This morning I gathered with a group of colleagues to brainstorm about our church theme and emphasis for the coming year: Practicing Beloved Community. We spent time thinking about the many ways these words can be illuminated, studied, embodied in worship, lived out through our meals together, extended into the other communities of which we are all a part. It was fascinating and enlightening to listen to what these words mean to each one gathered around the table. Like most things, this phrase meant often very different things to different people. Perhaps that is just another important learning about what it means to be in community!

Beloved community is spoken of or at least implied in the gospels. It is, I believe, what Jesus hoped to create among those who followed in the Way. It was also what the founder of Methodism, John Wesley, hoped for when he instituted the Holy Clubs, small circles of people who gathered for prayer, study and mutual accountability. Both wanted people to make visible the invisible lines of connection that binds us together as the people of God.

But it was Martin Luther King Jr. who said what I believe to be one of the most challenging statements about the art of being community, and, make no mistake about it, it is an art.In speaking of his hope for the movement for justice in our country which he helped birth, he said: “Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.”

Beloved Community. It might be easier to think of how we can make quantitative changes in our lives than to think of a change in the quality of our souls. This is a a much more challenging quest. Exactly how might we do this?

I am not completely sure but somehow I think the key might be held in the very word ‘beloved’. To be beloved by definition means to be a ‘much loved person or a dearly loved person’. To be ‘beloved’ is to recognize that we are first and foremost a loved being. As people of faith, we can say that not only does this gift pertain to us but to all. Being beloved community means recognizing that each dear one is equally loved by the Sacred and our role is to try to extend that love to ourselves and to all others. To do this is a soul changing experience.

Who is beloved to you? How are you the beloved of another? How can that love be extended in grace to all? What does the Beloved Community mean to you? When have you experienced it?

These are very big questions. That is why I am thankful for the practice. The every day getting up and going out into the world kind of practice that allows me the chance to have ‘do over’ after ‘do over.’ As I continue to keep this phrase before me, my deepest hope is that in the practicing I may make a tiny dent in improving the quality of my soul and that the beloved ones continue to grace my path

Blessed be.