The Membership

Sermon for Sunday, April 27
Scripture: Psalm 133 & Romans 12:1-16

There are some sayings that you hear all your life and often don’t know who’s being quoted. “How do I love thee, let me count the ways…” That’s Elizabeth Barrett Browning – and not by the way, the best line of that particular poem. Here’s another one for you: “No man is an island.” Do you know who said it?------------- It was the poet John Donne – but not in one of his poems. “No man is an island.”

These words are profoundly true, but in our age, we frequently forget them. We live in an age of extreme, almost militant individualism. I have my rights. I ‘ve got to live my life in the way I think best. I want to live my dreams. We’ve all heard sentiments like that. Maybe some of us have said them or thought them.

The statement “No man is an island” stands in sharp contrast to notions like those. How about this statement: “It is not good for man to be alone.” In the opening chapters of Genesis, we find God intentionally creating community. No man is an island. It is not good for man to be alone.

I’ve been reading the novels of Wendell Berry lately, and they have spoken powerfully to me about community. Wendell Berry would refer to the notion of community as being a part of a “membership”. Berry writes about life in rural Kentucky in a farming community. In his stories there are moms and dads and children. They rely on one another. But the membership is bigger than that too. Families rely on the help and support of other families in the community. These folks pitch in to help on the farms of course. But it’s more than that too. They care about one another at the deepest levels. They are there for friendship. They’re there in illness and death. They celebrate together weddings and births. They support one another along all of life’s pilgrimage.

This morning’s scripture readings affirm the blessings of community. In one of the pilgrims psalms sung on the way to Jerusalem to keep festival we hear, “ Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity! It is like the precious oil upon the head, running down upon the beard, upon the beard of Aaron, running down on the collar of his robes! It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion! For there the Lord had commanded the blessing, life forevermore!”

Now it’s not everyone’s experience that brothers dwell together in unity, is it? Lots of families are filled with sibling rivalry. I imagine lots of churches are too. Sometimes rubbing up against other people makes us uncomfortable and even angry. Community of any size: marriage, family, neighborhoods, friendships, and churches is hard (sometimes arduous) work. It requires energy and attention and forgiveness and humor. But the end result is blessing – life forevermore.

There is a priestly element in our community. In the Psalm, oil (a symbol of God’s presence – His Spirit) is pictured flowing down the beard of Aaron. This is a reference to Exodus 29 where Aaron was ordained as a priest to the people of Israel. Living together in community means seeing the oil flow over the head, down the face, through the beard, onto the shoulders of the other – and when I see that, I know that my brother, my sister is my priest. We are set apart for service to one another. We mediate to one another the mysteries of God (Peterson, p. 175).

In Romans 12 Paul uses the analogy of the body to drive home the point that we belong to one another. He urges each person to fulfill his or her own place in the membership. Whatever God has gifted you to do, you should do. Your motivation should be the benefit of the whole and you should do it in self-forgetting love. The one we serve, Paul says, is the Lord. It’s the Lord who has given us the gifts we have, and it’s the Lord who requires us to put those gifts at the disposal of our brothers and sisters – to build up the body, the membership.

No, no man is an island. Let me read to you a few more lines from John Donne’s meditation:
“The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that head which is my head too, and ingrafted into the body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another…. No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”

I’ve been pondering my memberships the last couple of weeks: I have my own little family at home where I’m the mom. I’m part of an extended family where I’m a daughter and a sister. I have friends – colleagues at work whom I count as friends, and friends outside of work. I have a church family. There are layers and layers of connection and community in my life.

How about you? What are your memberships? Who’s counting on you? Who do you count on? How are thing going in your memberships? Celebrate your communities. Is there someone who needs a phone call, a card, a visit – maybe a gift? Let these special people know how special they are to you. God has placed you in connection to certain others: to care for them – and to be cared for by them. It is in these relationships, these connections, that God has ordained blessings for you – life forevermore.