No "distance learning" with that Paul ...

Nowadays “distance learning” is all the rage. No need to be physically present in a classroom to learn. With your laptop, you can be in your bathrobe, sipping coffee in your kitchen (no doubt with the sports pages open)… and be taking a class. You can earn an entire college degree on line. I heard from a college administrator recently that the University of Phoenix, an “on-line university,” charges more per credit hour than the traditional state university where she works.

But no distance learning with the Apostle Paul. He writes to the Christians in Rome: “I am longing to see you so that I may share with you some spiritual gift to strengthen you … I have often intended to come to you … in order that I may reap some harvest among you…”

Paul was longing to be with them bodily, physically, in the same room. And since his letter is inspired Scripture, we just can’t dismiss his words as of only historical interest. They didn’t have internet back then, you say. And I say: it was by divine design that they didn’t. And what right do we have to think that that divine design is different now? To share spiritual gifts and to strengthen one another requires being together in the same place, and at the same time.

A point made in a sermon I heard as a young man comes back to me: “It’s easy to love the saints in Australia… it’s the ones next to me I can’t stand.” (I heard that sermon in Richmond, Virginia, a world away from Australia).

Do I actually long to be with the saints as Paul did? It is a searching question – which is a euphemism to cover up the real answer, which is “no.” I guess I am a much bigger fan of distance learning in church life than I would like to admit.

But Paul lists three fruits of being physically together:

The first fruit: Sharing together “some spiritual gift to strengthen…" one another. Notice the general nature of this fruit. Paul doesn’t say “that I may exercise my gift of teaching on you.” No, he just anticipates some spiritual gift; he doesn’t know what that gift is, and that seems to have been part of the reason why he longed to be physically together with them.

The second fruit: Mutual encouragement of faith, “both yours and mine.” Here is Paul, author of just about 50% of the New Testament, longing to be encouraged in faith by others so insignificant that we don’t know any of their names. But to get that encouragement, Paul knew he had to be in the same place, in the same room, with these no-names.

The third fruit: The prospect of “reaping some harvest among you.” Again, note the generality of the tone: Paul didn’t know what kind of harvest he would reap, or even if there would be one. He just knew that if there was any chance of a harvest, he needed to be physically with them.

No distance learning with that Paul. He knew better. There is no cyber-church. The church only comes into being when you and I labor to be built up with the living stones around us.

Logos2Go

Romans 1.10-13 … asking that by God's will I may somehow at last succeed in coming to you. For I am longing to see you so that I may share with you some spiritual gift to strengthen you -- or rather so that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith, both yours and mine. I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that I have often intended to come to you (but thus far have been prevented), in order that I may reap some harvest among you as I have among the rest of the Gentiles.