It is easy to love humanity in general. It's when they start to become particular people that loving them becomes problematic. In our day the hatred between liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, progressive Christians and fundamentalists, sometimes borders on rabid. But you can find hatred and nastiness within like groups. Look at the sort of infighting that occurs within political parties, or the fights that take place within Christian denominations and congregations.
I assume that the writer of today's epistle reading from 1 John is familiar with this sort of intra-congregational nastiness. Why else would he go on so about how important it is to love other followers of Christ, saying that "whoever hates another believer is in the darkness, walks in the darkness, and does not know the way to go, because the darkness has brought on blindness"?
I can only assume that the writer knew well that it is sometimes easier to love some unknown person far away, even when that person counts as an enemy, than it is to love that so-and-so you bump into every week, the one who has said nasty things about you, or made your life unnecessarily difficult, or blamed you for a problem not of your making.
How easy it is to seethe against those who have hurt us in ways that are immediate and personal as only those close to us can. But the epistle writer insists that we cannot be followers of Christ when we succumb to this temptation to hate those who are supposed to be in community with us, and that we stumble in the darkness when we do.
In her sermon here last Sunday, Diane Walton Hendricks shared this quote from Parker Palmer's The Company of Strangers. "When people look upon the church, it is not of first importance that they be instructed by our theology or altered by our ethics but that they be moved by the quality of our life together: 'See how they love one another.' "
Most of the congregations I've known over my life spent a great deal of time and energy on doing good worship and on having good programs and activities. Some of this has been geared toward fellowship opportunities and so community-building. But very often, community was more assumed than cultivated. It had occurred, more or less, organically over the years.
I love worship and think it essential to any Christian community. Still, I can't help wondering what church might look like if we spent the same sort of time and energy and money on building loving community as we do pulling off good worship.
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