insatiable craving for an impenetrable home. We are always coming and becoming. We live in an awareness of being in between kingdoms, worlds, and one another. We know that we are connected. Yet, we pretend that we are private, and separate from the human herd, but we are ever ready to run to the herd’s protective intimacy at the slightest awareness of life threatening challenges from any hostile environment, physical, social, or spiritual.
I will preach a series of 20 sermons on the Sundays after the Day of Pentecost that will explore an understanding of our life as lived in the “between” heaven and earth, between now, and eternity.
I invite you all to join me on this odyssey. The Holy Spirit shall guide us in the wilderness of this world’s illusions toward sanctuaries of Koinonia that is characterized as a people of God who live compassionately in love with all creation. We shall journey as companions sharing in the giving and receiving of limitless hospitality and boundless mercy. We seek to hear and to follow God’s higher callings to love Him whole-heartedly, and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.
We hope to grow as a Spirit filled people, a holy community whose holiness is measured only by its compassionate hospitality for the world.
For the Spirit already has set us on fire with the wonder that He sent His Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that it might be saved through Him. This same Spirit kindles our lives with healing powers that make us whole and at one with the world.
You all are invited to gather with us as we feast in God’s goodness and mercies. Join us in prayerful openness to God’s empowering callings to love the world whole.
We will come to know and live by “shepherding love” that sustains our spirit filled life that we live between now and ever after. The Lord is our Good Shepherd who is ever present to guide and guard us as we journey this life between earth and heaven.
We will come to realize and to live out the meaning of our creed that is to love one another as God loves us. We become His people daily, as He is our God eternally.
We shall listen for God’s commissioning and sending to serve, and not to be served, to minister, and not to be ministered unto. Our life in between the kingdoms of now and His Kingdom coming is lived out as a time of God’s out pouring Spirit that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
We shall live between now and not yet. Every day and every coming day is the last day! Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved every day, any day. Today is truely the first and last day of the rest of your life.
Joel 2:28-32
`In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.
And I will show portents in the heaven above
and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
The sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day.
Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.' "
The Day of Pentecost is today. Amen.
The Gospel According to Herb. B., Chaplain at the Church of “Shepherding Love”, [Mu Ai Tang---Good Shepherd Church, Shilin, Taipei, Taiwan]
Koinonia manifests the union of The Holy Spirit and human spirit. It is the outward reality of an inward spiritual, communal consciousness. It is an ever-present community that feasts constantly in the company of the risen Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God and the Son of Man. Koinonia’s communion is a table fellowship whose feasting lives within circles of love and service among its members who move to encircle the whole world. No one is left out. Nothing in all creation is beyond its embrace.
Therefore, Koinonia is a people of God revealing its Spirit as Christian communion. This fellowship is a new people inhaling God’s Spirit and exhaling His charity and truth in the world. Koinonia is a people on fire with a Holy compassion that heals human life.
The Christian church then, understood as Koinonia, is a people born in the spirit on the of the Day Pentecost who become family members and citizens of a community that lives between worldly kingdoms and the spiritual Kingdom of God. The church seen as Koinonia is not a physical structure, or a social organization, or a corporate association. It is the living body of Christ. It is a human community with holy and spiritual dimensions. Koinonia is a people who live in solidarity through solicitude between the kingdoms of this world and the Kingdom of God.
What does it mean to live in solidarity through solicitude? What does it mean to live between the kingdoms of earth and heaven? What is life for a people who inhabit a world present, and a world eternally “be-coming”? We are a people conceived as a body perpetually moving in directions of a Kingdom that is eternally coming into being. We live between kingdoms, seen and unseen.
During the 26 weeks that mark the Sundays in the liturgical year after the Day of Pentecost, we will seek to understand our lives as a fellowship in communion that is lived out between heaven and earth. We are a people with feet in the kingdoms of this world, but who have a mind and heart aware that it is out of place here, and that we have an urgent call and pull to reach out to unknown places. We have an insatiable craving for an impenetrable home. We are always coming and becoming. We live in an awareness of being in between kingdoms, worlds, and one another. We know that we are connected. Yet, we pretend that we are private, and separate from the human herd, but we are ever ready to run to the herd’s protective intimacy at the slightest awareness of life threatening challenges from any hostile environment, physical, social, or spiritual.
I will preach a series of 20 sermons on the Sundays after the Day of Pentecost that will explore an understanding of our life as lived in the “between” heaven and earth, between now, and eternity.
I invite you all to join me on this odyssey. The Holy Spirit shall guide us in the wilderness of this world’s illusions toward sanctuaries of Koinonia that is characterized as a people of God who live compassionately in love with all creation. We shall journey as companions sharing in the giving and receiving of limitless hospitality and boundless mercy. We seek to hear and to follow God’s higher callings to love Him whole-heartedly, and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.
We hope to grow as a Spirit filled people, a holy community whose holiness is measured only by its compassionate hospitality for the world.
For the Spirit already has set us on fire with the wonder that He sent His Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that it might be saved through Him. This same Spirit kindles our lives with healing powers that make us whole and at one with the world.
You all are invited to gather with us as we feast in God’s goodness and mercies. Join us in prayerful openness to God’s empowering callings to love the world whole.
We will come to know and live by “shepherding love” that sustains our spirit filled life that we live between now and ever after. The Lord is our Good Shepherd who is ever present to guide and guard us as we journey this life between earth and heaven.
We will come to realize and to live out the meaning of our creed that is to love one another as God loves us. We become His people daily, as He is our God eternally.
We shall listen for God’s commissioning and sending to serve, and not to be served, to minister, and not to be ministered unto. Our life in between the kingdoms of now and His Kingdom coming is lived out as a time of God’s out pouring Spirit that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
We shall live between now and not yet. Every day and every coming day is the last day! Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved every day, any day. Today is truely the first and last day of the rest of your life.
Joel 2:28-32
`In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.
And I will show portents in the heaven above
and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
The sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day.
Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.' "
The Day of Pentecost is today. Amen.
The Gospel According to Herb. B., Chaplain at the Church of “Shepherding Love”, [Mu Ai Tang---Good Shepherd Church, Shilin, Taipei, Taiwan]
