Write About Now

Two times this past week, on two of the rare afternoons I was working at home without the front door locked, my four-year-old neighbor Isaiah burst inside without knocking and looked at me in confusion.

Isaiah lives upstairs with his parents and two brothers, who enjoy jumping off their beds onto my ceiling, and Rachael, his mom, has recently mandated a more-jumping-outside policy. (For which she has my eternal gratitude.) But at dinner time, three staircases is a lot for a little guy. Sometimes he loses count–and ends up in my living room.

Both times I just said, “Hi, Isaiah. You’re in the wrong house. You need to go upstairs.” One time he closed the door on his way out, one time he didn’t. Rachael has her hands full.

I find this small imposition funny, but after reading an article in the latest issue of Relevant magazine, I’m not sure I’d be so easygoing with a bigger version.

The article describes the experience of four couples who decided to pool their resources, buy an old house near their church, and live there together. Matt Connor, the author and church planter, initially explored the idea because he felt uncomfortable leaving his new wife home alone in the rough area of town where the church ministered. He describes how the choice also saves money, provides emotional and spiritual support, and builds community.

This last part is the tricky bit. Connor describes the very real confrontations and forgiveness required to work through the practical details of such an arrangement–the frustration of not liking dinner, of having to empty the washer of another family’s wet clothes, of tolerating too-loud music.

“…It’s in that tension that you realize the selfishness coloring your outlook–and what you need to sacrifice,” he writes. “The same can be said for personal belongings….It’s a lesson in ownership–whether we own our things or whether they own us, as the saying goes. It offers another place of forgiveness, allowing people to ruin, break, borrow, chip, bend or stain an item and not the relationship.”

I love that, but I’d find it difficult. I like knowing all the mango sorbet in the freezer is mine, I like having sole possession of the remote, and I like calling the shots on the thermostat setting. Basically, I like control, and control is the opposite of community.

Yet just this weekend I complained to friends about many churches’ insipid approach to communion: the weekly routine of it, the little fish food pellets of bread, the thimblefuls of grape juice, the trays shared from hand to hand without any sharing of life. It seems a far cry from the early church we supposedly emulate.

But do I want to share life, with the messiness and work that requires? Living in community with my church family means hanging in even when I don’t like the sermon, don’t like the music, and don’t like the person next to me. It means speaking the truth but it also means hearing the truth about myself. It means forgiving others for not being perfect and acknowledging my own brokenness. It means a deeper, richer life–and a more difficult one.

Whether it’s God’s place or mine, choosing community means choosing not to say, “You’re in the wrong house.” Is that why we’re content to swallow the pellet and keep the tray moving along?

I don’t have it all figured out, and the “right” expression of community life will look different for each of us. But I do hope this is the week Isaiah figures out where he lives.