Stress Test Devotional April 27
April 27, 2024
EXODUS 19:5-6 | 5 Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, 6 but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the Israelites.”
The word “community” has little meaning in modern parlance. Phrases like “the Black community” or the “Latino community” are ways of referring to mental constructs. But they are proposals not descriptions, because people are real and these general groupings are reifications, or debatable fictions. Categories are artificial in their very nature, and as we tend to use them they are essentially rhetorical devices. To show this contrast any “community” based on race or gender or sexual orientation or geography with the original faith community.
Tested through shared suffering and resistance and solidarity and hope, the Israelites individually signed on to a covenant with a host of specific values. They embraced generational bonds, mutual responsibilities, and deep religious commitments. Membership included worship practices, labor laws, property guarantees, marriage commitments, and a national agenda that excluded idolatries of any kind, and included a movement away from slavery and towards a new specific kind of common life in a new land. The identity of this community was constituted in relationship to the command and invitation of God.
Why has our sense of “community” become so attenuated?
