Greet every saint in Christ Jesus. The brothers who are with me greet you. All the saints greet you, especially those of Caesar’s household.

Philippians 4:21-22,ESV

Friendship is a wonderful thing – and it’s great to have so many friends at church. And we all know that there’s a limit to the number of friends we can manage at any one time – relatively few close friends and then maybe a network of others.

If Alfred Dunbar was right, then most people can only hope to maintain a social network of up to about 150 people – which, by the time you’ve got extended family, friends, work colleagues and so on, means that the task of keeping up with everyone in a church the size of ours is going to be more than any normal person can handle.

So we should probably be glad that Paul doesn’t demand that we invite every saint over for coffee – or suggest that we pour out our hearts to every saint. But we should still greet every saint.

We’re in this together. The church is not a social club with a miscellany of overlapping friendship groups – it is the body of Christ on earth. It is not where we are, it is what we are.

You won’t ever know everyone – but you can still greet them. As your brothers and sisters in Christ you have a connection that transcends friendship – and even when we don’t know each other, we are still to love one another.

And we see it when we grieve over and pray those who are persecuted for their faith. When we support missionaries who are doing things that won’t benefit us. When we respond with joy when we hear of what God is doing outside of Paulsgrove. When we greet those who we may not know – but still love.

And just as one soldier will salute another, we salute each other.

Because we are one body.

So hey – greetings. We love you guys. Pass the love on.