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Coffee With Sister Vassa
WE ALL “BELONG”
“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all immersed / baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were given to drink of one Spirit. For the body does not consist of one member but of many.” (1 Cor 12: 12-14)
The Body of Christ, the Church, is among other things God’s answer to our human need to “belong.” And yet it seems that it is in the Church, both in our time and in St. Paul’s time, (which is why he writes the assurances he does above), that many of us, at least from time to time, quite easily come to feel that we do “not” belong. Why? As fas as I’ve observed, it’s usually because of our temporal, merely-human distinctions from one another, – of nationality or ethnic background (e.g., non-Greeks or non-Russians might at times feel alienated in a Greek or Russian parish), or of marital status (e.g., single or divorced people might feel like outsiders in a parish made up predominantly of families), or of gender or education (e.g., women, particularly highly-educated women, might feel superfluous in certain parishes), or of age (e.g., a young person might feel out-of-place within an older church-community), or of the pastoral “style” and insensitivities of our parish-priest to all-of-the-above.
But we do “belong,” St. Paul reminds us, – “all” of us, – in any parish, and regardless of all-of-the-above. How? “By one Spirit,” and by “drinking of one Spirit.” He is the basis of our unity, not only on Sundays, but every day, – unless we rely on something or someone else as the foundation of “us.” So if I find myself feeling like I don’t belong today, even perhaps amidst the hustle-and-bustle of church-related work, let me rush back to the Source of Oneness in this world, and the source of the gentle vision that is humility. “Our Father,” I say this morning as our Lord taught us to, “Thy will be done” with all of us today, as You see fit. And thank You for all of us.
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A parish community cannot begin to flourish without a genuine and sincere sense of openness to each and every person that desires to be a living member of such a community. The great strength of the Church is precisely found in breaking down the prejudices that belong to society: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Gal. 3:28) To further create that sense of openness, Orthodoxy in North America must move beyond ethnic and language barriers that could have the result of creating an uneasiness of not "belonging" for some people as outlined by Sister Vassa above. It is only the 21st century!
