Quaker Worship: Community (Part 3)
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Pastor Bob Henry
September 26, 2021
Good morning and welcome to Light Reflections. Today, we are continuing our exploration of Quaker Worship by looking at community. Our text for this morning is Hebrews 10:22-25.
So let’s do it—full of belief, confident that we’re presentable inside and out. Let’s keep a firm grip on the promises that keep us going. He always keeps his word. Let’s see how inventive we can be in encouraging love and helping out, not avoiding worshiping together as some do but spurring each other on, especially as we see the big Day approaching.
A few years ago, I decided I was tired of the word “community” in religious circles. I went as far as to write an article that showed up in a couple different media sources about my evolving understanding. The article began with me saying,
“Community" is a buzzword today. It is overused, misused, confused and rather annoying at times. I used to think it seemed pretty elementary, but when done religiously, I find it much more complicated. If asked, we probably all would have a slightly different idea of what good community looks like.
Now, I am sure if we took a moment right now and each shared our definitions – we too would have a wide range of understandings of just what community is to each of us.
Actually, it was in my exploration of the idea of “community” that my understanding began to evolve. In the article, I said…
Personally, I’ve had a few misconceptions about what constitutes community, one being the idea that everyone should be “best friends."
When I have pictured good community in the past, I usually think of myself in a group of really great friends. We get together on an autumn evening, have a cookout, talk about the “deep stuff," all the while making light of the greater mysteries of life.
Obviously, in this scenario of good community my happiness is very important.
If I am experiencing true community, I know that I am pleased with the way things are going. My friends are always looking out for me, I feel supported, and I am comfortably content.
Over time, I have realized I was wrong about what constitutes true community. I have decided that one of the best, and most difficult, ways to live in community is to spend time with people who are not exactly like me (and maybe not my friends).
Knowing the way the Divine works, it is most likely that God doesn’t encourage fellowship with one another for the sole purpose of our own satisfaction. God probably has something for us to learn through community.
This is when I started to look at scripture.
For instance, in Romans 12:4-5 it states,
4 For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5 so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.
This shows how even though we are all part of the same body, we all have different roles. We have each been given gifts that we are to use for unique purposes. As people who are hopefully striving toward similar goals, we should appreciate one another’s unique gifts.
Instead of thinking that everyone should do things the way that we would, we are to appreciate the diversity that God has placed within the body.
Once I realized this beautiful aspect of community, I thought I was content, until I found Ephesians 4:2-3.
Paul is talking to the Ephesians, again about being united as a body. He urges them to recognize each other’s individual callings. He also tells them to
“be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace."
I don’t know about you, but I am really good at knowing when others need to make an effort to be humble or patient. I can point out when someone should be better at bearing with me in love.
And, honestly, my Inner Light or Inner Christ often convicts me about playing my part as well.
But what hit me when reading this passage was the command to “make every effort."
I may be completely justified in the fact that I do just enough, but have I done all I can to be united with my sisters and brothers? That changes things a bit.
Perhaps the Bible encourages us to love one another and to be united because it helps us take the focus off ourselves.
I cannot control how other people respond to me.
I cannot make them be what they should.
All I can do is what I have been asked.
And uncomfortably for me, I have been asked to do a lot. I am asked to get my attitude right, no matter what the other person is doing.
I am to love at all times.
This love for others – whether or not they love me back – is part of my responsibility in encouraging a worshipping community.
Part of what a worshipping community teaches us is to slowly and sometimes painfully begin to think about others, to forgive others (as Mary Blackburn reminded us in our in-person waiting worship last week), and to bear with one another.
That means taking the focus off ourself is about being part of a worshipping community. This is another aspect of that positioning I spoke of two Sundays ago where we place ourselves in a humble manner before the Divine so we are able to be taught, transformed, and loved.
Yet too often I cocoon myself within my community.
I use my desire for fellowship with other people as an excuse to ignore those who do not want to live in the manner of Friends or the way of Christ. This quickly can become a country club environment or maybe for us a “secret society.”
Isn’t this the opposite of what we are supposed to be doing as a worshipping community?
Community is less about a great group of people who can make me feel loved and important, and more about how I can try to love those around me, and in turn, how together we can show God’s love to those around us.
