Give up "Pure" Community for Lent

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What do we do when we know we need communities and institutions to lean on, but they let us down? Hayley and Vince continue our Lenten tradition of giving up (for Lent) hidden beliefs that cause us to give up. (Art: Ethiopian Icon of Jesus washing disciples' feet)

SPEAKER NOTES

Give up “Pure” Community for Lent

Context

• Today is the 5th Sunday of Lent, the 40 day season in the church calendar that leads up to Good Friday and Easter Sunday, when we mark Jesus’ death and resurrection.
• Going off of the tradition of “giving up things for Lent”, Brown Line’s own tradition the last few years has been giving up unhelpful beliefs - And not returning to them. You can go back to your chocolate! But not the beliefs that are no longer serving us
• And this year, we are giving up the hidden beliefs underneath our lives that leave us feeling like our only option is to give up - We are giving up giving up - Some of these hidden beliefs are religious - But many are just general Western culture or American beliefs (unexamined assumptions about how life or the world works)

Ecclesiastes

• The saying from Latin American Liberation theologies we’ve been going back to is: - “We don’t just read the Bible, we let the Bible read us.” - That’s how we’ve been uncovering the hidden beliefs we want to encourage giving up.

• Specifically, referring to the Bible’s Book of Ecclesiastes. - One of the Wisdom writings of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament. Written 450 to 150 years before Jesus. - And it’s incredibly modern feeling text, - Its expression of existential dread, meaningless, “what’s the point” - Ecclesiastes centers on the deconstruction of conventional wisdom

• Today… - A famous passage from Chapter 4 — one of the few bits of wisdom that doesn’t get deconstructed, so it stands out. Let's read…

  7 Again I saw something meaningless under the sun:

  8 There was a man all alone;

  he had neither son nor brother.

  There was no end to his toil,

  yet his eyes were not content with his wealth.

  “For whom am I toiling,” he asked,

  “and why am I depriving myself of enjoyment?”

  This too is meaningless—

  a miserable business!

  9 Two are better than one,

  because they have a good return for their labor:

  10 If either of them falls down,

  one can help the other up.

  But pity anyone who falls

  and has no one to help them up.

  11 Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm.

  But how can one keep warm alone?

  12 Though one may be overpowered,

  two can defend themselves.

  A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.

• According to the writer of Ecclesiastes, THIS is one truism that doesn’t get a hole poked at it: - Partnership is better than loneliness. - And, I love the expansion at the end — even better than partnership is community: not just two is better than one, but a cord of three strands is not quickly broken. - We all need community, belonging to others, not just our selves.

• And yet, given that life so often includes the reality where the writer begins this reflection — “There was a man all alone...” - Still we feel the emotional distress behind this: - Is there any hope for actual experience of community and belonging even if we are aware of our need for them? - The writer seems to lack hope. - And boy can we relate to that, yes?

• What's the lack of hope this reads in us, in the 21st century?

Modern Meaning Crisis

We’ve been putting Ecclesiastes in conversation with “modern meaning crises” that describe the disorientation and disappointment we often experience in life

• Alongside our deep longing for community there’s this underlying question of “Can any community ever feel “right”?”
• This takes different forms- - On a smaller scale we have what I think of as the “sitcom effect”- The answer to loneliness is having a group of friends throughout the seasons of life that I you are unwaveringly supported by and you laugh and drink coffee and coincidentally live in the same building together - Yeah that’s so magical and unrealistic, no wonder we feel hopeless. - But then there’s also a loss of hope in the idea that institutions on a bigger scale can provide us with stability and a source of identity - I should be able to find meaning and belonging based on my affiliations and the structures I am reliant on
• When spheres of community don’t feel right, when we feel let down or excluded, do we give up? Isolate? Fall into cynicism?
• Is it on me to have to create belonging for myself, all on my own? - Because anything too institutional clearly can’t be trusted!

Breakdown of trust in institutions

• Researcher Ryan Burge shows the decline in reported “great deal of confidence” in major American institutions from 1978 to 2018

- Nearly everything is a downward trend for *all* these generation groupings
      - Banks, government
      - Education — look at the purple Millennial line! — the first generation group in the era of astronomical student debt — straight down!
      - Big employers like Major companies and medicine — huge declines (this came to a head with Luigi Mangione last year)
      - Organized religion is maybe the most important when it comes to providing community — especially down for Millennials after coming of age during the many church abuse scandals first unearthed in the late 90s, and reckoning with the conflation of fundamentalist Christianity with right wing politics
  - The only institution that is not a downward trend for all generation groupings is the military (in the middle), 
      - but it *is* a downward trend for Millennials, in purple
      - I wonder if this was updated today to include Gen Z maybe we’d have the start of a trend
  - Moral of the story: not nearly as many people feel proud to be American or Christian or Modern or a Company Man or Woman or an alma mater of a school, or to belong to just about anything today.

