Community

On the night he was handed over to suffering and death, our
Lord Jesus Christ took bread; and when he had given thanks
to you, he broke it, and gave it to his disciples, and said, “Take,
eat: This is my Body, which is given for you. Do this for the
remembrance of me.”

After supper he took the cup of wine; and when he had given
thanks, he gave it to them, and said, “Drink this, all of you:
This is my Blood of the new Covenant, which is shed for you
and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink
it, do this for the remembrance of me.”

Those words of institution from the Book of Common Prayer have been used for hundreds of years (with slight variations) during the Christian Communion service. Yet it strikes me that there are elements of the Last supper that have often been overlooked, nor is it stated in any of the gospel accounts of the Last Supper. I refer to the acts of hospitality as understood in middle eastern culture.

Here's an article about neighborliness. It's one of a series our local newspaper has done on interesting neighborhoods in the Albany-Schenectady-Troy NY area. My neighborhood is the first one of this summer's series.

While the reporter slightly exaggerates the close-knit quality of the neighborhood, it's still the most neighborly I've ever lived in, by far. And in almost 77 years, I've racked up 25 neighborhoods in 12 cities or towns in 6 states in the Northeast, the Far West, the Deep South, and the Midwest.

Neighborhoods are important. But with changed geographic and demographic patterns, particularly since the end of WW2, churches play less and less of a local parish role. Hence the appeal of house churches. Yet even they, judging from my one experience with a house church, draw from beyond neighborhoods. It makes me think about our social origins in bands, tribes, and villages, where religion expressed and reinforced the social bonds that already existed. Our situation is very different now. We talk about 'community' a lot, perhaps because we have so little of it. We keep trying to reinvent it and are inclined to redefine 'community' in terms of categories of people rather than in terms of face-to-face social interactions and closely-linked networks of interactions.

On the Sunday after Hallowe'en, when I got to church I was surprised to find out that I wasn't reading the passage that I thought I was going to read. I had used the old Lectionary to prepare, forgetting that the new edition had been revised to recognize All Saints Day and All Souls Day and thus the designated readings had been changed. So instead of Isaiah 1 and "your hands are full of blood", I read the tamer and elegaic "Let us now sing the praises of famous men" passage from Ecclesiasticus 44.

Instead of the message of "More Woe" which I had expected to project convincingly for them, the congregation heard an evocation of community -- a hymn in honor of our notable ancestors.

Granted, only men were mentioned, and they weren't "common men", but at least they were diverse. The word was that all of them, from the rulers of kingdoms who had made a name for their valor, down to those whose names have been forgotten, had been apportioned "great glory" by the Lord. Even those whose names and lives, and children's names and lives, have been forgotten are not forgotten. Their righteous deeds and their name live on "generation after generation".

published first http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org at 12:01 AM July 17, 2007

[Jerusalem, July 16, 2007] ICAHD, Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions is a non-violent do something group opposed to the occupation of Palestine which resists the Israeli demolitions of Palestinian homes in the Occupied Territories. This summer ICAHD has committed to rebuild 300 of the -so far 18,000 homes the Israeli government has destroyed which has resulted in creating 18,000 homeless families who legally own their land.