Communities of the broken: The Giver’s “Village” & the victims of Rome
The
second volume of Lowry’s quartet – Gathering Blue[1]
– introduces us to a community very different from that of Jonas.[2] Whereas Jonas’ community no longer had any
experience of death, in the opening pages, we find Kira – our second
protagonist – holding vigil over her mother’s body[3]
in “the Field”, i.e. her community’s “mass grave”, where the dead are left in
shallow tombs to be unearthed and carried away by “beasts”. Kira’s community is much less advanced that
the futuristic one abandoned by Jonas.
Indeed, Kira’s birthplace reminds the reader of a medieval town, with a
monastery-like edifice at its centre.
This is a community of hunters and peasants, where the weak are
considered “worthless” and are despised (or worse), where most of the citizens
live out their lives in squalor, all under the watchful eyes of the Council of
12 Guardians.
Following her mother’s death, Kira is
taken to live in the Council Edifice.
Though she has always been considered useless by most people due to her
twisted leg, Kira is endowed with a gift that is coveted by the Guardians – she
is amazingly skilled at needlework. She
is commissioned (required) by the Guardians to restore the “Singer’s Robe”, the
garment which tells the story of her community and which is worn by the Singer
at the yearly Gathering. Kira finds
herself “adopted” by a local boy – who is somewhat of a street urchin – named
Matty. After running away from the
community due to his abusive home-situation, Matty returns to tell Kira that he
has discovered another community where people like her – i.e. who are “broken”
– are welcomed and cherished. During her
work on the Singer’s Robe and during the Gathering where the community’s song was
sung, Kira came to realize that her community’s traditions serve to mask the
power-games and exploitative practices of the Guardians. Despite Matty’s invitation to run away with
him to “Village”, Kira decides to remain in her dysfunctional community – as
the Giver had decided to remain behind while Jonas escaped his birthplace with
Gabriel – in order to work towards restoring it to wholeness and giving it the
chance of better days to come.
Village’s “community of the broken-but-indispensable”
is a beautiful image of the Church, one which many western congregations now
only aspire to, but one that accurately re-presents (Paul’s vision of) the
Jesus-communities of the first-century Roman empire. These were communities where those who had
been dubbed shameful by both the empire and by Judaism – slaves, the poor,
pagans, “barbarians”, the helpless, sinners (cf. Gal. 3.28) – were welcomed as
equal members of a new family – the Body of Christ – called to share a common
life marked by the pattern of crucifixion-and-resurrection, of pain and
glory. Each member of these communities
was called upon to give themselves away to the others – everyone brought
something to the group that the other members needed (cf. 1 Cor. 12). Thus was the community “constructed” (cf.
Eph. 4.7-16). Indeed, the
church-community was a place where one was expected, not to “perform”, but
rather to serve. One’s gifts were not
intended for the stroking of one’s ego, but rather for concretely empowering
other members of the community and making their lives better (cf. Phil. 2.1-11;
Gal. 6.2, 9-10). Truly, the early Church
was seen to be nothing less than a new humanity (cf. 1 Cor. 15.45-49; Rom.
5.12-21). Humans had, previously, simply
not been used to acting this way, to treating each other this way, to “doing
community” this way. Paul’s
revolutionary gospel created revolutionary communities which were subversive by
their very nature.
It’s
important to point out that as Paul peregrinated around the empire, he didn’t
simply hold debates in the marketplace (cf. Ac. 17.16-18); rather, he founded –
at an astonishingly rapid rate – communities composed of those who had believed
his gospel. This is crucial – for Paul,
successful evangelism/apologetics is not simply a matter of people assenting to
arguments; it is all about people joining a community that embodies a
countercultural way of life.[4] Missiologist Lesslie Newbigin famously
referred to the local Christian congregation as a “hermeneutic of the gospel”,
i.e. the gospel makes sense (only) within the life of the community. One way to be a local
church-that-makes-sense-of-the-gospel is to develop the capacity to whimsically
and persuasively (and imaginatively) share the gospel message with newcomers
and establish its plausibility through both verbal and embodied witness. This is where the “second half” of Paul’s
letters takes on fresh meaning – in these “paraenetical”[5]
sections, Paul offers exhortations to his readers to live in light of the
gospel they have believed in.[6] How to speak and live in such a way that our
gospel becomes “good news” for those living in a world of injustice (both real
and perceived)?
