Text: I Corinthians 12
“It’s Good To Be Together In This Place”
[Sorry – audio not available for this one. But it’s a great read!]
Earlier in the week, I reread an old story from Wendell Berry, a story that I shared once before. But good stories are worth repeating, and so on this day when we celebrate our children, on this day when we’ve received new members into our community, on this day when some of us will gather yet again in the evening to share a meal together – on this day it felt appropriate to recall it again. The story is entitled “Are You All Right?” and it speaks simply, and elegantly, to the concept of membership, which is something we need to reflect upon from time to time. Membership can be a fraught thing for some among us. It can imply exclusion. It can imply a clubishness, or something like a clique. It can imply privileges conferred upon those with the means to pay. The very category can seem, to some, like something akin to a country club or beach club, where only the select are welcome to be a part of things. I actually think we need a whole new word for this thing we try to convey when we welcome folks into our community, a word that differentiates a church from all the other clubs and societies that ask for membership. But I don’t know the word yet – maybe some of you can help with that. But I know the concept I’m after. I find it in Berry’s stories about a fictional community in Kentucky, called Port William. “Are You All Right” is a short, but exemplary story, of what it is to be connected to other human beings around you.
The story begins late at night, when Andy Catlett is getting ready for bed after a long day’s work on his farm. He feels a much deserved rest calling to him, but is troubled by a nagging thought. It is April, and the river has overflowed its banks. It’s left parts of the town and county inaccessible by road. His mind turns toward a pair of old bachelors, Arthur and Martin Rowanberry, brothers, who farm close to the river. The phones are out, and Art and Mart, as they’re known, haven’t been heard from in several days.
Andy calls his friend Elton and asks if he’s heard anything. Elton replies that no, he hasn’t, though Art and Mart are probably doing just fine – they’ve been taking care of themselves for a long time, Elton says. They probably require as little worrying about as anyone alive. But still, something nags at both Andy and his friend Elton. The Rowanberry’s were getting old, and, the story says, “they were uneasy in being divided from them by risen water.” (Hang onto that image – being divided by risen water.)
Andy says: “Do you think we’d better go see about them?”
Elton says: “Well, we’ve thought, haven’t we? I guess we’d better go.”
And so they do. Elton picks Andy up in his truck, and they ride a few miles to the outskirts of town, where they meet with the floodwaters. The truck can go no farther, and so Andy and Elton leave it behind, and begin picking their way through the surrounding forest in order to closer to the Rowanberry’s house. They’re exhilarated to be outside, and to feel the first effects of the impending spring around them – the call of owls, the reflection of moonlight in the water they seek to circumvent, the buds breaking open on trees. But mostly they’re glad to be in one another’s company, glad to be checking in on old friends.
While they walk in silence, Andy ruminates on the Rowanberrys, who he knows may not be around to see many more springs. Mart is the worker, the one who, Andy has observed, Elton enjoys working with in the fields. “He can think your thoughts,” Elton had said, and there is a symmetry of body and mind that the two men knew when they worked, one that led to a deep seated trust between them. Art, by contrast, was the rememberer, the one who carried the knowledge and stories of long departed family members and neighbors. They all lived on in his mind, and spoke there. It’s not that he lived in his mind. It’s that he lived in a place, and the place was where the memories were, and he lived among them, tracing them over the living ground. They all loved Art for that.
After some time walking, Andy and Elton reach another area of flooded ground and they can go no farther. But the house is in view now, and they can see a lantern light burning in a window. The house had lost power, but the Rowanberrys are, evidently, inside.
Unable to pass through the waters, Elton raises his voice. “Marrrrrrrrt! Arrrrrrrrt!” he says across the water that separates them. They can see movement of the light, hear a door being opened, hear a shuffling on the porch. A few moments later, a voice comes back. “Yeeeaaaaah?”
“Are you all right?” Elton hollers across the water.
Andy knows that they are, and that they’re now free to go home. What he doesn’t know, not then, is that it wasn’t the Rowanberrys who were under the sign of mortality that night, but Elton. Elton would be gone before another April came around, and the Rowanberrys, who had held Elton on their laps when he was a child, would survive him for another decade. Knowing that all of them are now gone, Andy says it gives him enormous satisfaction to think of that night, of the enormous backwater between them, while Elton’s voice crosses the water, is heard and answered, and the other voice travels back:
“Yeeeaaaah!”
It’s the best story of membership that I know. Backwater from a swollen river sometimes floods our lives, making it hard to get to each other. It happens. In such moments, we don’t always know how to find one another, because the usual roads and pathways have been blocked. Sometimes we can’t find one another, because our minds are too cluttered with the received opinions of others, chattering at us in the split screens of our televisions. Sometimes we can’t find one another, because while social media enables us to be in touch with people on the far side of the world, we forget what it means to be in the same space with other people, relating to living, breathing, embodied people. Sometimes we can’t find one another, because we no longer possess an imagination capable of perceiving what others are going through.
I’d like to suggest that this thing we do called church can be a way of circumventing the backwater. Every single Sunday, I conclude the opening announcements and welcome with the words, “It’s good to be together in this place.” I don’t speak those words casually, because it is good to be together. I know, I know, we have our limitations. But where else can you gather with others, animate bodies and souls, not electronic ones, on a weekly basis? Where else can you direct yourself toward something that both encompasses and transcends your ordinary concerns? Where else can you go where you’re not in front of a screen, where you’re asked to consider your life, where some moment of beauty might, just might, awaken you? I know, sometimes our language can feel archaic. Sometimes the concepts we use can feel old or outdated. I know that. It’s just that sometimes, in order to find who we are, in order to find one another, we have to forgo the easiest and most direct routes. Sometimes we have to get out of our cars, forgoing labor saving devices, going the long way around in order to find that light burning in the window.
I believe that places like this are where we learn the true meaning of what it is to be a member of something. It’s not because we’ve paid our dues. It’s not because we confer special privileges or social status. It doesn’t give us access to resources that wouldn’t otherwise be available – like an airport lounge or a stretch of beachfront. Instead, this is a place we come to learn that we are all members of the same body, each with different aspects. It’s a place we come to learn how interdependent we are – children and older folks, progressives and cultural conservatives, scientists and artists, the more affluent and those with very little, those born and raised in this corner of the world, and those who arrived from elsewhere. It’s a place where we all come to experience one another as existing under the sign of mortality, a place in which we’re given to work with one another, and to remember with one another. It’s a place where we learn that what is on offer, which is nothing less than grace itself, is a nonmarket value that cannot be bought, sold, or traded. It is free. But above all, it is the place that we come to learn what it means to say across whatever backwater separates us: Are you all right? With any luck, we’ll hear the answer arcing back across the waters: Yeeaaah!
Standing under the sign of mortality, as we all do, the best response we can make is to learn what it is to be members of one another. It’s good to be together in this place.