Bottom Up Community

During last Sunday’s terrorist attack in Streatham the police rushed into all the nearby shops and evacuated them in case there might be an explosion. But when they tried to evacuate a nearby café the people refused to leave. One man said: “I’m not going anywhere, I want to eat my chips”.

They say that bad things often have silver linings and one of the silver linings from that awful event last week was the way that the community has come together. Not that it was ever apart. But there is a renewed determination to not let hate minded people either divide us or stop us from living our normal lives – or eating our chips!

A constant theme through the Bible is what kind of community do people want. Throughout the Old Testament there is a constant tension between the drive to build community from above and the desire to build community from below.

Community was built from above during times of peace and prosperity. During the great monarchies of David and Solomon everything was dictated by those in power. Kings made the rules, sympathetic priests and prophets dictated the religious law, and the people were kept in check by the usual trappings of the state. It was in these times that God’s people were most strictly defined and so those whose ancestry were not Hebrew, or whose religious practice were not pure were ostracized.

  But it was during such times that the genuine prophets who our reading today the Second Isaiah is scathing about the type of community that this system has built up. It is all show and no substance. Religion is strictly practiced but it has no heart. People fasted but still quarrelled. They spoke of God’s righteousness but openly exploited the poor. They brought sacrifices but refused to do justice.

 In contrast, it was when the state was at its weakest, or when it had failed altogether, that people walked closest to God. It was at these times when they were forced to make community from below, like when they were driven into exile in Babylon. There was no king, no temple, no priests. The only prophets that were listened to were the ones who shared the sufferings of the people. And as no one had any power everyone was more open to the Word of God. Community was built from the ground up.

It was this kind of community that Jesus favoured. He is not interested in the views of those in power but rather commits himself to showing that in God’s true community people are not judged by how much power they have or by how strictly they keep the law. In God’s true community it is only what is in your heart that is important. So the outcast is welcomed, the lepers embraced, the sinners happily forgiven and the tax collectors are given another chance. And this community is never going to be powerful for it will be made up of the humble and the poor and the meek.

But this community will hold power – it is just that this is a new kind of power. Not power judged by numbers or by wealth or by status. But rather power that is built from the bottom up as people band together and refuse to be divided. When this happens even just a few faithful people can have an effect that is greater than they could ever imagine.

And so Jesus looks for metaphors to describe this power and he finds them in cooking. “You are the salt of the earth” he tells his disciples. Today salt is pretty much taken for granted as it is absurdly cheap and we find it on every table. Back then it was precious – and necessary – to not just flavour but also to preserve food. And as we all know, you don’t need much of it to have an effect. In fact too much salt is not good at all. Jesus also uses light to describe the effect his community might have. We all know that a small flame can light a whole room.

The early church clearly saw themselves as salt and light. They were often persecuted. Earlier this week I listened to His Eminence Archbishop Angelos from the Coptic Orthodox Church speak to the district superintendents. His message offered us a humbling perspective on what it means to live as a Christian Community as he reminded us that for 1800 years his church in Egypt has been almost continually persecuted. Martyrdom was common, even today. The church has hardly any power but through its faithful witness and commitment it brings a flicker of light to what is often a troubled country.

For us the question is what type of community do we want to be? One that is built up from below or one that is determined by those above us? How do we bring light to our world, our neighbourhood, our streets? How do we offer salt to a needy community around us?

These questions are very pertinent as we think about the future of our building and the work that we want to do. But we cannot offer light if we only meet with one another, and it is pointless aspiring to be salt if there is no food to flavour. A true community would be one built from disciples and those we wish to serve. If we keep our light under the bushel, or rather locked inside a building that is only open one morning a week, then as Jesus reminds us, we are not giving glory to God.

At a community meeting this week in Streatham it was pleasing to see mostly people who already knew each other. The terrorist incident was not bringing us together for the first time, it just prompted us to cement together relationships that were already formed. At one point the chair of the Sunni mosque in Streatham made a moving and impassioned speech. He said that whenever he went into a local church, even though he was a Muslim he thought of it as being his church. Whenever he went into the synagogue, even though he was a Muslim, he regarded it as his synagogue. And he hoped that we, whether we were Jews, Christians, Hindus or people of no faith whatsoever, felt that whenever we entered his mosque, which is where we were meeting, that we thought of it as our own.

This, it seems to me, is real community. As we seek to build it here, I hope and I pray that those who we welcome into our, hopefully beautifully refurbished building, come to think of it, regardless of whether they are Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu or Atheist, as their church. Amen.