Koinonia: ‘Relationships With the Other Crazy People Who Love Him’
By: Joseph Serwach
Tags: Love, Community, Christianity, Relationships, Religion

God made us for communion, an incredibly intimate relationship: emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and physical.

What is more physically intimate than breathing life into someone? God breathed life into Adam’s nostrils as Jesus breathed onto His disciples — as the Holy Spirit blows into us at baptism. Spiritus Sanctus means Holy Breath.

“He makes winds His messengers, flames of fire His servants,’’ (Psalm 104:4, NIV).

Stay at home? After His resurrection, Jesus comes to “locked doors, to people hunkering down,’’ Bishop Robert Barron says, calling locked doors “an icon of the Church… symbolic of all forms of fear.’’ But wherever two or three gather, He is in our midst.

Through the Trinity, God is Communion, Community, and Fellowship. And never forget: God is love and truth itself.

Father Brian Larkin adds:

“He didn’t make you so you could be successful or attractive. God Himself is communion. He’s Trinitarian. That’s why we desire communion. In our life, all of us have those close friendships. In the New Testament, the Greek word for communion is koinonía, which means society, communion, community.’’

Is quarantine biblical?

The Latin root word of the word quarantine is 40, a very Biblical number representing massive change: a globe-enveloping 40-day flood, Jesus fasting in the desert (preparing for His world-changing ministry), and just as many days of Lenten sacrifice.

A caterpillar spends five to 21 days inside a cocoon to become a butterfly. In 2020, more than half the world (involuntarily) participated in a global, government-ordered form of life-changing Lent: 4 billion ordered to stay home.

2020 vision means perfect clarity. Or run the numbers: 20+20 = 40?

World religion went into its own isolating quarantine

Church is personal, focused on encountering the Lord personally, Pope Francis stresses. Going to church is also about joining a greater whole.

“When You hide Your face, they are terrified; when You take away their breath, they die and return to the dust. When You send Your Spirit, they are created, and You renew the face of the ground.’’ (Psalm 104:29–30, NIV).

Christianity over video and Zoom frightens the atheistic religion of communism. In China, communists banned in-person services, and Chinese police on Easter arrested Christians trying to celebrate via Zoom. For more than a month, religion around the world has come to people via video, which transmits the Word. But Francis cautions:

“A familiarity without community, a familiarity without bread, a familiarity without the Church, without the people, without the sacraments, is dangerous.’’

The point is to be together: participation, fellowship, communion

The whole Christian life is about desire, St. Augustine said. Aristotle argued that we could accumulate every other blessing in life, but without friends, our life would not be truly lived.

Larkin adds:

“We want to belong; we want to be part of something bigger than ourselves. Koinonía can be participation, fellowship, communion.’’

Koinonía also means sharing our gifts — what one has, a contribution. As Christians, we are each a living cell within one Body of Christ — one massive collection of living cells that work together for a greater whole.

For the ancient world of the Old Testament, “the idea of friendship with God is impossible. That should sink into all of us,” Larkin says. Through the New Testament, Jesus offers Himself as a beating heart of the Church through communion.

Christianity: more than following ethical rules

Participation, communion, fellowship, sharing the body and blood are all part of the koinonía, he adds — the reason we need to interact and come together.

According to Larkin:

“So many people today think Christianity is simply a code of ethics, but that’s not primarily what Christianity is. Christianity is not just following rules. Jesus did not die on the cross simply for us to follow the rules — that’s part of it. The Lord wants communion with us. He wants to have His very life living within us.’’

Christ wants to live in you

God made us for relationships with our brothers and sisters and for a relationship with Him. We are all in the tomb, nothing without Jesus. Without Him? No chance. But with Him? Jesus and His power can bring us out of our self-made graves.

Father Joe Campbell says:

“Jesus might be extending His hand asking you to be in an addiction support group. Part of us wants to stay with what we know. We are not made for this life. We are made for eternal life. We were made for God, and we all know this deep in our hearts. We are longing for God Himself. This longing points us to Jesus.’’

It was Thomas, the doubter “who gets it most right, who got the greatest gift of faith,’’ Barron says. Accept the gifts offered to you. What’s most important? To accept the mercy breathed into you and send it back into your own world.

Imagine you are walking with your family in the hot desert, and you know you all need to drink water. Then you find a well with limitless water. Our pastor, Father Mathias Thelen, asks, “How do we get the water out of the well?”

We are dying of thirst, and trust is the vessel for receiving that water. But it is also about relationships — creating a relational dependence, allowing ourselves to love and trust and depend upon someone else. There is no middle ground, he adds. Either you accept the light and believe in it, or you don’t.

Larkin says: