One of our lockdown finds has been the US sitcom "Community" which has been around for years now but as usual we were late to the party. It's about a highly diverse if not disparate and at times desperate group of students at a community college who form an unlikely study/support group. It has a really catchy, earworm (even if the lyrics are indecipherable) and it has been the soundtrack to my mid-night musings of recent days, together with the Charles Wesley hymn I allude to below.
One of my problems with the word community as it is applied to church, and its relation to other people, is not only the fact that it isn't an explicitly Biblical term or metaphor, but also, as it is used in Northern Ireland it is largely an exclusionary term. We talk glibly of "2 communities" (or more) here, with those communities defined by who is not part of them. I am loathe to include that mindset within the lexicon of the church... I find it difficult enough within the context of community relations and community development... But anyway... that's a long introduction to yet another pensee...
Do we long to be
Community
Where we think and speak
(And look) the same,
And cordially agree,
In perfect heavenly harmony?
Or does the Trinity
Really reveal
The divine in diversity?
Community is fantasy;
An idealised memory;
An aspirational destiny.
Our communities
Are usually not unitary.
Neighbourhoods are filled
With those like us
And unlike us;
Samaritans
Both good and bad
And worse.
With these we are called
To cooperate and collaborate;
To communicate and debate;
To communion if not community;
In loving our neighbour
To love our neighbourhood.
Selah
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