salt-shaker.blog

True “Christian Community” will suffocate the condescension that plagues the church. Henri Nouwen illuminates our minds and hopefully it works its way to our hearts as well.

It is important to remember that the Christian community is a waiting community, that is, a community that not only creates a sense of belonging but also a sense of estrangement. In the Christian community we say to each other, “We are together, but we cannot fulfill each other:. We help each other, but we also have to remind each other that our destiny is beyond our togetherness.” The support of the Christian community is a support in common expectation. That requires a constant criticism of anyone who makes the community into a safe shelter or a cozy clique, and a constant encouragement to look forward to what is to come. The basis of the Christian community is not the family tie, or social or economic equality, or shared oppression or complaint, or mutual attraction… but the divine call. (Emphasis mine) The Christian community is not the result of human efforts.  God has made us into his people by calling us out of “Egypt” to the *New Land,” out of the desert to fertile ground, out of slavery to freedom, out of our sin to salvation, out of captivity to liberation. All these words and images give expression to the fact that the initiative belongs to God and that he is the source of our new life together. By our common call to the New Jerusalem, we recognize each other on the road as brothers and sisters. Therefore, as the people of God, we are called ekklesia (from the Greek kaleo =qal; and ek = out), the community called out of the old world into the new…. As members of the Christian community, we are not primarily for each other but for God. Our eyes should not remain fixed on each other but be directed forward to what is dawning on the horizon of our existence. We discover each other by following the same vocation and by supporting each other in the same search. Therefore, the Christian community is not a closed circle of people embracing each other, but a forward-moving group of companions bound together by the same voice asking for their attention. It is quite understandable that in our large anonymous cities we look for people on our “wavelength” to form small communities. Prayer groups, Bible study clubs, and house-churches all are ways of restoring or deepening our awareness of belonging to the people of God. But sometimes a false type of like-mindedness can narrow our sense of community. We all should have the mind of Jesus Christ, but we do not all have to have the mind of a schoolteacher, à carpenter, a bank director, a congressman, or (the mindset of any particular) socioeconomic or political group. There is a great wisdom hidden in the old bell tower, calling people with very different backgrounds away from their homes to form one body in Jesus Christ. It is precisely by transcending the many individual differences that we can become witnesses of God who allows his light to shine upon poor and rich, healthy and sick alike. But it is also in this encounter on the way to God that we become aware of our neighbor’s needs and begin to heal each other’s wounds.

Only out of a prayerful place can we hope for community. Only when we know on some level that we are God’s beloved, can we start relating to other people. It’s not before or later as in chronological time, but spiritually: we need to know God, in order to know other people. We need to love God in order to love each other. Communion with God precedes community with people in a spiritual sense. Community is characterized by two things: one is forgiveness, the other is celebration. Forgiveness means that I continually am willing to forgive the other person for not being God – for not fulfilling all my needs. I too must ask forgiveness for not being able to fulfill other peoples’ needs.