WE ARE A PEOPLE OF...

It’s been a while since I took part in a conference led by Father Bud Holland from West-by-God-Virginia, as they say in those parts, and a seminary classmate of Bishop Price. Bud is a wonderful conference leader (I’ve been to two) who tries to put the conference he is leading into its proper perspective. He begins by helping the participants understand who they are as a people and as persons.

Bud says that, first of all, we are a people of the context. In other words, all life, all ministry, everything we do takes place in a specific context, that context being where we live and move and have our being, as one of the Sunday Collects puts it. Our context is not where someone else lives and moves and is but where we happen to be at this moment in time. It is only when we both are aware of and understand the context in which we live that we can even begin to understand who we are as a person.

Once we understand that we are a people of our own specific context and know and understand what that context is, the next reality of which we must become aware is that we are also a people of the gathering. In other words, we are also part of a community, in fact, many communities. We are not meant to go it alone in this world, in the context in which we live. We are always part of some sort of gathering even when we choose to be alone. As God says in Genesis, “it is not good for human beings to be alone.” And so we are not.

For us as Christians one of those communities in which we gather is our faith community, our church. We come together to worship, to fellowship, to learn, all in love and support of one another. We come together to be fed, fed both by the Eucharist and by one another in the very many ways we do in deed feed one another. Without that spiritual and supportive nourishment we would not be able to live out our faith and thus fulfill our baptismal promises and responsibilities to seek and serve the Jesus we meet in every person, as an example.

In other words, or our specific “church words”, we are, in Bud’s words, a people of the table. That is a wonderful analogy in that is only when we can come together around a table to share a meal – the Eucharist, pot luck or even a banquet – or only a cup of tea that we can become and grow as a community of any kind, let alone a spiritual community of faith.

Finally, we must remember that the wider community in which we gather is part of our context, for the church always exists in and is part of the wider community. In other words, as Bud reminds, we are a people of the dismissal. We gather as a community of faith around the table, strengthened by the Eucharist and one another, and are dismissed back into the wider context from which we have come to “go in peace to love and serve the Lord.”

We are a people of the context, the gathering, the table and the dismissal: all four. Understanding and living that truth is what we are called to do every day.