O God, in the Holy Trinity there exists a beloved community in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We give you thanks for bringing us into that beloved community of divine love and pray that we might foster it on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.
This week’s Collect notes that, from Jesus, we receive the fruits of his redeeming work and are to follow daily in the blessed steps of his most holy life. One of the fruits of this redeeming work of Jesus is the reconciliation that we are given with God and the opportunity for this reconciliation to be a rule of life for us as we strive to follow him as our Lord. A good shorthand way of talking about this is “beloved community.” Through the sacrifice of Christ, we have been brought into the beloved community by God’s grace and in following his blessed steps, we find our fulfillment in living as a beloved community. At St. Luke’s, we’ve been talking about and striving to become the beloved community. Using today’s Scripture texts, we’ll consider what exactly what the phrase “Beloved Community” connotes.
“Beloved
Community” was first used in the early 1900s and was popularized by the Rev.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In speaking about the Beloved Community, King said
“There is another element that must be present in our struggle [for justice and
peace] that then makes our resistance and nonviolence truly meaningful. That
element is reconciliation. Our ultimate end must be the creation of the beloved
community.” As you know, Beloved Community is a part of our identity at St.
Luke’s. What’s so helpful in having this at the core of who we are is that it
can cover so many things that are important to us. Beloved Community describes
our relationship with God that is rooted in abundant grace and expressed
through intentional worship. Beloved Community describes the fellowship and
affection we have for one another. So when we can get back to having social
events – those are essential aspects of becoming the Beloved Community. Being Beloved
Community describes our relationship with Creation and our commitment to proper
environmental stewardship. Beloved Community also points towards the goal of
our work for racial justice and equity. And with this eye towards becoming the
Beloved Community, we see that theme throughout today’s Scripture.
Genesis
45 gives us a glimpse into what the Beloved Community is. An inadequately short
summary that led us to this point is that Joseph is the youngest of twelve
brothers. Though he was the youngest, he was the one through whom God had
chosen to act, which made the other eleven brothers jealous. They had planned
to murder him, but instead sold him into slavery in Egypt. In Egypt, Joseph
rose up the ranks and become Pharaoh’s chief-of-staff and right-hand man. There
was then a severe famine in the land, which Joseph had adequately prepared for.
His brothers come in search of grain and the opportunity for reconciliation, or
vengeance, is now open. It really is a fascinating story, start at chapter 37
and read through 46.
There
are a few things of note about Beloved Community here. The first is that it
comes through the hard and honest work of reconciliation. When Joseph reveals
himself to his brothers he says, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into
slavery.” He doesn’t skip that truth-telling. He doesn’t shrug it off in the
interest of keeping things polite. In the Beloved Community love is at the center.
As we know from Scripture, “Love is patient; love is kind… It does not insist
on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in
wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all
things, hopes all things, endures all things.” We also hear in Ephesians that
we grow into the full stature of Christ is by “speaking the truth in love.” As
we all know, love is hard work. Love is a commitment to one another. Love can
endure the painful truths of our past and, indeed, this honesty is the only way
to find reconciliation.
There
is also a sense of humility and trust that is required. Joseph nor his brothers
understood how God was working despite their evil intentions. The brothers
acted out of jealousy and malice, but God acts out of mercy and salvation. We
might think that we are in control, but God remains sovereign. It is not that
God causes the brothers to sell Joseph into slavery, but it is that God always
has another move. This is what St. Paul is getting at in today’s passage from
Romans – that we are all disobedient, and yet all shown mercy. Whether we
recognize God’s hand at work in the world about us or not, God remains active. When
we trust that God is the one in charge, then we can find reconciliation even if
we thought it would be impossible.
We
also see that Beloved Community opens a new way for us. Joseph certainly could
have returned evil for evil. He could have had his brothers thrown in prison,
or worse. But he doesn’t. Love shows him another way – the way of
reconciliation where relationships are restored. Martin Luther King also said
that “Love is creative and redemptive. Love builds up and unites; hate tears
down and destroys. Physical force can repress, restrain, coerce, destroy, but
it cannot create and organize anything permanent; only love can do that. Yes,
love – which means understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill, even for our
enemies – is the solution to our race problem.”
