Community Is God's Strategy

Posted on Tue, Feb 14, 2012

Mel Williams

Community Is God’s Strategy Jeremiah 31:31-34; Ephesians 2:4-10, 17-22

A sermon by Mel Williams

Watts Street Baptist Church

February 12, 2012

What is God up to? Isn’t that question one of the reasons we show up here? Aren’t we seeking to help each other discover and discern where God is at work? If we want to find out where God is at work, the best place to start is to study our own life. Our hope is that if we can figure out what God is up to, then we can be doing the same thing.

I believe that one of God’s major goals is building community, creating vital faith communities. Community is God’s strategy for bringing love, justice, and peace. Community is God’s strategy at Watts Street Baptist Church.

Let me tell you a story of what happened here a week ago. Last Saturday in the fellowship hall of this church you threw a party called a “Fair Well Party for Mel and Jan.” We felt honored and delighted with the party. You had dozens of balloons, tomato sandwiches, lots of music—a hymn sing and three different bands (Ron’s Band, the Bulltown Strutters, and the OLLIE swing band). Our people were dancing and clapping and having fun. You had an ice cream bicycle truck, strolling monks who looked like monks from my monastery, a history room with records from the past 24 years, a slide show, a scrapbook, face painting, ice cream, lemonade, popcorn—and Moon Pies and tomato sandwiches. It doesn’t get much better than that! It was outrageously wonderful! People were smiling, laughing, dancing, hugging.

I felt enormously grateful for the party. But I want to tell you what I learned from that party. What I learned from the Fair Well party was not about me. The party taught me about YOU. You are a vital, authentic, vibrant, joyful community of faith. The party showed me your strength, your health, your enormous well-being, your capacity for love and caring and fun. The party was a love feast—and love energy was flowing freely throughout the gathering.

 

As I’ve reflected on the party, I’ve had a revelation. The party gave me some signs about what God is up to here. God’s strategy is community. Pau says in Ephesians that we are “equipping the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ.” (Ephesians 4:12) God’s strategy is building up the WSBC faith community. God’s strategy is showing you/us that this is a vibrant, free, buoyant, life-giving community. This is what God is up to here.

The major concern of the Bible is to offer a description of what God is up to. We could say that God is the healing, life-giving force in the world. A friend of mine defines God as “the energy for goodness.” Where in our life do we see God at work bringing goodness, healing, and fullness of life?

We might say that we find goodness, healing, and fullness of life in our private, individual lives. God loves each one of us, but the Bible resists allowing us to put undue emphasis on a “me and my God” individualism. God keeps turning us away from our self-centered, individual needs to a wider goal.

The central goal of all religions is belonging. We have a basic need to belong. If we don’t belong to a church, we belong to a book club, a coffee club, a women’s club, a hiking club, a basketball team or fan club, a singing group, a band. Some young people belong to gangs, and gang members can get into trouble. A gang is a substitute for church. We all have a need for a gang; we need to belong. The essence of all faith traditions is belonging---to God and one another. God knows that we need to belong.

That’s why God is in the business of forming us into a people. In the Old Testament, it’s called “covenant.” God says, “I will be your God, and you will be my people.” We belong together—covenant community.

God’s central concern is people, especially those who suffer. God reaches out to people with grace, forgiveness, healing, and steadfast love. Who among us doesn’t long for these gifts? And when grace, forgiveness and love reach us, we find that these emerge not from our isolated, personal groanings and grapplings, but from our relationships—in our families, our friendships, and our spiritual family—the church. 

What is God up to? God is up to building a community of love and justice and hope--- through relationships. In the Letter to the Ephesians, Paul says that “God, who is rich in mercy, out of great love for us, made us ALIVE TOGETHER with Christ…” The good news is that God loves us, forgives us, heals us and calls us into God’s dream—the Beloved Community. We have times when we see it and feel it clearly—like the MLK Sunday when we had diverse Durham in the sanctuary, like the party last Saturday when the room was electric with love and delight—and like the Sweetheart party at lunch today!

I think Jesus keeps showing up at times like this. Jesus is teaching us that in his life and relationships, the Beloved Community is here. He called this community the Kingdom of God. Jesus wanted us to keep building the beloved community where people come first, where hospitality and love are at the heart of our life together. That’s what happened at the party here last Saturday.

We also know that relationships are not easy. Building community takes an investment of time, energy, and attentiveness—love. W. H. Auden defines love as “the intensity of attention.” Paying attention to one another is at the heart of being community. We build community as we welcome each other and listen to each other, paying attention to our life-stories as we come to know and be known, to trust and be trusted. This is a great challenge for all of us. It takes energy and patience.

Some years ago I asked in a sermon here for all of us to do two things. I asked you to increase your financial pledge and get to know six new Watts Street people in this congregation. Following the service I had several people come to me and say, “I’m glad to increase my pledge, but I don’t think I can get to know six new people. That’s too hard” That was an honest response. 

Knowing each other takes energy. But knowing each other and building a coherent community of faith is, I believe, what God is up to. This is how God has worked in the past and how God is working among us now.

