Community is a word that is loaded with meaning. I don’t know about you, but, the word community brings immediately to my mind an Image of a small town nestled upon a hill. In the center of the town would be a church, a country store, and, perhaps, a bank. It would be a place where people know each other well enough to use first names. It would be a place where differences of opinion are hashed out at town meetings. Even If the discussions were to become heated, everybody even eventually continues their lives together with love and caring.

You might say to me. “Wait a minute. I thought we were discussing the word ‘community,̓ not ‘heaven.” Well, “Yes,” I would answer, “that is true, but, I was sharing MY picture of community. Maybe it is too idealistic to picture community as such a place, but I prefer Idealistic to disastrous.”

Would it be better to describe a community as a slum on the edge of some port in the Third World where dead bodies are routinely discarded into garbage carts every few days? Or, would it be more descriptive to write of a place where people who have lived next to each other all their lives, never speak to each other, and may not even know each other’s names?

People, who live in communities, where they share their lives with one another, tend to have common experiences. They tell each other about these experiences all the time. Perhaps you have seen someone stranded beside the road and were too afraid to stop to help (the parable of the Good Samaritan). Maybe, you have heard someone tell about helping a stranded person. This type of event is one many have in common, and it therefore becomes a community experience. Jesus tells parables to people who relate to this kind of community experience in such a way as to show the way a righteous person should act in that situation. When the story is finished, it is obvious the Samaritan is the “good guy.” and that the other men who “passed by on the other side of̓ the road” were too tied up in their own lives to really care about the “poor unfortunate fellow.”

Jesus understood that justice reveals itself in a functioning community in ways so obvious that he really didn’t have to explain himself when he told a parable. Everybody already knew what was ‘just’ in the situation. When people know each other, and share common ties, right and wrong behavior is obvious. People are more likely to deal justly with one of their own, than with a stranger.

Jesus used these kinds of common experiences in his parables to illustrate his teachings. He was able to demonstrate by what people knew to be the truth, how the just and the unjust were revealed.

In the community I described earlier where no one knew each other, it is difficult to deal justly with individuals, because, no one knows the situation within which they live. There is no sense of wrongness or rightness, just opportunity or the lack of it.

Jesus taught from the strength of community. It is the kind of place where everybody has a great deal In common. Perhaps he is sending a message as to how we should build our community of faith.

It makes sense that we spend more time getting to know one another. In that way we can begin to grow a place where justice and peace can prevail – A place where the love that Jesus taught can be shared.

Who knows, maybe Jesus had such a place in mind when he prayed “…Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.”

Shalom.

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©Copyright: August 6, 2009 J. Lemert Whitmer.  All rights are reserved.  This document is for your personal meditation or to use with your congregation during worship. You may share it with your friends and colleagues.   Any other use of this document requires written permission.  For more information, e-mail lemwhitmer@notesofthought.com