IT’S ALL ABOUT COMMUNITY

(Preached on Sunday, May 29, 2005)

Yet you chose me to be your partner; you have shared the secrets of the universe with me.                                                 -Psalm 8:5

 

Most of nature functions communally.

The majority of species seem to be social species.

A simple recitation of the variety of names for nature’s tribes demonstrates that fact: beginning with the familiar colony of ants, pack of wolves, gaggle of geese, pod of porpoises, pride of lions, flock of birds, school of fish, herd of bison — to the more unfamiliar pladge of wasps, intrusion of cockroaches, army of caterpillars, convocation of eagles, caravan of camels, cloud of grasshoppers, parliament of owls, and bask of crocodiles.

We of course know about some of the communal behavior in animals, including pecking order, alpha males, and group mind.

 

Group mind is one of the most amazing realities.

You have observed it in the pandemonium of parrots winging their way overhead, sometimes as few as 15-20, sometimes as many as 50, wheeling this way and that, enjoying the very early morning sunshine.  How do they know which way to turn?  Is it because there is one leader whom they watch and follow with lightening reflexes?  Or is it some form of elementary “group mind” which they share in this ariel ballet? 

Or, perhaps you have been snorkeling, or boating, or standing on a dock and observed a large school of small fish, numbering in the hundreds at least.

Like birds, they also move in harmony, this way and that, shallow or deep, all moving in perfect, instantaneous synchronization as though they were gloriously choreographed and had rehearsed for hours and days and now moved perfects to some inner melody.

 

Now scientists are doing research into the biology of community.  This research suggests that we may have underestimated our own version of communal reality — how much it determines our individual health and happiness.  These researchers are suggesting that sociability is a need as powerful as hunger and thirst.

In fact, using monkeys, early findings suggest that a stable community enhances health, helps fend off infection, alters relationships, and yes, promotes a spirit of friendly play.

They have even found that shifts in the larger community can change one member’s biochemistry, right down to hormone production and immune response.

 

These are important understandings that we seem to have lost touch with in our time.  Ours is an egocentric age.  When “post modern” people define themselves they do so over against everyone else.

We want to do our own thing.  We want to find ourselves.

Others are just things to be used for our pleasure.

We speak endlessly about “my rights.”

Rank individuality reigns.

It erodes the quality of life.  It isolates many poor souls.  Although they may be surrounded by crowds, huddle in cities, and enveloped in noisy music and the gabbling radio voices, they are chronically lonely.

Rank individualism breaks up marriages and destroys families and communities.

It has infected us all to some degree.  It has sorely impaired the quality of our Christian fellowship.  And more and more it impairs our ability to work together for the greater good of God’s mission in the world.

 

We need to reclaim the understanding in our faith that the highest and most beautiful form of personal existence is communal rather than egocentric individuality.

The reflection of the Psalmist that we read this morning expresses that beautifully: “Why should you care about a mere mortal?  Yet you chose me to be your partner; you have shared the secrets of the universe with me.”

And Genesis 1 tells us that God created us in the image of God, male and female God created us.  Certainly God intended the one(s) created in God’s image to be relational, as God is relational.

We were created male and female — able to relate in love to each other and to God as Creator, Spirit, and Word.

Whatever else may be true, it is certainly true that from our created beginning, we have never been able to be human alone.  We need a relationship with God and with each other in order to be truly human as God intended us to be.

 

A traditional Navajo belief is that physical and mental illnesses rise from one being torn from the fabric of being.

Restoration of the individual to health requires a community effort with elaborate rituals that can take from two to nine days.  During the healing process there is much interaction between healer, patient, family, and community.

This is a significant time commitment that goes far beyond the two-minute consultations of modern medicine.

The love, peace, support, and unity of the experience are powerful elements that help the patient rally healing resources and put his or her life back in order.

Perhaps some of their healings are deeper and more lasting than those effected by antibiotics or years of psychotherapy.

There is power when people gather in unity to support each other.

 

The early Church understood itself as that gathering of unity and support.

The word fellowship, koinonia in Greek, carried the meaning of sharing.

Sharing in marriage, sharing in a meal, sharing in medical practice, sharing in an adventure.

For me, one of the most helpful usages of the word koinonia was for shareholders in a business.  I like to apply that understanding to various passages in the Bible.

Among the eighteen times the word koinonia is used in the New Testament, we have texts where it is a shareholding in Christ, a shareholding in the Spirit, and shareholding in God.  For example, twice Paul specifically speaks of our shareholding in the Spirit.  In 1 John 1:3 we read of “our shareholding is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.”

Fellowship belongs to the very nature of God.

That is part of the truth the mysterious doctrine of the Trinity is trying to express: that God is communal by nature; not just with us but in God’s very self, God is also communal.

When we are incorporated into the church, in baptism, we are sharing something of the true nature of God.

We are delivered from the stark solitary ways of individualism.

Through God we are linked to each other, members of the one body, the church.

 

We do experience flashes of the true koinonia, fellowship.

We have known times while singing praise together we have experienced a blessed koinonia.  Sometimes we experience it in prayer.  Sometimes when we gather around the table and break bread and share a common cup.

Sometimes when we baptize a child.  Sometimes in giving aid to one another, sometimes in a combined outreach to the needy in the world around us.

Yet for much of the time we live like self contained individuals who intellectually hold a belief in common, and politely greet each other once a week in a church building, before returning to our isolated lives.

 

Yet if we are God’s partners, then there has to be an important interaction between our fellowship with God and with one another.

And we ignore it at our peril.

Whenever we let go of our egocentricity and we share in the fellowship of God, it opens us up to deeper fellowship with those around us in the church.

Whenever we truly enter into the joys and sorrows of our companions, it enhances our fellowship with God.