Richard Rohr, from whom I got the title for this sermon, tells about preaching one time in Africa, in the cathedral of Nairobi. At the end of his sermon, the people were invited to pray together. They trooped to the front of the sanctuary and all sat on the floor. An old black man prayed, “Lord, never let us move into stone houses.” People nodded and said, “Yes, Lord.” Rohr said, “I had no idea what this prayer actually meant.” So after the prayer service, he asked the priest why the man had said this prayer. The priest said, “You know Africa, you’ve seen our country. People here live in little huts, and huts have no doors. That’s why your family is my family, and my family is your family. The only family is the extended family. But as soon as you move into a stone house, you build a door. And on the door you put a lock. And behind this door you begin to collect your belongings, and then you have to spend the rest of your life defending those belongings.” Then the world is divided for all time into “mine” and “thine.” (Rohr, p. 88, Simplicity)

The church is more than “mine” and “thine, more than “me” and “you.” It’s “we, us, and our.” We are in this together. We have made a covenant to hang in there with each other through thick and thin, to love each other, forgive each other, and continue the ministry of Jesus. That means we keep finding ways to welcome one another, to bond together and announce the good news—to keep on shaping at Watts Street the Beloved Community of healing, justice, and peace. 

From the beginning God has been shaping us into a people. First, God called Israel to be the covenant people. Then through Jesus, God called a band of disciples to be a covenant people. That band of disciples around Jesus gradually became the church.

It is increasingly clear that God’s strategy is community—covenant people. We can see the beginnings of this covenant community in marriage, in friendships, covenant partnerships, and in our families. All of these relationships are challenging. We all know stories of fractured relationships—divorces, alienation. We know that many marriages and friendships and family relationships can be strained from disagreements, personality differences, old pain, or maybe plain old stubbornness.

On one of my annual visits to the monastery, I stood at the door of the chapel and there was a sign on the front door—a sign inviting guests to sign up for a marriage enrichment event at one of the nearby churches. The flyer read: Every marriage goes through four stages. I think you could say every partnership or friendship or church community goes through these four predictable stages: enchantment, disenchantment, misery, and awakening. The next line of the flyer read, “Most relationships/most partnerships never reach stage four.”

If God is in the business of building community, strengthening our relationships, then we might look at these four stages. They may not always move in orderly sequence. We may go back and forth, but here are the stages—applied to us as church.

Stage 1 is enchantment: We love the blush of new beginnings. There is usually a fervor or euphoria at the beginning of our relationships. We’re delighted to be with other. We’re in love with the possibilities the community offers and what these new friends represent to us. With this rush of energy, we are ready to commit, to give our hearts to this group, this church. 

Then comes disenchantment—stage 2. Here we begin to see what’s missing. We find out that the community is not perfect. We begin to find things wrong with the organization, the theology, the present situation, and maybe we didn’t like the tuna casserole that was served at some church luncheon—or the sermon or the hymns. The luster of the beginning wears off, and we get annoyed and disappointed. We start looking for flaws. Maybe it’s like living with a roommate who leaves clothes on the floor, or squeezes the toothpaste from the middle and not the end of the tube. We find ourselves getting bothered, and we become critical. This happens in relationships with a spouse or partner or friend or in our church community. Welcome to stage two—disenchantment.

That leads to stage 3—misery. Stage three can be daunting and troubling. Here we have the opportunity to work our way through the distress, or decide that the relationship is not working. Here we are in the desert, the dark night of the soul, the time of temptation. We’re getting depressed. We may stop going to Sunday school, and the class members don’t even call to check on you. You had some medical problems, but no one from the church found out that you were sick. Gradually the grievances begin to mount. Communication with friends or fellow church members becomes intermittent at best. You become isolated and down in the dumps. Misery has set in.

When we’re in this kind of desert, if we can persevere, we’re ready for stage 4—awakening. From a spiritual perspective, the darkest part of the night is just before the dawn. If we are willing to hang in there through our distress, and stay in communication—with God and each other, we can start moving past the misery to authentic awakening.

Here is the place where I sometimes say, “If there are weeds in our path, let’s get rid of them. If there is static on our line, let’s remove the static.” How? By sitting down and talking it out. Confessing our feelings to each other is the only way toward forgiveness. No close relationship can make it without forgiveness. 

When we “get it,” when we internalize the forgiveness, we begin to awaken, to be attentive, to be grateful for our life together, warts and all.

These four stages—enchantment, disenchantment, misery, and awakening—may not move in exact sequence. We may move back and forth through the stages. But if we can trust the process and stay with each other through the ups and downs, we will move toward awakening. Remember that when someone asked the Buddha if he were a celestial being or a god, he said, “No.” Then what are you? The Buddha said, “I am awake.”

We all want to be awake and grateful. But we know there are times when we disappoint each other. We are forgetful. We fail to be attentive. And that’s where our Watts Street covenant is so crucial. We have made a covenant to stay with each other—forgive each other, stop judging each other, to learn to love each other. And in this church, as in our families, our job is to learn to love the most difficult person, the person who bothers us the most. I’m convinced that this difficult person is the one from whom we learn the most. That person has much to teach us. Learning to love this person and others happens only through prayer and listening and forgiving—over and over. It’s called love.

As this love takes hold of us, we begin to awaken to God’s goodness. We begin to see that God is at work bringing reconciliation and healing. We begin to allow God to use us, to nudge us to be builders of a healthy community. Coherent community leads to coherent mission. This community, this mission is one of the great strengths of this church; it’s a great sign for the future.

God’s great longing is that we be one people, God’s people. When we can trust the process—through enchantment, disenchantment, and misery, we can move to awakening to the goodness of God in our midst. We awaken to come to the party where there is laughter, singing, dancing, and delight. Awakening to see that there is one thing more precious than one’s life—and that is our life together.

God’s strategy is community. We are not here by chance. God has brought us together. Together we discover where God is working, so we can be doing the same thing.

So may it be. Amen.

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