As today is World Communion Sunday, I thought I would take a moment to meditate on the role of community in the establishment of identity. It seems that one of the great misfortunes of western Christianity, especially of the sort I grew up in, (Protestant / Evangelical) is it’s failure to see beyond itself, its failure to recognize Christ in others, especially others whose practice differed from my own. But it isn’t just a failure to see, so much as a failure to participate in a community that is larger, in a community that is whole.
Here’s the thing. As I see it, my identity, my ‘who I am’ is a function of my community. It is not that one establishes the other, rather they confer on each other a sense of who we are. As I participate in my community, the things I do go on to make that community what it is. At the same time, that community leaves it’s mark on me, begins to define me. But if that community remains woefully incomplete, woefully less than it could have been, it leaves me being woefully less than I could be, and vice versa. So if I fail to participate in my community, if I fail to acknowledge its immensity, I fail myself.
Let me put it another way. Who I am is tied up in the way I love my community. And the way I love my community is tied up in the way it loves me. If I fail to love my brothers and sisters, those that I see and know as well as those I don’t, then I fail to love my community. I am no longer me. Likewise when my community is rendered impotently small by my myopic love, then I can only know its love for me from the small splintered shards of it that remain.
Let’s try to love our brothers and sisters this week. Let’s remember the Christians who are fighting for the opportunity to believe. Let’s remember the Christians whose lives are put at risk by their faith. Let’s remember the Christians whose service to Christ does not look like our own. Let’s also remember those of other faiths, even those with whom we do not share our Christian feast, for we live in more than just churches. Let’s remember to love as Christ loved us. Maybe it’ll catch on.
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