Paul had a habit, during his travels to
any given city, of preaching to the local members of the Jewish diaspora first
(cf. Ac. 13.44-47; Rom. 1.16). Although
some Jews did indeed convert to the gospel, most of Paul’s success was among
the pagan population. Paul’s mission was
to form communities of women and men who were loyal to Jesus and who were
committed to sharing life together, no longer according to the conventions of
Greco-Roman culture, but according to the “rules” of the ever-advancing kingdom
of God. Here we come up against Paul’s
problem – while Moses had received the 10 Commandments from Yahweh (cf. Ex.
19-20), Jesus had not offered an exact equivalent to his disciples as to how to
regulate their common life in the new world that he was inaugurating (the
closest Jesus came to this was the Sermon on the Mount[7];
cf. Mt. 5-7).
Actually, Moses can help us understand the
challenge that Paul faced. In 2 Cor.
3-4, Paul compares/contrasts the ministry of Moses with his own – i.e. the
ministry of the old covenant and that of the new. Paul’s mission resembled that of Moses in
many ways – both men were called to “form” a motley crew – ex-slaves in one
case, ex-pagans (many of whom were slaves who now had to get along with the
descendants of Moses) in the other – into the people of God, i.e. into a
countercultural community which would embody genuine humanness for the sake of
the world (cf. Ex. 19.5-6; 2 Cor. 5.14-21; Phil. 2.14-15). Yes, Paul was Jewish and he had “zealously”
defended the “orthodox” interpretation of the Law as a Pharisee; however, as a
church-planter, he had to re-think his ethics in light of the
death-and-resurrection of Jesus and the gift of the Spirit (cf. Gal.
3.1-5). Both Moses and Paul had to form
the people of God in the aftermath of a crisis – the Exodus from Egypt on the
one hand, and the death-and-resurrection of Jesus, on the other. Both of these traumatic – yet salvific –
events had ushered in a new reality, in which both the prophet and the apostle
had to “figure out” what it meant to be God’s people.
As we have seen, Paul – in his letters –
does not give any once-and-for-all “answers” to the problems he addresses. Rather, Paul invited his readers to “work
things out” based on his in-person teaching, the Scriptures (as far as they
were able to procure them, perhaps from the local synagogue? cf. Ac. 18.1-8)[8], “communal
discernment” (cf. 1 Cor. 5.9-13; 6.1-6; 11.13-16, 27-32) as well as Paul’s
personal example (cf. 1 Cor. 4.16; 11.1; Phil. 3.17; 1 Thess. 1.6; 2 Thess.
3.9). Paul determined to imitate Jesus’
cruciform life (and death) – and expected his converts to join him – in the
hope of sharing Jesus’ resurrection glory (cf. Phil. 3.10-11; 2.1-13). Paul understood his churches to be outposts
of the in-breaking kingdom of God that was displacing the kingdoms of this
world (cf. Rev. 11.15), or rather, that the Age to Come had explosively
interrupted This Present Age (cf. 1 Cor. 10.11); again, in other words, that
the cosmos was undergoing birth-pangs as God’s new world was birthed (cf. Rom.
8.18-23). Paul knew that to live in
light of the victory of God-in-Christ was to embrace the cross – the place
where the “rulers of this Age” had failed to grasp God’s “foolish wisdom” and
had attempted to eliminate the divine threat to their power (cf. 1 Cor. 2.7-8).
[1] Boston & New York:
Clarion Books, 2000.
[2] At this point, a few
years have passed since Jonas left his community with Gabriel.
[3] For four days: cf. Jn.
11.39. The belief in Kira’s community
(as in ancient Israel) was that a deceased person’s spirit remained with their
lifeless body for a period of four days, after which the person was believed to
have thoroughly “departed” this world.
[4] Cf. Hays, Richard B. The
Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation, New
York: HarperOne, 1996, pp. 24-25.
[5] Cf. Ibid, p. 17.
[6] Cf. Ibid, p. 18: Paul
theologizes as he writes to the churches, and the constant aim of his
theological reflection is to shape the behaviour of his communities. Paul’s singular message of Christ crucified
is made to address all the particular problems of conduct faced by his infant
churches.
[7] Another mare’s nest of
Christian interpretative difficulties…
[8] This passage describes
Paul’s initial ministry in Corinth, where he received hospitality from someone
who lived next door to the synagogue, and where the leader of the synagogue
converted to faith in Jesus.
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