{"id":2255,"date":"2019-07-27T11:00:50","date_gmt":"2019-07-27T15:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=2255"},"modified":"2019-09-08T13:11:12","modified_gmt":"2019-09-08T17:11:12","slug":"2255","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2019\/07\/27\/2255\/","title":{"rendered":"Faith in Community"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here to hear the full service<\/a><\/p>\n

Click here to hear the sermon only<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0John 13:12\u201317, 33\u201335<\/a><\/p>\n

Faith in\u00a0Community<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The title phrase of our Summer sermon series, \u201cFaith in Community\u201d, can be interpreted in at least two ways.\u00a0 One interpretation is \u201cFaith in Community<\/em>\u201d \u2013 belief and trust in the idea of community itself.\u00a0 That is, broadly, the idea of the unity of a body of people that share something in common: interests, location, characteristics, beliefs, and\/or culture.\u00a0 Another interpretation of the title is \u201cFaith<\/em> in Community\u201d \u2013 the ways in which faith is lived out in community both by the individuals in a community and by the community altogether.\u00a0 As I am preaching this Sunday and next, I thought we might explore both these interpretations.\u00a0 Today we\u2019ll consider faith in the idea of community itself, \u00a0and next Sunday we\u2019ll consider some of the ways faith is lived out by the individuals in community and by the community altogether.<\/p>\n

So, today, Faith in the idea of community itself, belief and trust in the idea of the unity of a body or group of people that share something in common:\u00a0 interests, location, characteristics, beliefs, and\/or culture.<\/p>\n

But first, I\u2019d like to tell you a little about what I\u2019ve done so far on my Summer vacation.\u00a0 Many of you know that I have the privilege to facilitate the Abolitionist Chapel Today group, or A.C.T., here at Marsh.\u00a0 We are a study\/program\/advocacy group in the larger resistance to human trafficking and modern-day slavery.\u00a0 The work is often a challenge. \u00a0Human trafficking and modern-day slavery together comprise the second-largest and most lucrative criminal activity on the planet.\u00a0 Mostly women and children, millions are victimized world-wide and over 100,000 are victimized in the United States every year, for the purposes of forced labor, sexual exploitation, debt bondage, child soldiering, and sale of body parts.\u00a0 The experiences we read about are often horrific, in the great scheme of things our group itself is small, and some days are discouraging.\u00a0 Our homework reminder to each other is \u201cdon\u2019t read or watch this at night, don\u2019t read or watch this alone, don\u2019t read or watch this before you go to sleep, and do something really fun after you\u2019ve read or watched this.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the other hand, Abolitionist Chapel Today is not alone.\u00a0 The word is getting out, and new people and groups join in the resistance all the time \u2013 some of them right here within the Boston University community, and some are those who we have come to know in Massachusetts and the wider national and global resistance.\u00a0 Law enforcement, businesses, politicians, and health providers are increasingly aware of the signs and issues of trafficking and modern-day slavery and are involved as well.\u00a0 We in A.C.T. enjoy each other\u2019s company and appreciate each other\u2019s gifts and interests, and we make sure to share \u201cgood news\u201d stories about what people are doing to resist this evil.<\/p>\n

I came upon one good news story on my Summer vacation.\u00a0 We went down to visit my brother and his family near Nashville TN.\u00a0 While we were there, my sister-in-law took me out to lunch at the Thistle Farms Caf\u00e9 and to check out their adjoining shop.\u00a0 The restaurant was spotless and attractive, the service was great, the food was delicious, and the almond cake \u2013 well, the almond cake invited a private experience of gustatory bliss.\u00a0 The shop offered helpful and knowledgeable service and a number of \u201ckind-to-the earth as well as to the body\u201d bath and body products, all made by hand through Thistle Farms from essential oils with various wonderful fragrances.\u00a0 The Shop also offers bags, jewelry, and household items made by Thistle Farms and by their global partners.\u00a0 There are also books about Thistle Farms and its accompanying residential program Magdalene House \u2013 these are written by their founder, an Episcopal priest named Becca Stevens.\u00a0 What was most interesting to me about the caf\u00e9 and shop, and the reason my sister-in-law took me there, is that Magdalene House is a two-year residential community.\u00a0 It \u00a0provides food, housing, medical and dental care, therapy, education, and job training \u2013 at no cost to them \u2013 for women who have survived trafficking, sexual exploitation, addiction, and\/or life on the streets.\u00a0 Thistle Farms Caf\u00e9 and Shop are staffed in their operations by residents and graduates of the Magdalene community, with all sales proceeds going back to the Magdalene community and the Caf\u00e9 and Shop.\u00a0 Graduates of Magdalene and Thistle Farms also receive ongoing support through networking, emergency assistance, and continuing education and job skills development.\u00a0 In the Thistle Farms National Network, over 50 organizations have programs based on Thistle\u2019s model of recovery, with 25 of them having residential programs.\u00a0 There is a Magdalene prison program in Tennessee so that women can begin their healing journey in prison and then upon release can transition into the residential program.\u00a0 With its more than 30 global partners in 20 countries on 5 continents working to alleviate extreme poverty, the Shop practices a \u201cshared trade\u201d model, in which both the partner and the Shop share the profits they make together.\u00a0 Last year alone, the combined enterprises provided thousands of hours of safe housing, employment, and employment support for survivors, over a million dollars in income for survivors, and hundreds of hours of counseling, therapy, and medical care for survivors. and 1,200 women artisans were supported by the global partnerships.<\/p>\n

