Community

"Abba Antony said, 'Our life and our death are with our neighbor. If we gain our brother, we have gained our God; but if we scandalize our brother, we have sinned against Christ.'" (Daily Readings with the Desert Fathers, edited by Benedicta Ward, p. 36)

If you do a web search on my name and "Desert Fathers," there's probably a few hits. Maybe not a lot, but few. I say this so that it is less surprising that I'm currently using the above book as devotional reader.

The quote reminded me of something Dietrich Bonhoeffer said in Life Together (and if I could find my copy, I'd quote it exactly but tonight my paraphrase will have to do). In effect, he said Christian community is a reality and a gift and it exists whether or not we are with other Christians. It is a reality and a gift even when we don't feel very loving to the community we have. The communion of saints simply is.

These things come to mind as I've been thinking more and more about how this struggle we're in is about community, who is in, who is not, who has full privileges, who is relegated to crumbs from the table.

I had a conversation with someone recently (and I won't identify him because I love him and he's not here to give his full side unless he's following this blog and wishes to comment) who said he wished I saw the church less institutionally and more as the one, holy, catholic church, what he said they used to call the "invisible church." In come circles, we might speak of "the mystical body of Christ."

It is a good reminder. It is a good reminder and still it is the institution that is denying full access to GLBT people, just as it once denied women full access (and still does in some institutions bearing the name of Christ). It is good to think of the church as transcending the institutions that build walls around altars, even as we see through the walls to what some of us can't approach.

What does it mean to have our life and death belong to our neighbor? What does it mean to belong to the mystical body of Christ, whether we feel a part of it or not? What does it mean to trust our baptism into Christ as being all there is to belong to the church when some powerful voices tell some of us that we can't belong fully?

I don't have answers. Not tonight. I'm merely thinking "out loud" and exposing where some of this blogging has led me in time when I'm not at the keyboard.

I see the church as the mystical body of Christ I believe to belong to my neighbor and my neighbor to me transcends any institution's decrees. I believe I belong to the body Christ even when I've tried to leave the church, even when I sit angry and hurt by an institution that says it represents that body.

But what happens when my presence, my existence in this body scandalizes my neighbor? Can I ask my neighbor to not be scandalized? Do people who wish to keep the status quo of the current policies agonize over scandalizing me, their neighbor? And how can we stop that? How can we belong to one another when we disagree about something that is at the core of a minority's identity? Bonhoeffer would say it happens whether we feel it or not.

I'm beginning to think we're all about to simply lose our neighbor and sin against Christ.

Who is my neighbor? How can I bind up the wounds of the homophobe when I seem to be the one causing the wounds? How can the homophobe bind up my wounds, wounds caused by homophobes? (By the way, I dislike the word homophobe---is there another one to use? The "anti-gay"?)

Who is my neighbor? Can people on each side of this divide promise to be the other side's hated, but good, Samaritan?