The Personal vs. The Communal

In our Dinner & Discipleship group at church, we are reading through Sabbath as Resistance by Walter Brueggemann. The first few chapters are focused on how we as individuals organize our lives. Chapter 4, which we just discussed, shifts the focus a bit to how the church behaves.

Humans are tribal by nature. The ancients understood this. The “individual” was essentially invented by Descartes. Subsequently, both philosophy and theology shifted to addressing how we, as individuals, believe, or how we respond to God. The Old Testament especially, but the New Testament as well, addresses how we behave within a tribe or nation, and how that tribe or nation should interact with God. God did not choose Abraham alone, or Moses alone, to bless. God chose them so that a nation, Israel, would be blessed. Indeed, many of the individuals that God chose throughout the Bible didn’t have very good lives. Prophets like Elijah were always on the run; most or all of the apostles were martyred; and of course Christ was crucified and bore all the sins of the world. Though these individuals suffered, their tribe or nation was blessed through them. Jesus proclaimed all humanity to be His nation.

¹⁸ Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹ Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,²⁰ and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Matthew 28:18-20 (The Great Commission)

My “tribe” these days is the congregation where I worship, the Mission where I volunteer, and to a lesser extent, my colleagues at S&T and internationally in IEEE. I’m going to try to read the Bible as addressing us as a community, rather than addressing me as an individual, and to try to understand how I can play a role in transforming my tribe into Christ’s Kingdom.