Consenting to Beloved Community

Dear sisters and brothers,

In my sermon this past Sunday I shared the good news that God’s love cultivates in us a whole-life love for God and neighbor that overflows the borders of our self interest and brings us into embodied, material solidarity with each other for the sake of the world.

Here are a few ways we can respond to this good news, consenting to “beloved community” together:

1) Join our Library of Things!

Ryan Donoho, one of our Co-directors of Kids Ministry, has done a lot of the legwork to create a practical way for us to share our stuff and our skills with each other. Here’s some information about how we practice sharing together, and here’s the information about the Library of Things.

I encourage you email Ryan right now (ryan at thetableindy dot org) to join the Library of Things and share your stuff and your skills with our community.

2) Participate in our upcoming giving campaign

One of the very practical ways we participate in solidarity with each other is by sharing our money through regular giving toward the mission of our community, and our benevolence fund.

Each year, we share a renewed expression of this vision and invite you to pray about how much you’d like to pledge to give in the coming year. Watch for an email coming soon with more information, and I encourage you to participate in whatever way you feel called.

3) Resist the false solidarity of “whiteness”

One way to do this is to keep learning about the history of racism, and the ways the church has been complicit in its advancement. If you haven’t read it yet, I’d recommend Jemar Tisby’s excellent book The Color of Compromise.

We’re also wanting to talk more about how Mammon warps our imaginations and skews our ability to perceive our solidarity with each other. Watch for a class in the new year on this.

4) Continue to celebrate and feast together

We had a wonderful time at the Halloween party this past Saturday at Falcon Creek Farms. A big thank you to Andrea Reinhardt, Jeff and MaryEllen Pitts, and Alicia Leming for organizing and hosting such a life-giving celebration. Let’s continue to find ways to feast together like this!

Also, the ultimate feast from which all our feasting flows is the Eucharist, so I invite you to worship with us this Sunday! Let us be re-membered as the Body of Christ in sharing Bread and Wine. We’ll be celebrating All Saints’ Sunday and baptizing Aletheia Austin!

In all these ways, we are placing our bodies and our materiality in solidarity with each other and with the marginalized, and in so doing encountering and growing in God’s love, lavished on us in Jesus Christ. Let us keep growing into this love.

Grace and peace,
Fr. Ben