C-19 Reflection #43: Community as Mystery and Gift

C-19  Reflection (43)

  Theme: Community as Mystery and Gift

  Scripture: Psalm 133

 How wonderful, how beautiful,

    when brothers and sisters get along!

It’s like costly anointing oil

    flowing down head and beard,

Flowing down Aaron’s beard,

    flowing down the collar of his priestly robes.

It’s like the dew on Mount Hermon

    flowing down the slopes of Zion.

Yes, that’s where God commands the blessing,

    ordains eternal life.

Reflection:

During this period of pandemic slowdown, we are thinking about many things. The experience of isolation is most certainly near the top of the list, and very near by must be the theme of community. What is the essence of community? How are we experiencing community just now? What is community going to look like in the future?

Psalm 133, a Psalm of pilgrimage/people on a journey, pictures community as the mysterious gift of God’s presence as they arrive together for worship after a long trek to Jerusalem from their homes in outlying areas. Notice some of the beautiful images in this reflection on community, even though the fellow travellers would have most likely been quite tired and even out of sorts from their long trip. The Psalmist sees and says these things because of the knowledge that community is something much deeper below the surface. Community, in other words, is more than simply the opposite of our isolation and separation. During this time when we focus on the Ascension of Jesus, it is important to remember that we have a great high priest who is holding us together.

Spiritual writer Henri Nouwen develops the notion of community further in his short reflection below. As you read and reflect this morning, remember that even in this time of more severe separation and aloneness that God is giving us the gift of community for the journey, even in this most unusual leg of that journey.

“Friendship, marriage, family, religious life, and every other form of community is solitude greeting solitude, spirit speaking to spirit, and heart calling to heart. It is the grateful recognition of God’s call to share life together and the joyful offering of a hospitable space where the re-creating power of God’s Spirit can become manifest. Thus all forms of life together can become ways to reveal to each other the real presence of God in our midst.

Community has little to do with mutual compatibility. Similarities in educational background, psychological makeup, or social status can bring us together, but they can never be the basis for community. Community is grounded in God, who calls us together, and not in the attractiveness of people to each other. . . . The mystery of community is precisely that it embraces all people, whatever their individual differences may be, and allows them to live together as brothers and sisters of Christ and sons and daughters of his heavenly Father.” ~ Henri Nouwen