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The year after I graduated college was a tough one for me. It was during the property market crash, so the only job I could find was as a barista. As time went on and the winter came (not as bad as the year before, but still pretty rough in Maryland at that time), the heating in our apartment went out. Our landlord was out of the country at the time, so we didn’t have anyone who could come and fix it. I wanted to have a conversation with our landlord about at least decreasing rent for this time period, but my roommates weren’t behind me on that.
At the time I was taking EfM, Education for Ministry. I was the youngest person in our group by somewhere between 20-40 years, yet we had all gotten close. One day in our check-in I broke down and shared the entire situation with our group.
Immediately everyone reached out with offers to help, including giving me a place to stay. It floored me that everyone was so quick and willing to give me aid. Now thankful shortly after that our landlord returned, the heater got fixed, and winter was already coming to an end. Yet their kindness to me, someone they had only met that year, has stayed with me these many years since.
It has stayed with me because that is how our Lord teaches us to be in community.
That community for me was about love, grace, and compassion. They didn’t care that I had nothing to offer expect my thoughts and prayers. They cared that I was there and that I needed help. They weren’t looking for anything in return. They just wanted to help a fellow follower of God who needed assistance.
This community wasn’t about personal gain. It was about being centered around our Lord.
That is all in contrast to what the world teaches us. The world wants us to keep pushing forward. The world is about success. It’s about “looking out for #1”, mainly our individual selves. The world is about us gaining power. When we do anything, the world wants us to think about “what’s in it for me?” and “what do I get from this?”
The community of God is very different, as we see in our readings today. In God’s community, it’s not about riches or glory. Instead Hebrews tells us to “Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have.”
It’s not about what we can gain from our interactions with others. In fact, Jesus calls on us to “invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind” to our table “because they cannot repay you.” We don’t need to get anything for what we do. All we need is to give love and grace. We never know how much it means to those we help. Sometimes we may not even know who it is we are really helping, for as Hebrews tells us “some have entertained angels without knowing it.”
Being part of the community of God isn’t about status. Both Proverbs and our Gospel instead call us to humility. In Proverbs, we see this in the instruction to wait to be called forward by the king or nobles instead of spouting off our opinions. In the Gospel, we are told to sit in the most humble position at the table so that we may be brought up, hopefully in the same way we have lifted others up. As Jesus says, “all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” The Epistle of James speaks to this too by saying “Humble yourselves before the Lord and He will exalt you.”
God’s community is called to follow the very example of our Lord. Jesus didn’t gather with those in power. He spent time with tax collectors and sinners, the very people shunned by society. When the evil one offered Him all the cities in the world, Jesus did not take them. Instead He exemplified what Paul refers to in 2 Corinthians 12:9 as the “power made perfect in weakness.” He rode into Jerusalem not on a war horse, but on a donkey. He washed His Disciples’ feet when He could have been the one served by them. Instead of rising up against the Roman occupiers, He was killed by them. He did so in order to rise to life again, and in so doing lift us all from our humble positions to be with Him.
Hebrews speaks of the leaders of the church being examples to imitate in Faith. That’s not just for ordained leaders for we are all called, lay and clergy, to be an example of Jesus just as our Catechism, our Outline of Faith, in the Prayer Book states. Continue to allow newcomers in your midst. Raise those who come after you to be leaders in your stead, lifting them up as you take the position of humility. Give to those who cannot return your hospitality so that they might know the love of Jesus through you. In this way we can not only be a part of the Kingdom of God, we can truly be the community of God.