• And we’re not wrong in many cases! - Institutions have let us down.
• But this is a big part of why we feel so alone. - A big, society-wide loss of trust in institutions — the social infrastructures that, at their best, are supposed to provide community, belonging, and support
• So is that where we leave it? - Are we just doomed to never have community that feels right again - Are we responsible for piecing together a patchwork on our own that manages our belonging? Piecing together the ideals and security - is that even possible?

Bonhoeffer’s Life Together

I think our answer is yes and no. Part of being alive today is finding community is just unavoidably a more individualistic effort, but is there nothing we can hold on to? No!

Our practical suggestion for today, as we’ve teased with our title, is to give up “pure” community for Lent, and instead we want to try to pursue “real” community.

This is different than concluding anything too institutional (or not sitcom magical enough) is untrustworthy.

It may lead us to be skeptical of an institution’s claim to provide community or support for us to fall back on to, but not by default just because something is more institutional;

• It’s important to note that when institutions break down, even broken ones, it leaves a wake of hurt, isolated people,
• In general (not every case but in general), it is more beneficial for the average person to have some institutions to fall back on and help facilitate life, rather than none
• the sense that the way forward is “screw all institutions!” feeds meaninglessness
• (And is easier for a privileged person to say than a marginalized person)
• This is what Musk’s ridiculous DOGE experiment is demonstrating right now

So we’re focusing on something different — on the empty promise of purity.

Many thinkers have made a distinction like this, and one is the young WWII-era theologian and ethicist Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who we’ve mentioned a lot at church lately (mostly because there was an excellent 8-part audio documentary on him that came out last year called “The Rise of Bonhoeffer”).

Bonhoeffer said things like this:

God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world… Only that fellowship which faces… disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it. The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both…

He who loves his dream of a community more than the [community] itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial. (Bonhoeffer, Life Together)

Any experiences that speak to Bonhoeffer’s distinction of the harmful dream of ideal or pure community vs. actual community?

Maybe it’s helpful to shine a light on specifically Christian or church community experiences we’ve had, because they especially can purport to be ideal or pure.

(And I wonder what comes to mind for any of you as we share?)

• Yeah, when I think of this idea of how a desire for ideal community can get in the way of experiencing real community, I think of working at a Christian summer camp during my college years
• We were all there for the same purpose- working at this family camp for the summer - Included things you’d probably think of — leading worship, kids programming, games and crafts. Lots of tie dye, singing songs around a camp fire - And also included less fun things like serving food, doing dishes, cleaning bathrooms
• Going in each summer I always had this picture of I’m gonna hang out with all my bffs and we’re going to have so much fun - And then I was met with the realities of really different personality types, a whole wide range of religious beliefs, a touch of sleep deprivation and — you guessed it — conflicts!
• Though it happened every year, I still felt really disappointed when my vision of community did not stand - I made wonderful friendships that shaped me but the constant feeling of we all need to be enthusiastically on the same page and conflict free created a picture of “this isn’t how it should be and I’m responsible for fixing it.” - That’s a lot of pressure! And a lot of feeling like“this is wrong” that got in the way of accepting “this is how it is”
• When we acknowledge the inevitability of conflict or misalignment as a feature of community NOT a fluke or flaw, we create more room for radical acceptance - Radical acceptance does not mean that growth and change aren’t possible, both individually and communally. - It does invite grace and permission for humans to be human
• V story - Years ago, I was part of what I can see now as a more immature experiment in Christian community - Everyone was roughly the same age, a bunch of young couples in their 20s, and we were all really well intentioned, BUT images of dream or “pure” community that we weren’t even conscious of just tore at the fabric of our group. - I can see now, years on, that we were all so insecure about how our lives were stacking up compared to each other, - Careers and money - Romance and family - Satisfaction or lack there of - And that led to each of us creating our own little “pure” community ideals, - about how this is how we're meant to show up for each other; and this is what we should be talking about when we're together - And these ideals were really just each of us trying to project on to the others topics and personal images we each felt confident in so we wouldn’t have to be reminded of all that we felt so insecure about in our own lives - The problem was always someone else - I look back with a lot of regret on ways I purity tested others, and with a lot of hurt about ways I felt purity tested - And, sadly, we didn’t build the relational resilience needed to push through that - I totally understand Bonhoeffer’s comment about how being disillusioned of our purity tests and the sooner the better is good for a community and its individuals — because that’s how you build resilience. - If you take too long to get there, you’re building on a shaky foundation, and things get too precarious to overcome later on. - We were by no means institutional - We were informal to the max power - But that didn’t guarantee healthy community for us at all - It was purity that did us in - I think this pull toward purity is often what is actually behind our modern loss of trust in institutions - The bigger and more formalized something is the harder it is to be pure - So it can feel like big and formal is always the enemy - But it is purity that is over promising and under delivering.

