Community

“I’m spiritual, but I’m not religious.” Those words have become the mantra for this generation. What do these words mean? “I’m spiritual.” I’m in touch with powers out there and powers in here? I’m sensitive to the good energy that flows through the world and exists between people? I’m open to be touched by something larger than myself? “…but I’m not religious.” I don’t go to church. I don’t want people cramming rules down my throat. Wherever the answer is to be found, it won’t be in Christianity. “I’m spiritual, but I’m not religious.”

    Through the character of Jayber Crow, Wendell Berry sees this long procession of  saints.  Jayber, who cleans the church building in his little hometown of Port William, KY, remembers it like this:  “One day when I went up there to work, sleepiness overcame me and I lay down on the floor behind the back pew to take a nap.  Waking or sleeping (I couldn’t tell which), I saw all the people gathered there who had ever been there.  I saw them as I had seen them from the back pew...  I saw them in all the times past and to come, all somehow there in their own time and in all time and in no time: the cheerfully working and singing women, the men quiet or reluctant or shy, the weary, the troubled in spirit, the sick, the lame, the desperate, the dying, the little children tucked into the pews beside their elders, the young married couples full of visions, the old men with their dreams, the parents proud of their children, the grandparents with tears in their eyes, the pairs of young lovers attentive only to each other on the edge of the world, the grieving widows and widowers, the mothers and fathers of children newly dead, the proud, the humble, the attentive, the distracted–I saw them all.  I saw the creases crisscrossed on the backs of the men’s necks, their work-thickened hands, the Sunday dresses faded with washing....I seemed to love them all with a love that was mine merely because it included me.”

We need each other to be the people of God.  Here’s where it’s the hardest.  Our society fragments us, individualizes us, separates us.  It rewards a few and punishes a few.  But to enter the abundant and good land God has promised us, we as a church must unite...we must be deeply involved in one another’s life, we must break the bonds that separate us in our own little houses, our own little rooms, our own little jobs, our own private thoughts and practices.  We need each other.  I can’t imagine what freedom from greed, freedom from brickmaking, freedom from fear looks like unless I see it in you.  When you model the life of Christ, I can grasp it, try it out.  When you open your home to others, I want to open my home.  When you share generously with the needy, it makes me want to open my wallet too. 

What kind of dreams trouble the richest and most powerful nation in the world? We have nightmares of scarcity. There isn’t enough to go around. We’re getting behind. We need more...more money, more of the world’s pie, more stuff from Walmart, more security, more oil. We are goaded by our leaders to be a fearful people– afraid of outsiders, afraid of terrorists, keeping one eye on the colored threat level alert. Is this an orange week or is it yellow again? Pick up the papers and it’s Egypt all over again. We’re worried about immigrants in our midst. How did there come to be so many? What can we do to ensure they don’t turn against us... overpower us? Can we send them back, can we build walls around them? Can we continue to keep them in economic bondage without giving them the freedom to find a home among us? And above all else, like the children of Israel in Egypt, our lives center around work. Work has become the major component of our lives. We have become cogs in Pharaoh’s machine. Work and spend money. 40-50-60 hours a week. We have bought into Pharaoh’s brick-making economy. You’re only worth as many bricks as you can produce in a day.

    Is it enough to know that this water flows around God’s throne...or is there some way to refresh ourselves around its flow today?  I’m intrigued by the vision of Ezekiel, who was surprised to see the water flow from beneath the threshold of the temple...Ezekiel said that the healing, refreshing water of God flowed from the sanctuary.
    One-hundred and eighty years ago, give or take, a group of men and women gathered right here on the first day of the week, at the river, on Buffalo Creek  to pray together, to break Bread together, to make their offerings to God.  They cut trees and constructed a log church building, and called it the Buffalo Creek Christian Church.  Buffalo Creek actually runs right through our property, we own both banks of the Buffalo here next to the church building.