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Where two or three people meet together in my name, I am there with them. (Matthew 18.20, WE)
Tradition is not some historical entity that we can read from a book and “get it.” Rather, tradition is a living, evolving, dynamic, transforming, and communal experience. We are shaped by tradition; we shape tradition.
Gregory S. Clapper, a Minister and Professor in The United Methodist Church, observes how being in faith community provides a formative tradition. He writes, “It is this formation in the tradition that makes certain experiences possible, and not some universal religious experience, that makes the tradition possible” (“Making Disciples in Community,” in Paul W. Chilcote, Ed., The Wesleyan Tradition).
The faith community provides a “creative tension,” writes Clapper. He observes the role of the creative tension as formative in faith formation:
Choosing to live in that creative tension, where our freedom to respond to God’s grace is seemingly reshaped from moment to moment by the realities of community, means living in both the excitement and challenge of ministry and, more generally, the Christian life. Living in that tension can sometimes feel like we are doing aerial acrobatics where the horizon is hard to find. But if we continue to check all the “instruments” that the tradition and the community put before us, we will end up arriving where the well-formed heart longs to rest.
Clapper writes of a freedom as malleable as Grace. Grace is more a fluid energy than a stable existent. Grace, by nature, expresses itself in response, in reciprocity. However, Grace is by that capacity to accommodate a free energy. Likewise, our freedom in Grace is, like Grace, responsive and reciprocal. Freedom, while an absolute principle, is a relative process, and true freedom contains the malleability pertaining to Grace. Therefore, freedom is gracious.
The nature of the Christian life as communal is set forth early in Jesus’ public ministry, in his calling disciples. The calling of disciples marks Jesus’ recognition that community is essential for faith formation. Without the tension of community, freedom is aborted in a socialized, privatized, and individualized experience that while often claiming to be logical is, nevertheless, an escape from the tension of community. This refusal to live within the tension of faith community forfeits the central locus for persons to learn how the freedom within Grace is shaped, moment-to-moment, by the realities of living in Christ with others in Christ.
I confess that I have, at times, longed to discontinue participation in the institutional church. I have confessed that, likely, being a clergyperson kept me in the church, at times. Still, I have come to see that faith community has served to temper my proneness to individualism and show me, over time, how being among others humbles a prideful tendency to go it alone. Yes, faith community has wounded me. The faith community has, however, provided the context to experience healing from the wounds of being in community. I, as the Matthew passage above observes, have come to appreciate that within the tension of faith community, I meet the living Christ.
Simply put, there is no Christian life apart from being in a community in which the spirit of Jesus Christ is among those living and serving in his name. And, after all my education and learning, I am grateful that I have experienced many times the real presence of Jesus through simply serving and praying with the most simple of souls, souls who do not have the education I have but who have grown to have a simple but profound faith in Jesus. Yes, possibly, these simple souls have done more to help me learn the true meaning of Grace than all the classes I took in religious schools over twenty plus years. And, now, continuing to serve in a wonderful and yet-imperfect community of faith is the continuing laboratory for the Master Alchemist to teach me more about the formative possibilities in Christ community.
Spiritual Exercises
1. What attracts you to being involved in a faith community?
2. What disappoints you about being involved in a faith community?
3. How has being in a faith community shaped your faith experience?
4. Which of the following statements do you most agree with?
a. What I believe about God is between God and me.
b. What I believe about God is not just between God and me, for my belief has ramifications for others.
5.Which of the following statements do you most agree with?
a. What I believe about God must be shaped in a community of others who, likewise, believe in God.
b. I can form my own beliefs about God.
6. Reflect on the following saying. What does it mean to you?
Tradition is not some historical entity that we can read from a book and “get it.” Rather, tradition is a living, evolving, dynamic, transforming, and communal experience.
7. Reflect on the following sentence. What does it mean to you? How does it speak to the statement quoted in number six, above.
We are shaped by tradition; we shape tradition.
8.Why do you think persons today are less committed to a particular Christian communion (i.e. Baptist, United Methodist, Episcopal) and, rather, are choosing a church that seems best to meet their felt-needs? Is this present lack of commitment to a particular tradition a positive move or not? Explain.
9. Are you committed to a particular faith community? Why? Why not?
10. What does saying that there is no Christian life apart from a faith community meeting and serving in the name of Jesus Christ mean?
Prayer
Living, Cosmic Christ, thank you for showing us the beautiful particularity of God, by forming a group of disciples around you, while you walked on this earth. Though many of us have been wounded by the fallibility of Christian community, grant us the fortitude to remain within the tensions of the communion that we, too, might learn more of your love for us, a love that led you to empty yourself of your pre-existent privileges as an example of the emptying that leads to the blessing of eternal life. Amen.
*Brian K. Wilcox
OneLife Ministries is a pastoral outreach and nurture ministry of the First United Methodist Church, Fort Meade, FL. For Spiritual Direction, Pastoral Counseling, spiritual formation workshops, Christian meditation retreats, or more information about OneLife, write Rev. Dr. Brian K. Wilcox at briankwilcox@comcast.net.
Brian's book of mystical love poetry, An Ache for Union, can be ordered through major bookdealers.
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