What does it mean to be in community? What does it mean to be Christians with other Christians, or Christians in the various contexts we find ourselves?
We often think of community as a group of people who share some commonalities-- the same neighborhood, the same church, the same belief, the same vocation, etc. Christian communities are meant to also include an intention to care and support one another. Communities are places where we belong, where we exercise the gifts and challenges of relationship.
Most of us have several communities we belong to-- family, work, school, church, neighborhoods, friends, etc. Lately, though, I've been wondering if we are really practicing true community. We do all kinds of things to foster community, to build community, to create community. But do we really know how to be community? Do we really want to be in community?
Especially in American culture, we spend most of our lives perfecting ourselves. We must be strong. We must succeed. We cannot break down. We smile just enough to hide the depression and anxiety that chokes our souls. We get busier and busier to squelch the fear and the insecurity. We ask "How are you?" as we pass each other in the halls, just barely making eye contact. And the automatic response is nearly always "Good." or "Fine.", because by then the moment has passed and there is no time to say how we really are. Community is beginning to look more like the last-ditch safety-net, or the way to at least appear to "love one another".
But, let's face it, life is messy. We are messy. Five year-olds get cancer. Professors at a peace college are murdered. Relationships fall apart unexpectedly. We lose our jobs, our homes, everything that tells us who we are. We have to put our lives on hold to help a struggling family member. People we love die. People we depend on abandon us. We hurt each other, or even someone we don't even know, simply because we are hurting ourselves. We struggle to grasp any sense of meaning and sense in the world. We are angry, confused, hurt, selfish, dishonest, violent, and unforgiving. We. Are. Messy. Each one of us, no more or less than the next. And we can't fix it. No matter how hard we try to make it better, or at least cover it up, we can't change it, really. It's who we are. We are human.
Being community means acknowledging the messyness, to see it, to allow it to be. I'm not sure we know how to do this. I'm not sure we know how to be okay with the mess, much less to allow ourselves to be messy. Lately I've found myself on the receiving end of relationship. It's a strange thing. I'm not sure I know how to allow myself to be honest and open, to be vulnerable, and to allow myself to receive the love of others. I don't want to let my messyness get out there. I want to fix it. And I want to be able to fix everyone else's mess too.
But I am beginning to see that life isn't about fixing it. We can't fix who we are. In fact, I believe, our deepest sin is not being who we truly are. Being community is about allowing ourselves to be who we truly are, to make space for our humanity together, messyness and all. Yes, it's counter-cultural. It's counter-intuitive. It's hard. But it is deeply and profoundly True. Because, really, it's at the heart of that mess that we see the image of God. In community, the mess and the holy live together. They are not separable. Not in the fixing, or the perfecting, but in the being. Community is a space where we acknowledge our own humanity, and the humanity of each other. Where the two most important questions are "What's your story?" and "Can I tell you mine?". Where we allow room for both the mess and the holy. Where we can be.
"I think that we're being called to something harder than being conventional 'Good Samaritans'. To understand ourselves, individually and as a church, being rescued by strangers and foreigners by the wrong people. To understand ourselves, individually and as a church, as beaten, hungry, hurting, lost at the side of the road. Called to touch the parts of ourselves that are strange and damaged and needy. Called to receive love from people we don't know and have no reason to trust. And only then, in turn, being called to the second part: to go and do the same thing-- knowing it will change us in ways we didn't plan and may not like.
And both receiving and giving mean really opening ourselves to strangers--in whose bodies we find, and upon whose being depends, our own salvation."
-Sara Miles, Take this Bread
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