The Power and Promise of Community

Rev. Dr. DeWayne L. Davis

September 29, 2024

Scripture: James 5:13–20

A few years ago, there was renewed interest in and attention paid to community organizing. Most agreed that there was nothing new about community organizing as historical change and movements all relied on organizing communities of people to effect social change. However, the discussions about community organizing in our current time reminded us that communities have been organizing to influence policy, culture, and the economy for a long time, often engaging, using, and organizing the time, talent, and money of people in local communities to do it. Churches, too, understood that people of faith needed to be organized and empowered to bring to bear the values and commitments of religious and spiritual traditions in making social change. Underlying the role and purpose of community organizing is the idea that ordinary people outside government and business, outside of the officially established, organized power of a state or a corporate entity, could be empowered to play a more significant role in decision-making and social change. That there is power and promise in the community. That communities as embodied and collective expressions of connection and collaboration are meaningful.

But that conclusion begs a different question regarding the beloved community of God. What happens to a community’s power and promise when love, God, justice, prayer, forgiveness, and radical hospitality are the organizing principles of an assembly? How much more are we empowered to do and be when we move beyond the transactional language of business and politics to organize ourselves in service to God’s beloved? What kinds of themes, messages, and ideas can the gathered community of God’s people offer a world that has lost how to speak and respond with kindness, hospitality, and justice?

The Apostle Paul was arguably the first to try to discover the meaning of a community of God’s people. It was Paul who appropriated the word “ekklesia” to mean church. He knew that the “ekklesia” described a public assembly of citizens who gathered in the public square to discuss civic and business affairs. But there was something different about the assembly of people called by God or gathered in God’s name, a fellowship of those who heard the good news of Jesus and sought to live in a way that reflected the reign of God. And so, we hear the apostle speaking over and over again about this community being the body of Christ, whose power and promise are found in the “work of faith, labor of love, and steadfastness of hope.” This “ekklesia,” this church, an embodied and spiritual people coming together in prayer and covenant, is much more powerful than an assembly debating in the public square on civic affairs.

So, by the time James, identified as Jesus’s brother, wrote this letter, which scholars characterize as a general letter addressed and circulated to all churches, the church was coming to understand its role and purpose in God’s work in the world. James can lay out the ethical and practical implications of the gathered community of God, an assembly of faithful people who can communicate with God for healing, forgiveness, and reconciliation for all people. Unlike all the other organizations a person might join, the church makes possible the opportunity for a healing, generative, energizing, and life-giving way of being, especially when we are at our weakest, most estranged, most aggrieved, most isolated, and most in need. Prayer becomes the working out of an ethic of care and a ministry of radical involvement so expansive and so inclusive that anybody can bring their suffering, their troubles, their joys, and their sicknesses to the community. James says confidently, “The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.”

Now, I don’t believe for one minute that James thought every prayer the church uttered would be answered. I’m not telling anybody our prayers will cure diseases or effect otherworldly miracles. But I believe that a praying community becomes how we can empower people individually and communally to be the source of a liberating, inspiring, encouraging, and forgiving experience for the people. The language of prayer can shift the environment from where we are expected to bear our burdens and suffering alone to where we see our congregation as a source of inspiration and encouragement, from an individualistic, do-it-alone culture to a communal relationship of sharing and support. I’m talking about embracing prayer to empower us against the odds: Our prayers strengthen us. Our prayers facilitate thanksgiving. Our prayers respond to physical and spiritual matters and concerns in our lives. Our prayers affirm forgiveness, our way of responding and reclaiming us from our separation from God and each other. Through prayer, our possibilities are expanded and our power magnified. We realize our power and promise as God’s beloved community.

I have also seen how the power and promise of the community can be forfeited. I’ve seen what happens when people do not experience church as a source of healing, forgiveness, and reconciliation. I saw it at the rallies, protests, and marches in the aftermath of the police killing of Jamar Clark. When a group of clergy and people of faith sought to hold space for prayer, some young people at the protests found it futile, irrelevant, and ineffective. They did not trust that our prayers would effect change, either in us or in the conditions on the ground, because they hadn’t done so before. In the classes I teach at United Seminary, I’m getting more and more students with stories of trauma and church hurt. They offer harrowing testimonies about churches that were anything but healing, forgiving, or reconciling spaces. Perhaps it is time for churches to go back to that essential spiritual practice of prayer, the intentional hallowing of space and place for people to experience the healing presence of community.

Since the COVID pandemic, new thinking has arisen about the power and promise of community. Scholars and thinkers have started to talk more about community, specifically churches, as the last institution capable of combatting loneliness and hyper-individualism. Church is one of the last institutions that offers a shared space for people to gather for prayer and ritual, where we form and practice community. For a praying community, a community steadfast in covenant with God and each other because God is present and moving, a community that has seen how God’s mercy and compassion transformed them personally and communally, so much is possible. For a praying community that has endured the slings and arrows of their world, sickness and suffering, separation and disconnection, prayer can shift the atmosphere and bring healing and wholeness.

Prayer may not assure healing, and it most certainly won’t be the source of a cure. Still, it may be the only opportunity to provide a place and a moment for healing space, for connection and reconciliation, for setting the stage for a practice of community well-being. These are not just abstract concepts but the very fabric of a community of God. They are what make us who we are, and they are what make our community so effective and powerful. When the focus is on healing, forgiveness, and reconciliation, we create a space where everyone is valued and accepted and where the power of community is truly realized.