Father Richard describes the influence of the apostle Paul on the formation of the first Christian churches:
The apostle Paul knew that the gospel message must have concrete embodiment, so he set about founding what he called “churches.” Jesus’s first vision of church is so simple we could miss it: “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them” (Matthew 18:20). This is surely why Jesus insists that the message be communicated not by a lone evangelist but by sending the disciples out “two by two” (Mark 6:7). The individual alone is not a fitting communicator of the core message.
During Paul’s lifetime, the Christian church was not yet an institution or a centrally organized set of common practices and beliefs. It was a living organism that communicated the gospel primarily through relationships. Paul’s brilliant metaphor for this living, organic, concrete embodiment is “the body of Christ”: “Just as a human body, though it is made up of many parts, is a single unit, because all those parts make up a single body, so it is with Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:12). At the heart of this body, providing the energy that enlivens the whole community, although each in different ways, is “the love of God that has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Romans 5:5).
This Spirit is itself the foundational energy of the universe, the Ground of All Being, described in the first lines of the Bible (Genesis 1:2). Union is not just pious rambling, but the very concrete work of God. It’s how God makes love to what God created. Paul writes that it is precisely “in your togetherness that you are Christ’s Body” (1 Corinthians 12:27). By remaining—against all trials and resistance—inside this luminous web of relationship, this vibrational state of love, we experience a very honest and healthy notion of communal salvation.
The churches or communities Paul founded are his audiovisual aids that he can point to inside of a debauched empire (where human dignity was never upheld as inherent) to give credibility to his message. To people who asked, “Why should we believe there’s a new or different life possible?” Paul could say, “Look at these people. They’re different. This is a different social order.” In Christ, “there are no more distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, but all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). This is not just a religious idea, but a socioeconomic message that began to change the world—and still can.
For Jesus, teachings such as forgiveness, healing, and justice work are the real evidence of a new and shared life. If we do not see this happening in churches and spiritual communities, religion is “all in the head” and largely an illusion. Peacemaking, forgiveness, and reconciliation are not some kind of ticket to heaven later. They are the price of peoplehood—the signature of heaven—now.
Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr: Essential Teachings on Love, selected by Joelle Chase and Judy Traeger (Orbis Books, 2018), 103–104.
Image credit and inspiration: Brice Xerty, untitled (detail), 2023, photo, India, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Like these tree rings, the early church’s imperfect but living community grows circles of love, joy, and fellowship through time.
Story from Our Community:
I very much appreciate Richard Rohr sharing the story of the birthing of the New Jerusalem Community. I, too, was richly blessed by the charismatic movement in the 1970s. We may have moved beyond some of that kind of spirituality, but it was a powerful renewal of the Holy Spirit still bearing fruit today.
—Christopher E.