The thistle is an apt symbol for Magdalene and Thistle Farms.\u00a0 It is considered<\/p>\n

by most to be a weed, but its taproot can grow through concrete and survive drought. Its leaves and stem are prickly in defense, but the flower is soft and full of beautiful color \u2013 rather like the survivors themselves as they move through the program.\u00a0 \u00a0Out of Becca Steven\u2019s own story of childhood loss, betrayal, sexual abuse, and economic challenges, and out of the stories of women who have survived excruciating pain, poverty, and violence, out of these shared interests and experiences has come a community, a people truly united by new shared experience and interests in healing and hope.\u00a0 And all of it, as Becca Stevens writes, is 20 years of \u201cwitness to the truth that love is the most powerful force for social change in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a very interesting statement.\u00a0 Faith in love as a force for social change does not seem very evident in these days of children separated from their parents and held in cages at our southern border, where they either suffer hunger, filth, and disease if not death, or are lost entirely so that no one has any idea where they are.\u00a0 Faith in community as unity through shared interests doesn\u2019t seem to have much traction either, except as very narrowly defined by certain groups more concerned for their own interests against those of anyone else, even to the death of the planet, even to the trafficking and enslavement of those they consider as commodities for their personal gratification.\u00a0 Part of it may be that our ideas of love and community have become fuzzy, so that we don\u2019t know what love or community actually looks like.\u00a0 \u201cLove\u201d is the most over-used and fuzzy word in the language:\u00a0 I love my God, I love my dog (and\/or cat), I love Cherry Garcia ice cream, I love your hat, I love that window treatment.\u00a0 \u201cCommunity\u201d also most often seems to mean a collection of people having some common interests, but not necessarily interests that create unity.\u00a0 For instance, my own denomination of United Methodism has many common interests, including allegiance to Jesus and an assumption of leadership and guidance by the Holy Spirit.\u00a0 But these are apparently not enough to overcome the demands for a litmus test around the full inclusion of LBGTQIA persons, or not enough in the face of these demands to continue to maintain the unity around the other common interests and the ongoing life of the community.<\/p>\n

Jesus himself, and the early church, however, had clear ideas of community and love, three of which are remembered in our scriptures this morning.\u00a0 John\u2019s Gospel recalls Jesus as leaving his disciples with a new commandment:\u00a0 they are to love one another as he has loved them, and it is by this love that everyone will know that they are Jesus\u2019 disciples.\u00a0 So how did Jesus love his disciples?\u00a0 He washed their feet, as an example to them.\u00a0 He brought them together as a community, a group of people united by their interests in the good news of God\u2019s kingdom, and freedom from the slavery of sin and separation from God, self, and neighbor.\u00a0 He changed his mind in front of them as he grew into his work.\u00a0 The community included the original twelve men and then other men; the women who funded the ministry, opened their homes and their pantries, and first told the news of the resurrection; and let\u2019s not forget all those children, who brought loaves and fish and were set in the middle of the adults as examples of God\u2019s kingdom.\u00a0 And when the community had the examples and the training and any healing they needed, Jesus sent them out tp preach and teach and heal and be examples themselves.<\/p>\n

The Gospel of Matthew recalls Jesus\u2019 story of what we now call the Last Judgement.\u00a0 It is the righteous, those who have acted in accordance with divine or moral law, who will inherit the blessing and the promises of God.\u00a0 They will do so because they have fed the the Lord when he was hungry, given drink to him when he was thirsty, welcomed him as a stranger, clothed him when he was naked, cared for him when he was sick, and visited him in prison.\u00a0 And when the righteous have no idea when in fact they did all this, the Lord tells them that when they did all these things for the least of these, who are the Lord\u2019s \u2013 not just community but family \u2013 they have done it to the Lord himself.<\/p>\n