Quaker Rex Ambler in his book, “The Quaker Way” has a chapter focused on Meeting Others. By meeting together and opening up to one another in a worshipping community, he says “we find strength and insight, and a basis for action” – but he also says “it means we take a responsibility for one another.”
As worship has become more about styles and preferences as I discussed a couple weeks ago, taking responsibility for one another has become lost.
As he closes out this chapter Rex specifically talks about worshipping together in community. He says,
Our practice of coming together once a week to sit in silence [or Meeting for Worship] makes sense ONLY IF we have learned to do that during the week and have gotten to know the people we sit with in ordinary, everyday interactions.
How well do you know the people you worship with at First Friends? How much are you willing to let them know? These are important questions and I believe are the crux of what it means to be a part of a Quaker Worshipping Community.
This is because being a worshipping community is a holistic experience that incorporates both a responsibility for one another and a desire to get to know one another in a more holistic way.
Folks, this means a Quaker Worship Community will be asked to take risks.
Quaker Marty Walton in “The Meeting Experience: Practicing Quakerism in Community,” says,
“We cannot stay in safety, hidden behind walls of private thoughts, with aloof smiles on our faces…When we move beyond our protective barriers, lift up our shroud of privacy a bit, and begin to ask each other real questions and engage each other in honest searching, we inevitably discover how very different each of us is. We are confronted with experiences both delightful and confounding.”
Not only does worshipping in community challenge our understanding of each other, but as it states in Quaker Faith and Practice,
“Worship is our response to an awareness of God. We can worship alone, BUT when we join with others in expectant waiting, we may discover a deeper sense of God’s Presence.”
A few years ago, I may have been ready to throw out the word, “community,” but folks, the more I look at it in light of worship, I realize it is essential.
New England Yearly Meeting has this statement in their Faith and Practice that I would love for us to affirm at First Friends. It sums up what I have been trying to say in this sermon about being a worshipping community.
Just listen to how they describe the Worshipping Community in the Manner of Friends.
“The nature of their purpose and quest as Friends binds members of a meeting and of the whole Society into an intimate fellowship whose unity is not threatened by the diversity of leadings and experiences which may come to individual Friends.
To share in the experience of the Presence in corporate worship, to strive to let Divine Will guide one’s life, to uphold others in prayer, to live in a sense of unfailing Love, is to participate in a spiritual adventure in which Friends come to know one another and to respect one another at a level where differences of age or sex, of wealth or position, of education or vocation, or face or nation are all irrelevant.
Within this sort of fellowship, as in a family, griefs and joys, fear and hopes, failures and accomplishment are naturally shared, even as individuality and independence are scrupulously respected.”
That is the definition of a Quaker Worshipping Community.
So, how might we at First Friends work on continuing to develop this worshipping community in our midst? Let me give us some suggestions (some of these we may already be doing – but they are always good reminders for us to consider):
1. Start from what each of us knows from our own experience.
2. Foster deep, satisfying worship.
3. Encourage Friends to seek and respond to the Inner Guide (Light, Christ)
4. Practice careful use of Quaker process in conducting business.
5. Encourage regular attendance at both meeting for worship and meeting for business.
6. Welcome newcomers and help them integrate with the group.
7. Encourage social networks based on friendship, work, hobbies, or shared activities such as music-making.
8. Provide a variety of small group activities.
9. All contribute financially as able.
10. Work together on maintaining the meetinghouse or on service projects.
11. Provide opportunities where Friends can share deeply with one another.
12. Take individual leadings to the meeting for discernment.
13. Support one another.
14. Hold one another accountable.
15. Actively mentor people into positions of responsibility.
16. Provide opportunities for spiritual sharing and growth.
17. Provide opportunities to learn more about Quakerism so that there is a common understanding among Friends of what we’re about and how we do things.
These are just a few ways we can begin to build a better worshipping community at First Friends. I hope you will find ways this week to engage some of them.
Now, as we enter waiting worship this morning, I ask that you take some time to think through your involvement with the worship community at First Friends. Ask yourself:
· Where am I taking a risk as part of this worshipping community?
· Who are the people that are not like me that I need to engage at First Friends to build a stronger community?
· What can I do this week to enhance and/or participate within the worshipping community at First Friends?