We Are All Special People

 

Ecumenical Service

Sunday, November 20

John 6:25-35 

First off, let me thank you all for being with us this evening. We are truly honored and blessed to have so many members of the Okaloosa County community gathered in this holy place. Tonight, we have come together in peace as one body to offer prayers of thanksgiving for the many blessings that fill our lives despite the chaos and turmoil of our global community. 

As well as acting as your host, I have also been asked to deliver tonight’s message. In preparation I, of course, have been in deep thought regarding the focus of my message. More importantly I have prayed relentlessly beseeching the Holy Spirit to infuse my muddled brain with a message that would be relevant to all of us as we consider the context of our world and our community as we move into 2023. 

Let me begin by saying that I recently had the good luck to participate in a South African travel seminar led by the Rev. Dr. Michael Battle, one of the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s colleagues and a brilliant theologian in his own right. The point of the travel seminar was to study not only the ubuntu theology of the archbishop, but also to have an in-depth opportunity to learn about the ongoing struggles of black South Africans despite the abolishment of the apartheid movement and despite the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, chaired by Tutu in 1995-2002.

I do not exaggerate when I tell you that the trip was life changing for me. I returned to the US with a renewed enthusiasm for spreading the word of God through the building of community. I came home understanding the absolute necessity of community if one is to encounter God acting in today’s world. The absolute necessity of community of we are to see the very image of God among us.

So, this evening I want to speak of community and its critical role in this very fragmented and chaotic global society in which so many are suffering, with little or no relief in sight. In which so many yearn for God’s redeeming love. In which so many hunger for a taste of hope through the presence of God, the bread of life, to come into their lives.

In the gospel according to Mark, Jesus clarifies for all who demand to know what the most important commandment is when he answered saying, “The most important one is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

Tonight, I want to suggest that if we are to grasp the full intent of God’s command to love our neighbor, we are called to understand and firmly embrace the concept of love of neighbor and the importance of how that love is revealed in and through the gift of community.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer the German Lutheran pastor, theologian, and anti-Nazi dissident who was executed at Flossenberg concentration camp just four days before the end of the Second World War in his book Life Together wrote, “The church is [God] existing as community. It is only through community that we are connected to God….On this presupposition rests everything that the Scriptures provide in the way of directions and precepts for the communal life…”

Bonhoeffer concludes these thoughts writing, “The more genuine and deeper our community becomes, the more will everything between us recede, the more clearly and purely will [God]… become the one and only thing that is vital between us. We have one another only through [God], but through [God] we do have one another, wholly, and for all eternity…this is not an ideal but a divine reality.”  (Life Together. p 24, 26)

In his last published work, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community, Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote “…today our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change. The large house in which we live demands that we transform this worldwide neighborhood into a worldwide brotherhood. Together we must learn to live together as brothers and sisters or together we will be forced to perish as fools.”

The late Archbishop Desmond Tutu viewed the critical importance of community through the African concept of ubuntu. Tutu defined ubuntu in saying “A person is a person through other persons. We need other human beings for us to learn how to be human, for none of us comes fully formed into the world…Ubuntu is the essence of being human…I am because I belong…I need other human beings to be human.” (Various presentations) 

An international leader in human rights and social justice, Tutu believed firmly that the building of community was increasingly important in addressing the challenges of our fragmented and chaotic global community. He said “We are living in an historic moment. We are each called to take part in a great transformation. Our survival as a species is threatened by global warming, economic meltdown, and an ever-increasing gap between rich and poor. Yet these threats offer an opportunity to awaken an interconnected and beloved community.” (Various presentations)

In the Episcopal Church the gospel reading appointed for Thanksgiving Day is John 6:25-35, a story we might entitle “The Bread from Heaven.” This story is very much about finding God in and through community.

If you will recall, in search of Jesus, a crowd on the shores of Tiberias gets into small boats and crosses the lake to Capernaum where they hope to find him. They have heard about the miracle of Jesus finding food for 5000 even though he had but five barley loaves and two fishes. The crowd wants to join in – to be fed similarly. But Jesus has their number. He says to them, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you…I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never by thirsty.”

Simply put the crowd is seeking a taste of bread, a morsel of fish, a magical and temporary fix to a passing hunger, but instead they find Jesus who instead offers them a different a kind of food. He offers them the bread of life. A way to fulfillment that brings love and peace not through the temporal fix of a small meal, but through an eternal peacefulness of the heart and soul. In these moments on the shores of Capernaum a community frantically seeking temporary fulfillment of their hunger instead recognizes God as the true bread of life. God as the way to eternal fulfillment. This desperately seeking community emerges as God’s fulfilled and sacred community.

Bonhoeffer, King, and Tutu while quite different in their theological approaches to the challenges of their contexts, all agree on one critical point – God is found in community. God is among us, whatever our current context might be. God is always present in all of us and through all of us. Once again quoting Bonhoeffer we recognize that, “…brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; rather it is a reality created by God in which we may participate. The more clearly we learn to recognize that the ground and strength and promise of all our fellowship is in God alone, the more serenely shall we think of our fellowship and pray and hope for it. (Life Together. P. 30)

My friends I know that there is not a person present who does not understand the urgent need for us as members of Okaloosa County to strengthen our communal bonds. To, as one, hear God’s voice as he guides our way and lights our path in the work of creating a community that reflects his peace and love. A community that lays aside barriers to unity and welcomes all. A community created in and strengthened by love. A community formed in the image of God. 

And, on the eve of our Thanksgiving celebrations, a community that offers the bread of life to all through inclusion, healing, and love. Let us remember we are all beloved children of God. All created in his image. All members of God’s kingdom now and forever.

In closing I offer one final quote from the late archbishop.

“In my theology there are no ordinary people. Each one of us, because we are God’s representative, God’s viceroy, God’s stand-in, and a God carrier – each one of us is a very special person.” (No Future Without Forgiveness. 109)