Takeaways

So to give us some takeaways…

1. Communities and institutions are proven by their resilience, not their purity
   • Immaturity and disillusionment are not automatically red flags; they are opportunities for a community or institution to grow
   • That means pushing through momentary feelings sometimes — of awkwardness or discomfort or fear or dissatisfaction with change, being upset.
   • I remember when a friend in this church called me on missing their perspective as a person of color… they saw my immaturity as an opportunity not a red flag, and our community grew stronger as a result.

• Yeah I think it’s moving away from litmus-testing and toward insight-building - The integrity of a community isn’t threatened by noticing how things are ineffective or need to change - That’s a part of the process of evolving - And that’s how communities and institutions build resiliency— by embracing change instead of clinging to a stagnant ideal

2. Discerning between immaturity and abuse is important
   • Immaturity is inevitable in any community or institution, and we must learn to accept it, and trust in resilience.
   • Abuse, however, is another level — it is not inevitable, and needs to be taken very seriously;
   • It does not need to be accepted as a part of community,
     • And it needs to be addressed honoring victims above all, and avoiding as much as possible the creation of new victims.
   • And this is where bigger institutions can be more prone to problems — with more defined hierarchies, abuse is more likely to happen
   • But this is about discernment and wisdom,
     • because what is experienced as very harmful to one may not be experienced as harmful to the same degree to another
     • universalizing one’s experience as what has to be everyone’s experience is another example of looking for “pure” community.
   • If we’re not careful about trying not to universalize our experience, we can
     • incorrectly diagnose all immaturity as toxic abuse,
     • or incorrectly diagnose all abuse as mere immaturity,
     • And, as a result, isolate ourselves or someone else.
     • And being alone, not held up by any communities or institutions, is a terrible fate.
     • We should take that danger extremely seriously.

Jesus

To close, one more reading from the Gospel of John that I’d love to bring in today,

13 It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.

2 The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. 3 Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; 4 so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. 5 After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

6 He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”

7 Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”

8 “No,” said Peter, “you shall never wash my feet.”

Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.”

9 “Then, Lord,” Simon Peter replied, “not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!”

10 Jesus answered, “Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet; their whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you.” 11 For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said not every one was clean.

12 When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. 13 “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. 14 Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. 15 I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. 16 Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. 17 Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them…

34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

• Consider the “impurity” of this community - Judas is there, who would betray Jesus. - Simon Peter is missing the point. (There’s that immaturity) - The disciples, as a group, had their own internal conflicts
• And yet, “having loved them, he loved them to the end” - This is resilience, centered on love
• When Jesus washes the disciples’ feet, I think about what we talked about last week: - a true leader of community holds others up, not demands to be held up... - Perhaps that covers over a multitude of impurities. - Perhaps this is what enables a community, impure though it may be, to be resilient and be known by love.
• I remember hosting a birthday party when I was just out of college that brought together a bunch of my friends from different circles - and one work friend observed to me off to the side, after seeing all night a group of my church friends at the time interacting, “it just seems like everyone really loves each other.” - That has stayed with me. Because it still feels true to me of that season of community for me. - Unlike the other season of attempted Christian community I shared about this morning, this post-college season, those people, I think we were focused on resiliently loving one another. - We were not pure or perfect (we were so immature), BUT we did do our best to persist in loving one another. - And it was beautiful to me to experience being known by that.
• It still helps me today know what to look for as “success” for this church. - When people communicate feeling like there is love in the atmosphere here, that you can know, that you can recognize. - That’s not about purity. That’s people picking up on something stronger.
• And we need to trust those instincts, - just as much as we trust our radars for institutional BS or abuse - Otherwise we are flailing in meaninglessness attached to nothing. - And that is no way to live. - We mustn’t let the failures of some communities and institutions steal all of our hope that any community or institution can be good.
• I long for this church to demonstrate that — even though BLC has and will let people down, we can still be good, so long as resilient love is our aim, not purity.

Hayley possible note:

Our visions for the ideal are not bad on their own. They reveal what care about, what we hope for, what we long for.

It’s when we hold the ideal as the only worthwhile possibility. When we view anything less or different than that as a failure we can’t recover from. Cynicism will be a natural next step

This is why we need an anchor outside of ourselves that offers stability regardless of the reality. A hope we can return to. A love that guides us

We can be hopeful skeptics— we don’t sweep the failings of community and institutions under the rug, we acknowledge the evidence of flaws (that’s the skeptic piece) And. We also acknowledge the beauty and stability of belonging to something, belonging to one another. That’s the hope.

Prayer