Editorial: Doing what it says on the tin
Anna Rankin

Comment: Stat crux dum volvitur orbis
Ben Walker

p.s. Seeing red and feeling blue

The elusiveness of trust on the ethnic frontier
David Stevens

Beliefs, values and spirituality
David Livingstone

Citizenship
Brighde Vallely

Creating Community
Ben Walker

Interview with Jose & Marizete Lara: Laboratory for mission
Anna Rankin

Transforming Culture
Derek Keefe

That's not fair!
Drew Gibson

Review: A Heart to Listen
Lynne Livingstone

Review: How to Detox your Spiritual Life in 40 Days
Claire Martin

Review: Praying in Exile
Karen Campbell

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Creating Community

DEBATE is currently raging across Europe concerning the future of the European Union given the recent veto of the constitution by the French and the Dutch. A constitution marks out the foundation of a community, its shared laws and its united purpose. It seems that many are questioning whether this potential community of people actually has shared history and roots to speak of, whether they want such mutual laws or can agree to a joint purpose. Whatever else they may be, it is hard at this stage to see the people living in Europe as a community.

Contrast this with Exodus 19, where we see the Israelites, on their journey from slavery in Egypt, now camping in front of Mount Sinai. In verses 4-6 these wanderers are given a constitution which marks them out as a particular community, a treasured community, God’s community. And it is in using these words that Peter, in his first letter to the Christians dispersed throughout much of the known world indicates that we, through Christ, are ‘God’s own people’ – his community.

There can be few buzz-words more bandied around in our times than ‘community’. It is one of those words that everybody uses, everyone has a feeling about or vague picture of, but for which no-one seems to have a clear and agreeable definition of what it actually means.

These passages help us to understand at least something of what God understands by community:

Exodus 19:4-6: You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.

1 Peter 2:9-10: But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light. Once you were not a people, ...but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, ...but now you have received mercy.

God’s community: Founded on grace
Communities look back to a shared history or foundation. Perhaps a place or an event or an achievement gives them a collective sense of identity. God’s community is no different,while at the same time being wholly different. For its members are called to identify themselves as a community based on a shared history. But it is not a history that they have brought about or achieved. It is not something that they have done together, but something that has been done for them.

The constitution of these Israelite people spells out a foundation that is based not on their initiative, nor even on their shared ethnicity and the activities of their forefathers. God tells them they are here, now, together as a people, because ‘I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself’. They are a community solely because of the saving action of God, delivering them from Egypt. This is the one thing they share in their history (even though they are predominantly of the same ethnic origin, others were with them – cf. Exodus 12:38). It is not even the sharing of the same laws and customs which makes them a community. The covenant law is given to them as this community. That’s why the following chapter containing the Ten Commandments begins not immediately with the first law but with a reminder that they are a people saved by God.

Peter understands this as he applies it to those who are in Christ. Once they were not a people, but now they are God’s people. How is this? What makes them God’s people? Because once they had not received mercy, but now they have received mercy. The community of God and membership of it is based on one thing alone – receiving the grace of God. This marks it out from ethnic communities, legal communities, geographical communities or cultural communities. And it also allows for a wide range of diversity. For if it is founded on grace, then such things as colour, culture and citizenship must be irrelevant markers of membership.

Of course, there are limits to diversity. Every community, however diverse, has certain limits, and liberal secularism, dare I say, is a hypocritical liar if it tells us that there need be none. But, I suggest, the only limits on the diversity of God’s community concern misconceptions about the Giver and the giving of grace.

God’s community: Called to holiness
Having established the foundation, the constitution of God’s community deals with its shared laws: ‘Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant… you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.’ Peter reiterates this labelling of a ‘royal priesthood and holy nation’. The call of the constitution is for the community to be faithful and holy in keeping with the founder of the community. I recommend the ECONI publication The Politics of Holiness by Alwyn Thomson as an excellent exploration of what it means to be a holy community. Nevertheless, I shall say something about holiness.

Holiness is all-encompassing. In Leviticus 19, Moses begins his address to the community on behalf of God: ‘You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.’(v2) Of what does this holiness consist? It is much more than personal morality or propriety in corporate worship. It includes concern for the poor and marginalised (v9-10, 14) concern for justice (v11, 15-16, 35-36) and concern for the alien/outsider (v33-34). In fact, the alien shall be ‘as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself’. Why is this? ‘For you were aliens in the Land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God’(v34).

Not for the only time in that chapter are the community of God reminded that their principles for community living come on the basis of their salvation experience; that they are to treat others, even the outsider, remembering their own treatment and the gracious foundation of their community.

So part of being a holy community, of being the community the Holy One has called them to be, is remembering. To be a holy, faithful, distinctive community, God’s community needs to remember its constitutional foundation.

This is the habit of lasting communities the world over. They take time to remember their foundational events and occasions. This is why there are so many mechanisms for communal remembering in scripture e.g. Passover, Purim, Communion. They are all there to enable the community to remember the grace on which it is founded that it may be the holy, distinctive, faithful, loving community which it is called to be.

God’s community: Purposed for proclamation
The purpose of the holy community is to proclaim the God of grace. Exodus 19 sets the community in the context of all peoples: ‘You shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation’. The community has a relationship with the nations and between God and the peoples. As Peter explicitly puts it, ‘You are… God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.’

Being a holy community is not an end in itself. It is for the purpose of proclamation. Community is not just belonging to, but belonging for. Holiness is not being separate from, but being set apart for. Jesus’ holiness was not set by boundaries that kept him from sinners, but was centred on the gospel of grace that he took to sinners. Thus his community is distinctive from other communities in order that it might faithfully proclaim Christ in other communities.

We are a community of grace. As such we have something to proclaim within what Jonathan Sacks identifies as the culture of shame that prevails in society today.¹ In a community of shame, people are judged by the honour in which they are held. If they do something wrong and are found out, the stain of shame is permanent, and in one way or another they are excluded or disappear from the community. So to remain acceptable to others and part of the community, you have to keep up appearances and cover up all wrong-doing. The law of the community is public image and the three new rules: ‘Thou shalt not be found out, thou shalt not admit, thou shalt not apologise’. What it is lacking is any sense of forgiveness or grace.

So how does God’s community react in order to proclaim grace? The temptation is to understand that we should not take wrong-doing seriously; that we should deal with issues lightly; that ‘love covers up (not just covers or covers over?!) a multitude of sins’ (cf. 1 Peter 4:8). But this is not being community founded on grace, it is community formed merely on acceptable appearances; a community where we falsely claim: ‘I’m fine’ and joke our way through small talk. This too is a community of shame where we find it uncomfortable to admit to any sin or acknowledge the problem or issue for fear of disgrace, embarrassment or offence. But if there is no sin, where is the grace?

Only by healthily acknowledging issues, problems and sin; by communally assessing our holiness and faithfulness and by dealing with them from a foundation of grace and forgiveness can we proclaim God’s grace in our life as a community. Paul’s point in Romans 5:20-21, is that where sin is recognised, grace abounds. The focus and proclamation, then, of this holy community is the grace of God, rather than the unhealthy obsession with or denial of sin which operates in a community of shame. Such a proclamation draws the ‘outsider’ to inclusion rather than pushing the ‘insider’ to exclusion.

God’s community continues, not because of our shared preferences or a false harmony which papers over cracks, but through a foundational, covenantal commitment which honestly, seriously and gloriously deals with difference and in doing so proclaims the grace of God.

1 See www.chiefrabbi.org/articles/credo/december03.htm

BEN WALKER is Research Co-ordinator at the Centre for Contemporary Christianity in Ireland.

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