Called to Community. Thomas Merton

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СКАЧАТЬ do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. . . . But seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matt. 6:25–34). From the beginning, ever since Christ was born, people have sought such a society, a fellowship of the kingdom, free from cares and worries. There is an enormous strength when people stand together, when they unite in a communal way. The idea of private property falls away, and they are so bound together in the Spirit that each one says, “What I have belongs to the others, and if I should ever be in need, they will help me” (2 Cor. 8:13–15). This firm and absolute solidarity in a shared life where each is responsible for the other is the kind of life in which you can indeed say, “Don’t worry!”

      Time and again, people have attempted to live together in this way. Yet it has never come fully into being. And this is the reason why Christianity has become so weak. To be sure, people throughout the ages have known that this building up of a social order in which one need not worry anymore was originally Christ’s will. Christ told us not to seek after riches or the honors of this world. He said this precisely because he took it for granted that his united people would always have the necessary means for life. He told his followers that their oneness in love, their lifestyle of sharing, would provide them with sufficient food and clothing.

      Again and again people have thought that this is the way society should be. But because it does not fully come about, they give it up eventually and settle for charity, where those who have offer something to those who have not out of a charitable urge. This is the way it has always been. Many people find ways, with their extra means, to help the poor here and there. Yet this is not what Jesus Christ wants. Just the opposite! What worries are caused by the many charitable institutions of our day! Millions of people continue to worry how they can get a little here and a little there. Often they are turned away by charity itself. Does this surprise you? Do not be taken aback when the philanthropists of this world fail to give help. Charity is not the way; it still holds back what is essentially needed. Therefore we must join together. A united company of Jesus must come about.

      How will this happen? We have lost the feeling for it. One reason why Christ’s followers did not remain organically bound together, as at Pentecost, is that they wanted to draw in too many foreign elements. The members wanted to convert the whole world before they themselves were fully converted. It is simply not possible to gather hundreds of thousands of people into common fellowship before the members themselves are ready for this. This is especially so if you draw in people who are materialistic, envious, unfree, and unwilling to go the whole way. It would be better if they remained outside and had the cares of the world. They are not yet fit to be co-fighters.

      Freedom of the heart must be there first, a freedom from all the worldly pleasures that might attract us. Then we can shed all worries. How much people are able to do once they are freed from all cares and do not worry about their daily bread! It does not take much, only that people are so bound together that they know, “When I get into need, the others will be there.” But if I say, “I will save enough for myself so that I will never have to depend on others,” then this is the ruin of any Christian community. It is a mockery of Christ’s body.

      For this reason I do not think much of “spiritual communities.” They do not last. People are friends for a while, but it eventually ends. Anything that is going to last must have a much deeper foundation than some kind of spiritual experience. Unless we have community in the flesh, in things material, we will never have it in spiritual matters (1 John 3:16–18). We are not mere spirits. We are human beings of flesh and blood. Every day we need to eat. We need clothing for every season. We must share our tools; we must work together; we must work communally and not each for himself. Otherwise we can never become one in the love of Christ, can never become the flock, the community of Jesus that stands up in the world and says, “Now things must become quite different. Now the individual must stop living for himself. Now a society of brothers and sisters must arise.”

      This is the way Jesus calls us to set aside our worries. Yet we Christians somehow expect people to have faith in the most impossible of situations, in conditions where they nearly perish in need and misery, where they exist in wretched hovels, hardly knowing how to keep the wolf from the door. And we come along and call out to them, “Simply believe!” To shout into this kind of distress, “Believe! Then everything will be added unto you – heaven awaits you!” is a demand that simply cannot be carried out (James 2:14–18). No, the kingdom of God must not be only a kingdom of the future. In Christ’s church community we should strive to become united, and begin to become free in such a way that, at least in the circles where we love one another, cares cease. ◆

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      Embodiment

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       Gerhard Lohfink

      One of the fundamental problems of the church is that faith no longer saturates the whole of life, but only a narrow sector. Out of an entire week we often have no more than sixty minutes on Sunday for “faith.” Our employment has long since become a world in itself with its own rule and ways of behaving. It has scarcely anything to do with Christian existence. All the efforts of Christian societies and church efforts toward a “lay apostolate” have not changed this. In the same way leisure time has also become a world unto itself, as have education, the economy, culture, and all the other spheres of life. Faith is drying up. It no longer has any material that it can transform. It has become unworldly and therefore ineffectual.

      For many Christians it would not be a turning point in their lives if they decided, one day, to stop praying tomorrow, to leave off going to church next Sunday, and at the next opportunity to stop the church magazine. Their lives would continue according to the very same social rules, norms, styles of behavior, and models as before. Nothing would change because, long before that, their faith already would have become unworldly, inconsequential, and ultimately futile. It was, in fact, not faith at all. Where faith is really faith it cannot be shoved to the margins of life.

      Christian faith, just like Jewish faith, subjects all of life to the promise and claim of God. Its nature is such that it interpenetrates all aspects of the lives of believers and gives them a new form. Of itself it demands that social relationships must change and that the material of the world must be molded. Faith desires to incorporate all things so that a “new creation” can come to be.

      At the same time faith tends toward a more and more intensive communion among believers, for only in the community, the place of this communion, only in the place of salvation given by God can the material of the world really be molded and social relationships really transformed. It would therefore be essential to Christian faith that individual believers should not live alongside one another in isolation but should be joined into a single body. It would be essential that they weave together all their gifts and opportunities, that in their gatherings they judge their entire lives in light of the coming of the reign of God and allow themselves to be gifted with the unanimity of agapē. Then the community would become the place where the messianic signs that are promised to the people of God could shine forth and become effective.

      All this is part of the tendency of faith to embodiment. Christian faith of itself produces an impulse to bind believers in communion and by way of that communion to draw all spheres of life into God’s new creation. This integrating tendency is a property of faith itself. It is not something added secondarily at some time or place. An individual cannot first begin to believe alone and then, afterward, join the church community. Accepting faith already means desiring the communion of believers. Accordingly, the transformation of world and society is not an obligation that is added to faith as something secondary. Instead, where faith is a living thing, it transforms the world from the very outset.

      The communion of believers thus is not something that is merely spiritual and intellectual. It must be embodied. It needs a place, a realm in which it can take СКАЧАТЬ