Community Life
Posted on May 23, 2018 by
I pray that you have had a blessed week.
This Sunday is Holy Trinity Sunday. The Doctrine of the Trinity is the church’s attempt to offer a description of God, but as I have said many times, the reality is, to define God is virtually impossible. The bottom line is the Doctrine of the Trinity tells us that God is a God of relationships; it’s just that simple. He is a God that reveals himself to the world in different ways (Father, Son, and Spirit), but he is only one God. We need not make it more difficult than that.
So what does it mean for us to have a God that is community? I like to think about the fact that God exists in God’s own community, God’s own family, a family of equals who share their calling and goal in life but exist within that community and family as unique individuals who are stronger together than they could ever be apart. That helps me understand the notion of the church better, because if we’re made in the image of God and if God needs community, then it makes sense that we need community, as well. We need community that is called together to move in the same general direction, willing to bear each other’s struggles, loving each other and serve the world. As humans, though, it is difficult to live in community, isn’t it? We often struggle with seeing others as our equals. We judge others by the color of their skin, their accent, their job status, their economic status, and the list goes on.
This past Sunday at our congregational informational meeting, I was asked what it would look like to act and be the church differently. Well, I am sure my response wasn’t very good in the moment, but as I have thought about it I have thought “to be the church differently” means that we ought to focus on building relationships with more people. We ought to seek to better understand that God’s world is filled with diversity, and when we don’t seek to be diverse in our own community, then how can we love a diverse world.
The Holy Trinity is a perfect community of equals, and my belief is someday we, too, will be able to live in a perfect community. In the meantime, the goal of the church, our goal, ought to be to seek diversity, to be willing to be uncomfortable with diversity around us, and to seek to be like the Trinity.
Our calling on this Holy Trinity Sunday is neither to figure out the Trinity nor to try to explain it. No, our calling is to live out the Trinity in our lives and in the holy and loving community we call the church.
Have a blessed week!
Shalom,
Pastor Dave