Discipleship and Community

Discipleship—and Community

John 13:31-35

At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus creates a community. He calls his disciples. Throughout his ministry, he holds that community together. He goes to great lengths to inform his community about its priorities. He challenges its members. He is not reluctant to chastise members of the community who attempt to stand in his way, either figuratively or literally. When ambition threatens the unity of the community, he meets it head on. He defines his leadership in ways that the disciples should have been able to understand. And when he faces the end of his life on earth, he makes a diligent effort to ensure that the community will survive his departure. He reveals his plans for the disciples in considerable detail and, in particular, he seeks to strengthen the bonds between them. “Love one another,” he says. “Love one another.”

In the course of his ministry—but also through his example—Jesus makes clear the importance of discipleship as community. His example and that of the community he created give us a measure by which we can value our own community. In many respects, as we endeavor to shape and to share our own calling to discipleship, we seek to model ourselves after the community described in the Gospels. We want both to reaffirm the strengths of that Gospel community and to acknowledge and avoid the cautionary lessons that community offers.

In his book, Jesus and Community, Gerhard Lohfink, a Roman Catholic priest, introduces a useful phrase. He refers to the church as a “contrast society.” By this he means that the church must seek a balance similar to that maintained by Jesus’ disciples. Without becoming so separated from society as to alienate those who might be drawn to it, the community nevertheless embodies and expresses a distinct perspective, a distinct witness, a distinct commitment—all of which express a relationship to the world that is simultaneously engaged with it and apart from it.

We find the elements of discipleship and community throughout the Gospels. Jesus repeatedly offers his presence within communities, “where two are three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” Christianity by this standard, like the Judaism from which it inherited so much, is preeminently a community faith rather than a solitary one. You are probably familiar with the minyan, the “quorum” of ten required for Jewish public worship. The number is derived from an account in Numbers, in which ten agents return from espionage in Canaan, but its larger significance is the importance of community. The Episcopal Church does not enforce such an explicit minimum, but our Anglican tradition, like that of the Orthodox church, has always discouraged solitary celebrations of the Eucharist. The 1662 Prayer Book makes this clear: “There shall be no celebration of the Lord's Supper, except there be a convenient number to communicate with the Priest . . . .” Both Judaism and Christianity are community faiths. We may know good Christians who prefer to go it alone, but in doing so they are separating themselves from what we describe in our service of Holy Baptism as the “household of God.” They are breaking ranks with their fellow disciples.

To understand discipleship as community also implies an acknowledgment that disciples draw their fruitfulness from their close attachment to their master. Jesus makes this principle clear through an agricultural metaphor in John, chapter 15: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. . . . As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. . . 2

And the Gospels remind us that discipleship as community means that we listen to Jesus and follow his direction, just as the twelve did. In Matthew, chapter 10, verses 5 through 8, Jesus sends out the disciples with specific instructions: “Proclaim as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons.”

An emphasis on discipleship as community informs as well the writings of that most effective of community builders, St. Paul. In his letter to the Galatians (6:2) Paul encourages the members of that community to “bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” Similarly, in addressing the church at Corinth, Paul urges that its members care for one another so as to avoid any risk of divisions. “If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (12:25-27).

There is an important balance in Paul’s teaching between the necessity for a shared faith and the recognition of the different ways in which that faith may be expressed. On the one hand, he asks the Philippians (2:1-30) to “complete [his] joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.” Faith in Christ and in Resurrection are non-negotiable. But on the other hand, Paul makes it clear in his letter to the Romans (12:3-13) that a community of faith thrives not on the sameness of its members but on the variety of gifts its members bring to its service. “For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching;” and so forth.

Today, in observing his namesake church, St. Paul would appreciate, I believe, both the shared convictions that draw us together and the diversity of gifts and functions that enables our community to thrive: acolytes, members of the choir, ordained ministers, lay ministers, cooks and servers at the community meal, small group organizers, sextons, educators, knitters, Eucharistic ministers. That is what a community of disciples looks like!

Yet we know from observing the twelve that rivalries can develop within communities. That was certainly true of the early church. Writing to the church at Philippi, Paul warns against ambition and self- seeking: “Do nothing from rivalry or conceit,” Paul says, “but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” His model is of course that of Jesus himself, who, “though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.”

There are more lessons here for the life of our community than we can possibly cover in one sermon, but the most important may be that discipleship begins with a call into community. Jesus summons his disciples not to create a network of independent agents, but to form around himself a community of faith and witness. And we can remind ourselves also that Jesus’ call, for the disciples and for us, is not a recognition of our merit or a reward for our availability, but an opening summons to the work he has given us to do. For us, as for the 12 disciples, that call comes with the assurance that we will be given the strength to do what we are asked. Though as the prayer by Phillips Brooks reminds us, we should not pray “for tasks commensurate with [our] strength [but] for strength commensurate with [our] tasks.” 3

The Epistle to the Hebrews takes us one step further by emphasizing our obligation to enable others within our community to reach their own potential as disciples. “Let us consider,” the Epistle says, “how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another . . . .” We see this principle at work whenever a member of the choir recruits someone in the congregation to join its ranks, whenever one of our community meal cooks enlists a new volunteer, whenever a Stephen minister identifies a possible teammate and begins to encourage that person’s interest. In his first letter to the Thessalonians (5:14), Paul urges us to calibrate our “stirring up” of our fellow disciples by paying close attention to what may be required in a particular instance. Hence, while we should “admonish the idle,” we should be no less ready to “encourage the fainthearted” and “help the weak.” Above all, St. Paul says, we should “be patient with them all.”

There is far more we might take away from St. Paul’s teaching on discipleship and community. It is a consistent thread through his writing. He has a great interest, for instance, in the sustainability of the communities he establishes. He checks on them, writes to them with encouragement or admonition, praises them when appropriate, chastises them when necessary. Throughout, he focuses on the necessity of their faith in Jesus Christ and on their love for one another.

For the Ephesians, he makes literal the metaphor of the church as the body of Christ. Christ is the head, “from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.” And for the Romans, he envisions the sharing of spiritual gifts among community members. Disciples should be “mutually encouraged by each other's faith.”

Having now relied so heavily on St. Paul for this summons to discipleship as community, I want to close with his message from prison to the Ephesians. It is as profound a summary of discipleship as community as there is. “Walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— one Lord, one faith, one baptism.”