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We are loved as individuals, loved by God for exactly who we are - not despite who we are, as some seem to think. Alongside this value we have as individuals, we are also made for togetherness, for community. In the first of the Hebrew Creation Myths in the book of Genesis God says, "it is not good for the man to be alone", and it isn't long before families, tribes, nations become the focus of our Scripture story. 

For the earliest 'Jesus followers' they gathered in groups which effectively became 'chosen family', recognising their bonds of love that joined them in faith. St Paul repeatedly talks of the communal nature of faith and the need for loving and caring for and bearing with one another, John's Gospel has Jesus saying to his friends on the night before his death, "This is how people will know you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

In community we are called to find who we are, as individuals and together. In the best of Christian community we have a safe place to ask questions, to wrestle with our faith, to find support in difficult times and have people to share the joys of life with. Community can challenge us, inspire us, uplift us, and ground us - as we remember that, as St Paul Said, "We are all members of one body."

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot were to say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body’, that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear were to say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body’, that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body. 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.’  

1 Corinthians 12.12-21

 

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