Community

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
September 10, 2023

18 Proper A 

          Serving as a summer camp counselor was a crash course in living in Christian community.  I spent three summers at Camp Mitchell in the Diocese of Arkansas when I was in college.  There were 10 or 12 of us on staff, mostly college students, and we lived, worked, prayed, and played together for 10 weeks as we shepherded children of various ages through a week of summer camp.  We looked forward to a wonderful summer, living in Christian community, tending to the children placed in our charge.  However, we quickly learned that a summer at camp was not going to be all peace, love, and little donuts.  On the one hand, we were all very different and often approached the whole idea of camp life differently.   Some of us actually liked bugs and sweating and didn’t mind the lack of hot water and life in repurposed WW 2 army barracks.  Then there was me.  We all had our moments where we hit the wall with fatigue and had to carry each other through.  Camp food was questionable on a good day.  The children could be challenging.  But on the other hand we forged friendships that were rooted in Christian community.  We learned about love and forgiveness, kindness and patience because we had to practice them.  A lot.  We knew we were all needed not in spite of our differences but because of them.  We all knew that we were part of a story larger than ourselves as we helped children find their place in that story.  And at the end of the season, almost all of us signed up for another summer.

          I think about Camp Mitchell when I hear our lessons this morning because they are all teachings about how we are to live in community.  What, you might wonder, do detailed instructions about how the Israelites are to keep the Passover have to do with how we live in community as people of faith.  A lot, actually.  The directions are specifically given to the whole congregation of Israel and the instructions are clear that the whole assembled congregation is to participate in remembering the Passover.  Everyone.  Young, old.  Large families, small families.  Those with wealth and those with nothing.  The able bodied and the differently abled.  Everyone.  Living as a community of faith includes everyone as full participants. 

          The reading from Exodus also reminds us that when we live as a community of faith, we are part of a story larger than ourselves.  The Israelites are instructed how they are to remember the Passover in such a way that a past event becomes a present reality even centuries later.  The people become part of the Passover story through this ritual.  The people are not just to give thanks for what God did for them in the past, but they are to enter into that event by how they prepare the Passover feast, the hurry with which they eat, and the blood they put on the doorposts.  The story of the Passover is their story and every piece of the ritual connects them to a part of the story.  As Christians, we do the same thing in the Eucharist as we take, bless, and break the bread, using Jesus’ own words, to connect us with all that God has done for us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  That past event becomes a present reality for us every time we gather together at this table.  We belong to a story much bigger than ourselves, the story of God and God’s people.

          Living in community, even a faith community, is not always easy as my camp colleagues and I found out.  We don’t always agree.  We get on each other’s nerves. We hurt each other.  While the reading from Exodus uses very specific instructions to help us think more generally about life as a faith community, both the reading from Romans and the reading from Matthew give us some more general guidelines for our life together that help us deal with specific instances.  Love one another.  Forgive each other.  Jesus even spells out a process for dealing with someone who sins against you.  His final instruction is “if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”  Finally!  We get to smite someone and give them a piece of our mind and and maybe even tell them that they should go play somewhere else.  Except…..how did Jesus treat gentiles and tax collectors?  He ate with them and called them to be his disciples.  Jesus follows that instruction by saying that “whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” On the surface, that sounds like we have a lot of power and control over what happens in heaven.  However, in the same breath that Jesus calls us to remember how he treated gentiles and tax collectors, Jesus actually turns our thinking about forgiveness inside out.  In a community of faith, we recognize that the person being bound to an offense for all eternity by our failure to forgive is none other than ourselves.  And the person who is released for all eternity by being willing to forgive an offense is also ourselves.  Failure to forgive harms ourselves as well as each other, and thereby the community of which we are a part. 

At Christ Church, while we do not spend every waking moment together, we are a Christian community that worships, works, prays, and plays together.  We host memorial services and receptions whether for a beloved parishioner or someone we hardly know, we participate in First Serve, make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, build houses for Habitat for Humanity, and take care of each other.  Life in Christian community is not always easy and requires a good measure of love and forgiveness.  But practicing love and forgiveness roots us in the story of God and God’s people and makes that story come alive for ourselves and those around us.  Making that story come alive is our call as God’s people.

                                                                   Amen.