Elbows Together and Hearts Apart—Beloved Community Not Yet

“There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men. Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.  Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.” 1 Corinthians 12.4-7, 14, 21-26

Paul was distressed that the Corinthian community was fragmented and the problem was in how they were living out their diversity. Paul understood differences as divinely inspired and as enriching the community by God’s design. So different persons have different life circumstances, different callings… All of the differences are appropriate, and God uses them for the common good. In this passage, Paul struggles to alter the Corinthians’ tendencies to individualism…and tries to integrate the believers more fully into community and a sense of belonging to and serving one another.

We have recently remembered the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Central to the thinking of King was the concept of the “Beloved Community.” In his last book he declared: “Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation . . .” King’s was a vision of a completely integrated society, a community of love and justice wherein brotherhood would be an actuality in all of social life.

King once said desegregation will only produce “a society where [persons] are physically desegregated and spiritually segregated, where elbows are together and hearts apart. It gives us social togetherness and spiritual apartness. He knew that the transition to integration would require effort on our part.

From early on in the Genesis text, we hear “it is not good for the human to be alone.” Dr. King, in one of his addresses, said “We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.” This was a way of affirming that human beings are dependent upon each other. “As I stood with them and saw white and Negro, nuns and priests, ministers and rabbis, labor organizers, lawyers, doctors, housemaids and shopworkers brimming with vitality and enjoying a rare comradeship, I knew I was seeing a microcosm of the [humanity] of the future in this moment of luminous and genuine brotherhood [Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (Harper & Row, 1967)’ p. 9]

King knew that the solution of social problems is a slow process. At the same time, he was confident that, through God’s help and human effort, the Beloved Community, which is “not yet,” but in the future — perhaps even the distant future, would eventually be actualized.

Similarly, in his 2009 book Community: The Structure of Belonging, Community developer Peter Block writes: “Our communities are separated into silos; they are a collection of institutions and programs operating near (emphasis mine) one another but not overlapping or touching…it is this dividedness that makes it so difficult to create…[an] alternative future—especially in a culture that is more interested in individuality than in interdependence. The work is to overcome this fragmentation…there are too many people in our communities whose gifts remain on the margin.” (pg. 2) “We need to create a community where each [person] has the experience of being connected to those around them…” (pg. 3)

From Paul, to King, to Block’s comments our communities today, we realize that the challenge of becoming a Beloved Community is still in the realm of “not yet.” The same is true, if we are to be honest with ourselves, here in our microcosms. Look around this vast expanse in your daily travels. As we move among our communities, whether local, church or work communities, with our eyes open, we can see that there are many collections of groups who operate near one another but are not interrelating, or as King noted, we are physically desegregated, but spiritually apart.

 This separateness, I think, is where we find our challenge. We have the opportunity, indeed we have been called, to name the reality of disconnectedness within our sundry, yet inter-related communities and engage in the ministry of reconciliation, by lifting up that interrelatedness and affirming that each person brings a gift without which the community would be incomplete. So, I invite you to ask yourself: “how can I reach out in new ways to affirm the gifts of each person in the communities among which I move and how can I work toward reintegrating the fractured community around us?”