Community is a place, in which we are created to exist as the people of God. We are invited into relationship with God, and subsequently with each other, and our own selves. Within this place, we can receive redemption (wholeness) from God, and experience the incarnational Spirit of God living in and through each other. Included in this divine gift is the redeeming, grace-filled manner in which we learn to be with one another. “Community” is our participation with the Trinity and the “other” and they with us. Sometimes the “other” is the other we encounter within us.
The Triune God reveals a gracious model of community. The Trinity is diverse and loving, gracious and giving, egalitarian and honoring, always drawing us in to relationship by creating a space for us. The Triune God is relational within it’s own self, and with creation. Created in the likeness of God, and being restored to that likeness, we are invited to participate in relational redemption with God, each other and ourselves. In this manner it is a strong integrative model as it speaks to the journey to whole-ness (both individually and corporately) available in the kingdom of God.
One manner in which community is revealed is through the element of story. “Story” is life’s narrative: of an individual, of a people. It is the integration of an individual’s story within the larger narrative. This aspect of community is important not only in our relationship with God, but also with each other. It is in the story of the “other” that we are able to see aspects of God, we may not have experienced in our own journey. It is in the story of the other, that God calls us to lay down self, love another and in this way, learn of and model God’s love for us. It is in laying down our own interests for others that we begin to understand areas in our own lives that separate us from God and others.
Without narrative, we limit our understanding of the far reaches of emotion: fear, pain, joy, or peace. Story of the other illuminates the limits of our thinking and breaks boundaries of our experience. Narrative invites us to wonder how our story, and that of the other fits into the meta-narrative of God. It is the South African concept of ubuntu: “our story is wrapped up in the story of others.”
My own experience in understanding narrative has included support and challenges. Growing up, culture both in and outside of the walls of the church seemed less interested in individual stories. Within my faith community, the focal story was identified is the Christian scriptures. It was to these stories we were to look, at times with the reminder that "we (because of our sin) were the cause of the pain evident in some of those stories." Individual stories appeared important only as they matched up to the stories of scripture. There was not much discussion of a corporate story, unless one looked at how an individual’s action “made the church (and by implication, God) look bad.” On the reverse, narrative support came later in life, in the listening presence of friends. These friends attended to my story, the joys, and the wounds and continued to love me. This attuned support offered healing in its simple existence.
My faith tradition did not seem to understand the importance of story. My story was mine and mine alone. There was not an invitation to tell one’s story; it was simply something that you held, alone. The reality is that one carries the burden of the trials and perhaps even the joys, alone. A recent conversation come to mind. This person had held a secret for their entire life and had never had another person with which they could share this information. Keeping the secret seemed to impact the quality of life of the patient more than the actual “thing” that was actually hidden. There was great relief and (I believe) a turning point in the healing by speaking out the secret: this part of their story, out loud to another person. In the holding of the secret, in the missing that part of the narrative, it seemed as if grace was more difficult to access in these situations.
Community, as represent as story, unites us in celebrations of faith such as baptism and communion: coming together, representing the reconciliation and healing grace we can offer to our self and others. The story of the people of God proclaims grace in actions of love and forgiveness. As we experience grace through the telling of our own story and by the attuned listening to the other, we begin to realize the power of the grace needed in the world and how we can participate. We embody God’s Spirit in us; each one images God to each other and to the world. This corporate image is attractive to the world and draws us, to Yahweh.
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