We are almost 15 years out from the publishing of Bowling
Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert D. Putnam. You may remember
this book. Back in 2000 this national best seller spoke prophetically about the decline of ‘social
capital’ – the drop in personal interconnectedness, mutual support, and
cooperation amongst America’s public. The book’s famous illustration is that
while more Americans are bowling than ever before, they are bowling alone.
Bowling leagues (along with all sorts of groups, clubs, and associations, not
to mention churches) have seen their membership plummet in today's American society.
Today many seekers who come through church doors,
including St. Peter’s, are longing for the kind community our society has lost.
Yet there is a significant difference between what they are after and what we
use to have. Today’s seekers want organic, not institutional community. They
want belonging and acceptance, not membership and procedures. They are after
true-to-heart conversations, not bureaucratic exchanges dominated by agendas
and Roberts Rules of Order.
Today’s seekers are also finding out the hard truth about
community. Community is the fruit of arduous work and tough struggles. Knowing
others and being known also means exposure to the faults, vices, and
shortcomings of others. Perhaps more painful is facing our own faults when
others have borne the brunt of them. It means confrontation, vulnerability,
making mistakes, and asking for and accepting forgiveness. Given the pain of
honest connection it is no wonder false decorum, various social rituals, and bureaucratic
social systems exist! They may hide authenticity now, but originally their
purpose was to soften the collisions of our personalities!
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| The Disciples (right) abandon Jesus |
Jesus was no stranger to the desire for and difficulties
of community. Jesus wanted community. The Gospels show him gathering a
community and binding them in love to each other and his Father. And Jesus knew
the difficulties of community. When the going gets tough, the ‘tough’ were
nowhere to be found! The 12 closest Disciples of Jesus abandon him. (Only the women
disciples are to be found.) But the Gospels tell us Jesus already knew he would
be abandoned (Matthew 26:31).
He knew yet still celebrated the Last Supper, a celebration of community, in a
most loving and intimate way. And then Jesus gave his life up for his betrayer,
his denier, his failed disciples, for strangers, and not the least, his enemies
also.
Christ knew that Christian community is a hard won fruit
of the Gospel. It requires vulnerability, great sacrifice, and a death of our selfishness
for the love of God and others. (Matthew
16:24-26)
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| Risen Jesus gathering again his disciples, here shown on the Road to Emmaus (Lk 24:13-25) |
But that is not where the story ends. Jesus is resurrected to life, and appearing many
times to his followers, he begins putting the community back together. Apparently
Christian community is not just worth dying for, it is worth living for.
So begins our story, the story of disparate, bowling-alone people being
made into God’s people. The story of people who, by their own power, cannot
find community with one another and with God, now find it through Christ. It is
a community mystically bound in the sacraments and Holy Spirit-ual experience,
and tangibly bound together in worship, mutual care, and the Gospel mission of
love for the world. Most of all, it is bound by its failings and its
forgiveness for each other through Christ.
Are you looking for community? Then come journey with
Christ’s disciples through Holy Week and Easter. Experience God’s call and
power to be the Community of Christ, the as-yet-imperfect-but-already-Divine Family
of God.
