The Community We All Need
I once
read that the Russian instinct, when under pressure, was to gather with other
people, while the American instinct was to flee. Thus, the Russian landscape
was marked by villages, while America was marked with isolated homesteads. My
Russian knowledge is just hearsay, but I know that Americans like to homestead
and to be alone. The American suburb is not a village, it is streets filled
with little homesteads, islands of isolation, affectionately known as “my
castle.” Americans are also frightfully lonely.
I have
served for some thirty-seven years in ordained ministry at six different
parishes, and worked in the establishment of a handful of others. Everywhere I
have ever served, the topic of “community” has been popular. The very
popularity of the topic points to the poignancy of its absence. My thoughts are
that community is simply too shameful for most to bear.
The
Russian vs. American description (whether accurate or not) will serve to point
to the problem. The Russian experience for many centuries was marked not only
by the dangers of wolves and the like, but the much more fearful danger of
marauding Tartars. Villages and cities were frequently terrorized by an enemy
who could occasionally be placated with ransom payments, but very rarely
defeated. This pattern continued for around 250 years and had profound effects
on the shaping of culture. The American experience, similarly faced with a vast
open land for settlements, was that of conquering rather than being conquered.
They vanquished their foes (native Americans) and took their lands. The
so-called “pioneer spirit” was exalted as a virtue, with stories of brave
individuals rather than fearful villages.
Communities
are not built by pioneers. They are rooted in mutual need and brokenness.
Stanley Hauerwas has observed:
My hunch is that you don’t just make a
community up. You discover that you need one another because you’re in danger.
The need,
created by various forms of weakness, must be acknowledged and accepted. The
“shame” associated with it must be borne by the community as a whole. Without
that acceptance, there can never be sufficient safety for a community to form.
And this, I think, is the largest obstacle to “community” in our American
landscape. We need each other but are both afraid to acknowledge how and in what
manner as well as being fearful of our own inadequacy in the face of others’
need. It is much easier to talk (and write) about community.
At two
points in my life I have been hospitalized with depression-related symptoms.
The details are of no public interest, but both experiences were profound. The
first was a bust: the treatment was improper and I was far from ready to be
there. The second was a complete reverse. I was more than ready to be there,
and found myself within a community of treatment that was simply the safest
place I had ever known in my life. It was incredibly diverse in every possible
way, including the nature of the various diagnoses. We shared only occasional
elements of religious belief. However, the need was extremely clear and vulnerability
became a hallmark of most interactions. Its community was profound.
Part of
the lore surrounding the American military is that our men do not die for their
country. Instead, they die for the guy next to them in the foxhole. The real
stories of real wars and real heroes are rarely shared outside of that circle
of experience. They are both too shameful and too wonderful.
My
parents were extremely nostalgic about both the Great Depression and World War
II. They were born in 1924 and were shaped by those great events. When you
questioned them, or listened to their stories, there were an abundance of
“needy” tales. The poverty of the Great Depression as well as the shared
inventiveness of its management sounded like adventures when I heard them. The war
put an entire nation on an equal footing of shared sacrifice and need. There
were shortages borne by all.
I was in
England a few years back when a news story broke about a pub riot in Scotland
regarding England’s national soccer team. An Englishman was killed, as I
recall. It became a topic of conversation with the cabby who was of my father’s
generation. “I can’t understand it!” he said. “We were in the war together!”
It was
not the first time I have heard nostalgic comments about that wartime. Of
course, it is about a kind of community, enforced by the magnitude of the need.
Our needs
are no less great, even though the war is so much less obvious. Privately, even
secretly, we are all running short of something, and have just come from one
emotional bombardment or another. I see the British war memes almost
everywhere: “Keep Calm and Carry On.” They still speak to the soul.
The
Church is, first and foremost, a community. It is, indeed, the primary
community, the communion of God and humanity in Christ. We often think about it
as a community of “faith,” imagining that it is our shared beliefs that bind us
together. And, of course, having failed at any number of points to keep calm
and carry on, our faith wanes, or falters, and we feel isolated and excluded.
We fear to speak of the alienation.
A careful
study of St. Paul’s letters makes it clear that we are saved not by our
strength (or even our common faith): we are saved by our weakness. Grace is
only truly complete and in its fullness in our weakness (2 Cor. 12:9).
Strangely, we fear that our weakness (in its various manifestations) will drive
others away. In truth, if others are not with you in your weakness, they are not
truly with you. We gladly celebrate our strengths, and place great store by our
perceived talents. Those things bring us awards and congratulatory attention.
But we do not enter into communion through such things – they do not reside in
that faculty of the heart where communion can be found. The communion we have
with Christ is, strikingly, through His shed blood and His broken body. In a
similar fashion, our capacity for communion lines up most closely with that
which is most vulnerable – and hence – always very close to the places of our
own wounds.
I think
that the lived reality of God’s-grace-in-our-weakness is largely absent in
contemporary Christianity (of every sort). It is, I think, one reason why we
are all given over to such boasting. I will easily be misunderstood when I say
that Orthodoxy is the worst of all Christian groups. I mean by this, that we
carry the burden of 2,000 years. An honest study of those years should remove
any temptation to triumphalism. Someone might ask, “Then why be Orthodox?” I
can only answer that I need it and that I have chosen to enter communion with
the weakness of the Church through the ages.
The
Church in Jerusalem was founded in a shared, common weakness. Its first
gatherings were behind locked doors. They had arguments (Thomas). They had
failures (Ananias and Sapphira). The argued over doctrine (gentiles) and
ministry (neglecting Greek widows). They were prone to factionalism (Corinth)
and false teaching (Galatians). The dire warnings contained in the seven letters
within Revelation were written to Orthodox communities. There is no historical
evidence that the Church learned from its difficulties in the first century and
outgrew its problems. It has never(!) been other than it was then.
I can
only bear witness that cowering behind locked doors, I have encountered the
risen Christ. The sooner we learn to speak the truth about ourselves to one
another, and to confess our abject poverty before Christ, the sooner we will
know the only community that will ever exist: founded in need, and filled with
God.
By Fr.
Stephen Freeman
Source: https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory2godforallthings/2017/05/24/the-community-we-all-need/