The letter of James in the early church states that faith without works is dead.\u00a0 In other words, the way one is shown to be a faithful disciple in the Christian community is by the actions one takes, not by what one says or believes.\u00a0 Faith is the wellspring of action, and the example James gives of an appropriate action is to care for the bodily needs of those who are suffering.\u00a0 The community of faith does not just have a spiritual mission; it has a mission of holistic engagement with the needs of the world as well.<\/p>\n

Magdalene and Thistle Farms have this kind of faith in community:\u00a0 they believe that the unity of people who share interests and experiences can change the world.\u00a0 Out of the worst sorts of abuse and exploitation, and out of being overlooked or judged harshly by others, they choose love as the power they will develop in themselves and for others to promote their own holistic hope and healing and to offer that hope and healing to others.\u00a0 Their community grew organically out of the people who comprised it, from Steven\u2019s own interest in oils and balms as aids to her own ministry and healing, to the use of oils and balms by the Magdalen residents to bring freshness and soothing to their own lives, to the realization that these comforts could be offered to others for their enjoyment and self-care as well as to provide for the support and expansion of the Magdalene program and the Caf\u00e9 and Shop, to the invitations to others to join them globally in the promotion of health and healing in other places of challenge. It has not always been easy.\u00a0 The first batches of a combination oil they attempted in the kitchen ended as sludge on the bottom of the pot.\u00a0 Fears and doubts raise their heads.\u00a0 Survivors do not complete or relapse from the program; they go back to their old lives, they die.\u00a0 Human trafficking and modern-day slavery are now being called a public healh crisis or a social pandemic.\u00a0 And life in community is always real in both its gifts and its challenges\u00a0 But Becca Stevens and the Magdalen and Thistle communities ground their faith in community as did Jesus and the early church.\u00a0 They ground their faith in love, in what Stevens calls the four axioms of love.\u00a0 First, love is eternal, with no beginning or end.\u00a0 Second, love is the story of God unfolding in our lives.\u00a0 Third, love is not concerned so much with dogma as it is a dogged determination to bloom and speak.\u00a0 Fourth, love is sufficient.<\/p>\n

The work of resistance to human trafficking and modern-day slavery is not for everyone, and even if it is generally for some, it is not the same specific work for everyone.\u00a0 For instance, Abolitionist Chapel Today does not run a residential program, a caf\u00e9, or a shop.\u00a0 We are a study, programming, and advocacy group.\u00a0 But we and Magdalene and Thistle Farms both do witness to the truth, that faith in community empowered by love can change the world in their places and time.\u00a0 Faith in community powered by love can change the world in other places and times as well.<\/p>\n

We ourselves may not do the work that Magdalene and Thistle Farms are doing.\u00a0 But what communities do we love enough to have faith in?\u00a0 These communities may not necessarily be churches, although they may, like Magdalene and Thistle Farms, be deeply informed and grounded in the ideas of community held by Jesus and the early church.\u00a0 But each one of us has communities that we love and want the best for, in which we share a unity of interests and experiences.\u00a0 How might these communities grow organically out of our experiences and interests and the experiences of the other people who comprise them?\u00a0 What among our shared experiences and interests might point to ways we might invite others to join us, or provide others with the holistic resources for hope and growth?<\/p>\n

There are just some things that we cannot do alone.\u00a0 We cannot recover from trauma and pain, or find hope and new life, alone.\u00a0 We cannot face the personal, spiritual, and societal challenges of a complex and changing world, much less find the solutions we need, alone.\u00a0 We cannot love and be loved, alone.\u00a0 We need the unity of community.\u00a0 Not just the unity of shared experiences and interests, but the unity of love.\u00a0 The kind of love that Jesus taught, that we may not know as we talk about it or believe it, but we sure know it when we see it or experience it.\u00a0 The love that respects, that teaches by example, that speaks truth with love, that keeps our sense of humor going, that allows and leads to changed minds and changed lives.\u00a0 That kind of love creates not just the idea of community, but real communities with real unity that we can have faith in to carry us through to hope and goodness.\u00a0 As the noted cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead reminds us, \u201cNever doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.\u201d\u00a0 Whether it is the community of Jesus, the community of the early church, the communities of Magdalene and Thistle Farms, or even we ourselves, AMEN to that.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

-Rev. Dr. Victoria Hart Gaskell<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here to hear the full service Click here to hear the sermon only \u00a0John 13:12\u201317, 33\u201335 Faith in\u00a0Community   The title phrase of our Summer sermon series, \u201cFaith in Community\u201d, can be interpreted in at least two ways.\u00a0 One interpretation is \u201cFaith in Community\u201d \u2013 belief and trust in the idea of community itself.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[24],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2255"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2679"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2255"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2257,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2255\/revisions\/2257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}