Sunday is Pentecost - the birth-day of the church community. I've been reflecting, praying and wondering what does it all mean? What it is about community that turns me on, grabs me and convinces me that this whole Jesus groupie story thing is true? It's what these scriptures are about - the story of being overcome by the power of God and being thus drawn into a life of counter-cultural revolution-starting world-transforming community based upon the God given and inspired notions of equality, inclusiveness, empowerment, liberation and solidarity. That's what I want. A place where all gifts are welcome. A place were everyone is recognized - as happens in these scriptures. A faith community that includes all those on the journey, not in a pc-tolerance way, but in a dynamic life-liberating community praxis experience of mutuality - like the logs and embers in a fire that enrich, enliven and challenge each other as they burn, burn-out and burn-again in a resurrection sort of way. Why is it that the church community so often is more like a match that lights burn bright, burns out, and often makes a lot of smoke to hide the ugly odors we want to deny as part of our humanity?
While on the stair-master I re-read a masterful and incredibly short book by Eberhard Arnold, Why We Live in Community in which he says perfectly what Pentecost - the church - community is all about:
Faith is not a theory for us; neither is it a dogma, a system of ideas, or a fabric of words, nor a cult or an ogranization. Faith means being overwhelmed by God. Faith is the strength that enables us to go this way. It helps us to find trust again and again when, from a human point of view, the foundations of trust have been destroyed. Faith gives us the vision to perceive what is essential and eternal. It gives us eys to see what cannot be seen, and hands to grasp what cannot be touched, although it is present always and everywhere.
If we possess faith, we will no longer judge people in the light of social custom or according to their weaknesses, for we will see the lie that stands behind all the masks of our mammonistic, unclean, and murderous human society. Yet we will not be deceived in the other direction either and made to think that the maliciousness and ficklenesses of the human character (though factual) are its real and ultimate nature. Admitttedly, with our present nature, without God, we humans are incapable of community. Tempermental mood-swings, possessive impulses and cravings for physical and emotional satisfaction, powerful currents of ambition and touchiness, the desire for personal influence over others, and human privileges of all kinds - all these place seemingly insurmountable obstacles int he way of true community. But with faith we cannot be deluded into thinking that these realities are decisive: in the face of the power of God and his all-conquering love, they are of no significance. God is stronger than these realities. The unifiying energy of his spirit overcomes them all.
Here it becomes abundantly clear that the realization of true community, the actual building up o f a communal life, is impossible without faith in a higher Power. In spite of all that goes wrong, people try again and again to put their trust either in human goodness (which really does exist) or in the force of law. But all their efforts are bound to come to grief when faced with the reality of evil. The only power that can build true community is faith in the ultimate mystery of the Good, faith in God.
How do we make this experiential and participatory in worship? I'm stuck as I wonder about it. Shouldn't every Sunday - every moment of life in faith community be this? I lived in a radically envisioned community for a year. There were moments like this - escaping the death-making system we live in to glimpse experientially true community based in, through and for faith in a living God...yet all too often the ugly natures of our humanity came out: envy, power-seeking, jealousy, fear, passive-aggressive silence. Can we live in true community? That's what Pentecost is all about. Have have you experienced community? Like logs in a fire, a match...or somewhere in the grey-in-between?
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