Community

Sam, Diane, Norm, Cliff

Moses, Aaron, Joshua, Phineas

Jonas Clarke, John Parker, Sylvanus Wood

William Bradford, John Robinson, Alice Southworh

Peter, James, John, Mary, Matthew, Luke, Martha...

I suppose communities are bound together by different kinds of glue. Some of them are held together by romance, or the vicarious experience of romance, or by beer, or by blood, or by sports, or by music, or politics, or faith, or even--in this age of the ubiquitous computer screen--by a common love of 18th century military orderly books. Communities are profane and sometimes sublime. They are ephemeral and eternal, ridiculous and heroic, completely superficial and cold-dead, write-it-in-blood serious.

There was a time, in the Christian world, where you "stepped into" the community. You met a standard, in other words. You weren't just sprinkled at birth, or confirmed at twelve, or debutatanted at sixteen. It wasn't a matter of chronology, or tradition, or religious bureaucracy rubber-stamping you on your way to another blue-punch and cookies reception. It wasn't just a Christian fern bar, where all you had to do was walk through the door and keep it nice and superficial. It wasn't just a tearful trip up to the altar--it was an agreement to be subject to others. Paul wrote that this covenant between believers was so important that the believer essentially had two worlds--"this world" which is full of fornicators, idolaters, and the covetous. But there was also a separate community, the believer's "company," the people, essentially, he hangs with, he eats with. Paul makes it very clear--believers aren't even supposed to eat with someone who is a gross sinner and who calls himself a brother. (1 Cor 5).

Matthew talks about the demarcation between mere heathens and a covenant community when he records the words of Jesus, with respect to someone who will not take the rebuke of the church, "let him be unto thee as an heathen and a publican." (Matthew 18:17). Jesus also makes it clear that this authority, "this church," doesn't come from synods, or arch-bishops, or elders, or this year's approved geriatrics in the denominational pyramid scheme. In the very next verses he says that wherever "two or three" are gathered in His name, their actions shall bind on earth and in heaven.

It was this sort of small, meaningful covenant that inspired William Bradford to joint a separatist Pilgrim church--as a twelve year old. He paid a high price for community: he was already on the run from the King, for his religious beliefs, by the time he was nineteen. Before another dozen years had passed by, he was getting his boots wet, off the coast of New England, settling a new covenant community in the howling wilderness of the new world. Talk about high purpose. This was ice-cold serious stuff, with each man bearing a musket to the rude meeting house, and the entire community burying half of their congregation in the ground, the first winter.

In our age--our "this world"--we're happy if we have a community that's something like the gang from Cheers. "A place where everybody knows your name." We are so community-impoverished we'll settle for this superficial version of the Bradford community. (Ironic--isn't it?--that the Cheers Bunch and the Plymouth bunch occupied roughly the same geography, but no where near the same spiritual territory.)

Community isn't just a longing for good conversation anymore. It's getting very serious. In Iran, Muslims just found out that execution will await them if they convert to Christianity. (You read that right. Execution.) In our own country, as resources dwindle, there could be a very ugly fight for who gets health care, who gets pensions, who gets benefits, who controls credit, who gets to raise their own children. (Barbara Boxer just decided she wants the senate to affirm the U.N.'s anti-parent "rights of the child" convention.) Yesterday, I lamented that the entire political establishment has gone stark raving mad. Their answer to national insolvency is to print more funny money and put our grandchildren into even greater debt. In the face of a political establishment that has clearly lost its mind, small "Bradford style" spiritual communities should be our sanctuaries.

But where are they?

Can anyone really say their eternal community (the one they like to think is "eternal") is really anything like the Mathew or the Corinthians or the Bradford fellowship? When was the last time your church "rebuked" you? When was the last time your church "provoked" you to good works? When was the last time your church called those of our political leaders who claim to be "brothers" to repentance?

It's time to start real fellowships. Corinthian fellowships.

Let him who has ears to hear, hear.