The Nones are a complex
and diverse group. A few of them are atheists. But most of them are not
necessarily opposed to religion. Many of them were raised in a religious community
but have drifted away for various reasons.
As she studied this
diverse group of people, she has learned that they have filled their lives with
other commitments, relationships, priorities – but one thing they often miss is
the community of the church. These people have searched for a sense of
community in other places, but nothing takes the place.
Grose interviewed
sociologists for this project, and she asked all of them if it was possible for
communities created around secular activities to give the same level of support
that religion does, and almost every one said no.
You can have your book
club, your golf league, your political action group, your community service
organization – you can have a sense of belonging with any or all of these
groups – but nothing will take the place of religious community. Because
religious community is so much more.
And as people drift away
from religious community, I wonder if they even know what they are losing.
What exactly is the
importance of other people in our lives? What is the real value of human
community?
I cannot speak for other
religious communities, but I can say with confidence that the church has a very
particular answer to those questions – an answer that you will not find
anywhere else.
In both of today’s scriptures,
we hear instruction to the church – the community of Christ. The passage from Matthew was written late in
the first century with the church very firmly in mind. The letter to the
Ephesians is one of a number of letters we have preserved in our New Testament
that give specific encouragement and instruction to the church communities.
Much of the content of
these letters in the New Testament focus on how to behave toward one another –
not because the apostles were concerned about manners, being nice, or anything
like that – but because the community of the church is meant to be authentic
community in Christ.
That is counterintuitive,
countercultural, and counter to our sinful human nature. The very idea that we are members of one
another, as the letter says, is a difficult one for us to swallow. It may sound good in theory, but in reality? In the flesh?
Not so much.
The letter to the church
in Ephesus alludes to some of the reasons why we might avoid community at
times: people are difficult. They say hurtful things because they are
angry or because they are careless or because it just sounds so clever when
they say it. Then they fail to be helpful because they are preoccupied or
because they assume it’s not their business. They say harsh, judgmental things
because they believe they know better than other people do.
Now. Scratch every “they”
in those sentences and insert “we.” We
are difficult. We say harsh, judgmental
things. We fail to help one another.
The truth about Christian
community is that it is complex, it is sometimes inconsistent, it demands a lot
of those who want to be a part of it, and it is irreplaceable. Dietrich Bonhoeffer spoke eloquently on these
things in his little book called “Life Together.”
Bonhoeffer was a German
pastor, theologian, and martyr, who is dearly remembered for his faith and
courage. In 1933, Bonhoeffer was in Berlin, teaching theology to seminarians.
This was the year Hitler became chancellor. At that time, Germany was, like
most of Europe, almost entirely Christian. But there was real pressure put on
the German church by Hitler’s government, efforts to consolidate the German
protestant churches into one pro-Nazi church that would be under their control.
Bonhoeffer was one of the
few who would not cooperate. He moved abroad, accepting a call to serve two
German congregations in London. But soon he was called back to Germany to take
a leadership role in the resistance movement, the Confessing Church.
He took charge of a new
underground seminary for the Confessing Church. They lived together, a beloved
community in the midst of enemies; and during this time, he wrote the book,
Life Together.
Bonhoeffer wrote that
“Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. No
Christian community is more or less than this…We belong to one another only
through and in Jesus Christ.”
The connection we have to
one another in the church, then, is only through our connection to Christ. But this
means we have one another, wholly and for all eternity, through Christ. In
short, to belong to Christ is to belong to the whole community of Christ. And
this makes the relationships in the church something different from any other
human relationships.
The danger, however, is to
idealize it. And we do that often. Many times, I have heard someone cry out in
anger that people in the church are no different from people anywhere else.
Sadly true. We do all the things I mentioned earlier: we act selfishly. We
judge others. We are difficult, and it truly can be a disappointment to discover
that. But – here’s the catch – our wish for more than that, Bonhoeffer says, may
be harmful to the church.
Many Christian communities
have been destroyed by what he calls wish dreams. When Christians come together
to form a church and bring with them very definite ideas about what Christian
life together should be, very soon the dream will be shattered. People will
hurt one another, offend one another; they will become disillusioned with one
another.
They may leave. They may
go out in search of another church, a purer church where they can more fully
and joyfully worship God. Most likely, they will again be disappointed. Why? Because
they love their dream of a perfect community more than they love the community
itself.
Christian community,
Bonhoeffer says, “is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality
created by God in Christ in which we may participate.” It is a gift of the Holy
Spirit.
We are in communion with
one another only by virtue of being in communion with Christ. We belong to one another and are members of
one another only insofar as we belong to Christ.
This business of being in
authentic Christian community is not an easy thing. It is mysterious, hard, and
it is precious. There is much to
contemplate here, and over the next few weeks we will be looking at this gift
of community: how we accept it, unpack it, and live in it.
We will look at eating
together, listening together, praying together, and confessing together. And in the process, it is my hope that –
We truly see one another as fellow members of the body
of Christ;
We discover new blessings in our life together;
We all draw nearer to Jesus Christ our Lord.
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