The process of watching someone close to you suffer is painful and difficult and begs the question, what does it mean to provide incarnate community for the person suffering? Community is much like family, and when one person mourns we all mourn. It is hard to watch someone you love suffer, and there is no action plan or structure to help someone cope with this. You want to take away the sorrow for them but you can’t. You can’t fix people. That’s Jesus’ job, not ours! We are all desperate for him and only he can heal us. This does not mean that community does not have a role though. The question is what is our role? What is good, healthy, and appropriate? What can we do and what does that look like?

Living in community with others is part of the Kingdom of God. It is good Kingdom work but we need to remember that we all must depend upon the King to be our King, not other people. This is often hard to remember in this time of the already but not yet, where we know that things are not the way they are supposed to be. We know upon whom we are to depend but so often it is easy to look for that in, and try to be that for, those whom we love and those who are visibly before us. This is true in both marriage and in friendships, and our job is to point one another, and ourselves, to Jesus. He is the author and perfecter of our faith and the one who sustains us.

Community is glorious but we must guard ourselves from simply reducing it to something romantic. Yes, there is a romantic element to it, but it dictates very little. Community is about the commitment to stand by each other through all of life. It is messy, risks hope, forces humility, and invites and even requires vulnerability. Incarnational community requires sacrifice, grace, and patience towards each other as we strive to be faithful not only in times of pleasantness and comfort, but also in the midst of sin, selfishness, pain, sorrow, and misguided love. Being in community means that we make sacrifices for each other, allow others to make sacrifices for us, and show grace to one another when sacrifices cannot be made. It is to learn to enjoy, strengthen, and forgive one another. And all of this is to be done in love (for love covers over a multitude of sins) through both close and distant seasons of relationship. In short, it is to show and be Jesus to each other. It is not easy. It is hard, but hard does not equal bad, just as easy does not equal good. After all, what is worthwhile is most often difficult, either for you or for someone else.

Community within the Kingdom is to strive to stand by and encourage each other. A few weeks ago at church Michael defined “encouragement” as bringing courage to the place of a person’s fears. I like that. It is a good preliminary definition that cuts through the fluffy crap of intentions that are never realized or are only spoken to make us feel comfortable rather than to benefit the person suffering. When one member suffers, as in the case of the death of a loved one, we weep, laugh, cry, and pray with them. We are called to provide distraction when they need it, protect them as much as possible from well meant but misplaced comments (realizing that oftentimes we are the ones who make those comments). We are to receive with grace, patience and humility the times when we need to be a whipping post for their grief. Relationship requires giving them space to be themselves while encouraging them with our presence, action, truth, and words. These all must be done in love and usher one another toward the reality of our Good Father, the Risen Christ, and the comfort of the Spirit.

What does this look like as we try to live it out? It looks like baby sitting so a couple can have some alone time and take a walk or so a parent can simply take a nap and get away from the kids. It is providing a movie so a couple can have a date. It is playing washers out back wile drinking a beer with someone who is grieving. It is reading scripture and praying with the person, making them meals, helping them meet expenses, checking on them with a phone call or a visit. Caring for them well is remembering that the grief is often hardest the month after the funeral when others stop checking on them. It is sending them cards and letting them play with your children. It is sitting silently by them as they cry, pray, process, or say nothing at all. Caring for people is a ministry of presence and support. This is faith in action. It is good and right and is loving your neighbor as your self. And by doing so, we are loving him who has first loved us.

Yay! It is written!

I especially love your last paragraph about the practical nature of being community. Not only is it one of the main ways we love Him, it's one of the main ways He loves us. "The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love..."

thanks for sharing, lloyd. i enjoyed your paragraph about not reducing community to something romantic. i think when a community is portrayed on tv, or on the movies it looks so comfortable and we often long for a community like that. but in reality it's just not comfortable and pleasant all the time. when you hrow in loss of jobs, loved ones, hard times raising children, financial problems, (in other words, life here on earth) it makes things hard. but, i also liked your statement that hard doesn't equal bad.

by the way, i love your new banner!

"Incarnational community requires sacrifice, grace, and patience towards each other as we strive to be faithful not only in times of pleasantness and comfort, but also in the midst of sin, selfishness, pain, sorrow, and misguided love." So true Lloyd. Painfully true.

OoOpS That was me.
Heidi V