The
Beloved Community is manifest when we actively prioritize and pursue the good
of the other. We do not ask what they have earned, rather we love them as if
loving were the only thing that matters, because it is the only thing that
matters. Joseph did not need to reconcile with his brothers, he but he did not
want to live as a slave to retribution or brokeness. Instead, what is happens
is a Beloved Community. And these twelve brothers would become the fathers of
the twelve tribes of Israel, through which Jesus Christ was born. The Beloved
Community opens new possibilities in the very same way that the Resurrection
opened for us the way of new life.
And
one of the hallmarks of the Beloved Community is sheer joy. Today’s Psalm is
one of the shorter ones, but it is wonderfully rich – “Oh, how good and
pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity.” And that word “good” is an
important Biblical word. Back in Genesis when God created the heavens and the
earth and all that is therein, then God declares them all to be “good.” And
this sort of goodness isn’t an evaluation, goodness here is about
intentionality. When God calls Creation good, it means that it is as God
intended it to be. So when we proclaim that it is good when the people of God
are with one another, we are saying that this Beloved Community is how things
are intended to be. Beloved Community goes with the grain of the universe.
The
last time we gathered together for worship was March 8, over five months ago.
And I know that it’s going to be different and will present new challenges, but
I’m really excited, more than I expected to be, about being able to resume
in-person worship this evening with outdoor worship. Because it really is meet
and right when the people of God dwell together in unity. We are an
incarnational people, and while I’m thankful that technology has kept us connected
in this pandemic, there is something good, holy, and proper about actually
being together. No, it won’t be the same, but it will be good and pleasant to
again gather as the Beloved Community at St. Luke’s. That’s the signature of the
Beloved Community, the joy of being gathered together.
And
turning to the Gospel text from Matthew, we see how it is that we become the
Beloved Community. Often, the assumption is that holiness and goodness come by
the things that take on. You’ll hear a lot of Christians talk about the
importance of reading Scripture and prayer. And to be very clear, those are
good things. But those things are not the ends, they are the means. The end is
partaking of the abundant life of Beloved Community that God intends for us. So
if you come to church on Sunday but defraud the poor on Monday, then that isn’t
following in the blessed steps of Jesus. This is what Jesus gets at when he
says, “What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what
defiles.” The fruits of salvation aren’t about what goes in, but rather what
comes out. You try to bake a cake with rotten eggs and you get a rotten cake.
The
Beloved Community does not come through good intentions, or avoiding difficult
truths, or staying at the surface level. No, Beloved Community is about our
diet. Do we consume violence and oppression in our lifestyles? Do we dine on
partisanship in our news sources and our conversations? Do we seek first the
Kingdom of God, or is that an afterthought? Jesus is telling us what we’ve all
heard before – you are what you eat. And if we sit at the table of selfishness,
of self-righteousness, of fear, of looking down on others, of jealousy then
that what will come out of us.
This
is why Jesus gives us the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. It’s so much more
than a meal, the Eucharist is an entire way of life. It is a way to come
together, as the Beloved Community to receive God’s grace and mercy, to be
reassured of God’s love, to be encouraged to follow in Jesus’ blessed steps. We
receive the Eucharist so that we can rest in God’s grace and become Eucharistic
people. And being nourished by the grace of the Eucharist, what comes out from
us are things that build up the Beloved Community. Things like humility, and
forgiveness, and compassion, and a zeal for justice.
The
Beloved Community is the Body of the followers of Jesus who have thankfully
received the fruits of his redeeming work and seek to follow daily in the
blessed steps of his most holy life. The Beloved Community is a way of being in
which truth-telling, reconciliation, and Resurrection happen. The Beloved
Community is full of joy and goodness, as it is what God intends for us. And
the Beloved Community is something that comes on earth as it is in heaven by
God’s grace when we are filled by the Holy Spirit and share those gifts of love
with the world. Indeed, how good and pleasant it is when the children of God
dwell together in Beloved Community.
