The Incarnation and Community

Disclaimer: My brother Jon loves these long, rambling theological postings so much so that he skip over them. You should probably do the same. This post continues on where I'm stuck and what I'm learning about the incarnation and what it's doing to me.

The part I've been reading in the book The Holy Longing about community is affirming something I've felt in my gut for a while:

The fact that God has human flesh has some hard consequences regarding spirituality and community. Spirituality, at least Christian spirituality, is never something you do alone. Community is a constitutive part of the very essence of Christianity and thus of spirituality. God calls us to walk in discipleship, not alone but in a group.

The author goes on to look at how Jesus went from such great popularity to pissing everyone off enough that they wanted to kill him, particularly with respect to Jesus' teaching that "unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you will not have life in you" Without digging into the original Greek, these words go way beyond cannibalism or describing Jesus' sinless body or a communion wafer:

What we're being asked "to eat" is that other part of his body, the community, the flawed body of believers here on earth. In essence, Jesus is saying: "You cannot deal with a perfect, all-loving, all-forgiving, all-understanding God in heaven, if you cannot deal with a less-than-perfect, less-than-forgiving, and less-than-understanding community here on earth. You cannot pretend to be dealing with an invisible God if you refuse to deal with a visible family.

There's a part of me that wants to write off my Christian spirituality is always as being between me and God - which I guess goes back to that idea of being a Thiest vs. a Christian. It turns out it is as much about dealing with others as it is about dealing with God and my looking back, my life reflects that reality. When I look at the where I've grown and been stretched in my world, at least half of those times have been in the context of a larger community. Sometimes it's learning about being loved unconditionally, sometimes it's been about offering forgiveness or learning to receive it, giving grace as well as accepting it. Doing my faith between me and my God that I can't see can seem way too theoretical. Dealing with others puts a whole new spin on things.

I love the idea of community, to a point. I love having close friends and family, celebrating and being celebrated, being a part of a small church where I know others and I'm known by them. I love community until it becomes uncomfortable, until conflict happens, and then there's a part of me that wants to bolt.

There is a part of me likes to deal with conflict until I reach a point, at which time something clicks in me and I make the mental decision to write off that person and cut them out of my world. I had some recent conflict with a friend of 12 years where I'd reached the point where rather than pursue closure and reconciliation, I'd decided to cut him out of my world and told him point blank where I was at. My friend Joe was sitting at the table with both of us and reminded me that community doesn't work that way, that it's about "eating" Christ's body - all of it - the good, the bad and the ugly.

Cathie and I have been a part of Crossroads Church for 12 years. In that time we've become deeply connected, been deeply hurt and grown through all of it. By being a part of a small, local church - we know others and are known by them. People are no longer just "them' but real people who I get to know, like, dislike, agree and disagree with on things - most of which shapes me for the better.

I've seen hundreds of people leave the church for various reasons, and I wonder how that fits into this idea of the incarnation. How do you grow if you change churches every time you disagree with something? Are there good reasons to leave a church? Sure. Is conflict the right reason? Mostly no. I have the same question for those who connect loosely to a church, or purposely go to a huge church anonymously for a long time. By this definition, they almost live their faith as Deists in this respect.

I guess one of the reasons I love the church and my group of friends so much is that part of the very essence of Christianity is to be together in a concrete community, with all the real human faults that are there and the tensions we live in the middle of.

The bottom line around community and the incarnation is this:

We cannot bypass a flawed family on earth to try to relate to a non-flawed God in heaven. Concrete community is a nonnegotiable element within the spiritual quest because, precisely, we are Christians, not simply theists. God is not just in heaven. God is also on earth.