You have to wonder what was happening in the church at Ephesus so
that St. Paul had to write to them about avoiding falsehood, properly dealing
with anger, not stealing, and sharing with those in need. And why did he need
to tell them to “put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and
wrangling and slander, together with all malice?” Would you join that church?
Perhaps Paul wanted to contrast the sort of behavior that one would
expect to find in the Greco-Roman world of the first century with the behavior
he hoped would characterize a Christian community. Of course, the members of a Christian community should avoid
behavior that would hurt the community, and they should engage in behavior that
strengthened the community. Paul
describes the desired behavior this way: “. . . be kind to one another,
tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.” Paul expected Christians to be
“imitators of God.” Now that's a
high standard!
If we look back to the type of community the Hebrew Scriptures call
for among those folks with whom God has a covenant relationship, we see a
community called to behave justly in their dealings with others. Six of the Ten
Commandments address how to treat others who are part of one's community. The prophet Amos declares that in the
covenant community justice “should roll down like waters and righteousness like
an ever-flowing stream.” Paul wanted the Christians to practice those behaviors
as well.
But the many of the early Christians—especially those to whom Paul
wrote—were not Jews. Using the
model of a righteous life taught by his tradition, Paul now needed to teach
these new Christians how a community who claims to follow Jesus should behave.
But what did this idea of community mean for them and what does it
means for us?
In Paul's time a Christian community began as individuals felt God's
Spirit move within them, calling them to follow the example of Jesus. In baptism they received what Paul
described as “a seal for the day of redemption.” But the nature of that
community reflected the idea from the Hebrew scriptures of God's
covenant-making with a group of people: God expected that group of people to worship God alone and to live
harmoniously with each other, because they showed both justice and mercy in
their dealings with one another—you might say, acting as God would act.
In Jesus God offered not a covenant, but God's very self. With Jesus at the center of the
community his followers (both then and now) there could be no doubt about God's
intent to draw people into an everlasting relationship. Paul called it the “body of Christ.”
When Jesus calls himself “living bread” in the gospel reading today,
he characterized that everlasting relationship as one of feeding and being
fed. For the writer of the Gospel
of John there is no greater image of God's love for humanity. The theologian,
Gail O'Day, claims that the Christian community “. . . derives first from the
mutual indwelling of Jesus and the believer. . . [Then] community is formed
from those who share Jesus' presence.”[1]
So for us, very much like it was for the Christians to whom Paul
wrote, we cannot be fully Christian all by ourselves. The emphasis often placed on an individual's salvation by
accepting “Jesus as my Lord and Savior” cannot be where we stop in our journey
with Christ. Finding God in nature
as in “all I need to worship is to be alone with God when I walk in the woods
or on the beach” cannot be where we stop our journey in with Christ. Believing that we can practice our
faith in God completely alone—as in “I'll just read my Bible and pray at
home”—can never complete the journey of faith we began when we first felt the
Holy Spirit draw us.
Why, you may be asking, am I preaching about community when everyone
here today has shown his or her commitment to community by showing up? I preach about community, because we
should never take its importance for granted or look at is as an unpleasant
necessity. Life together [in a Christian community],
according to the German theologian and martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his book
by that name, affords us the only way we can confront our tendency to look to
our own righteousness and perfection as the means of our salvation. When we place Jesus Christ at the center of
our lives together in a Christian community, we have a better chance to
understand who God is calling us to be and to accept and love the others whom
God has called as well—despite their rough edges and ours!
John reported that Jesus said that he was giving himself “for
the life of the world.” The
earliest Christians may have had difficulty with that inclusiveness of Jesus,
because they felt the need to separate themselves from the dominant Greco-Roman
culture and from a religious establishment that rejected Jesus and them. 21st century Christians,
especially in the United States, struggle with a slightly different
problem. Often we want to tell our
culture that it's getting it all wrong, and it needs to get back to certain
values that we hold. Perhaps what
we should offer the world is not a critique, but an example—an example of how a
community of mutual respect and kindness works, even when composed of people
who hold very different views on a variety of issues. In creating this sort of community can we serve as leaven
for our whole society? Can that be
the reason for our parish to exist?
For the Episcopal Church to exist?
May each of us give thanks for the struggles and joys of sharing our
lives together, centered our Savior, Jesus Christ!
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