Inspired by Exodus 2:2-10, Romans 12:1-6, Matthew 16:13-18
I suspect that the first thing that happened to you when you read the title for today’s reflection was that your mind went to the 1970s musical group of the same name. I’m not going to ask for a show of hands – you know who you are. I also suspect that the next thing that happened is that you began singing in your head the tune “YMCA”. Yeah…now you know what’s been popping into my head all week. I apologize that that song will now reside in your brains for the rest of the worship service (maybe the rest of the day)!
The good news of this reflection is that it is NOT about a musical group that was popular 50 years ago – it is about the fact that we’re created by God to live together…we are created to be people of villages. Humans have an innate desire to congregate. We feel better, our mental health is better, we function as a species better and we accomplish more things when we operate in a coordinated fashion that brings our unique perspectives and gifts together on a situation or problem. God created us so that we are in need of others – since none of us has everything required to flourish in the world, we must be around other people who can supply the gifts and graces that we don’t possess.
Lucinda and I have found over the years in both our professional and personal lives that accomplishing anything meaningful requires a village. In fact, there have been times that we experienced the truth of the statement, “it takes a village to raise a child” – and we joke that we didn’t realize the size of our village would equal the population of Manhattan! Over the last 30 years, our lives have been embedded in different church villages, gatherings of people who were/are doing their best to follow the teachings of Jesus the Christ. We have found that when we follow the God of our understanding, then we find that God is always bringing people into our village with the gifts we need to move forward together into God’s preferred future.
Across the Bible we read and hear about how God brings people together to accomplish God’s will. The Apostle Paul teaches the believers in Rome that they are to understand that the many followers of the Christ form one body with each member belonging to all the others. While each individual member has a specific function within the gathered village, all members work together so that the amalgam flourishes.
Jesus has miraculously fed more than 9000 people in a very short space of time in the Gospel according to Matthew. The disciples continue to walk with him and to be mystified by many of his teachings and miracles. Our reading today has Jesus asking them who others think he is, and who they believe him to be. Simon answers that Jesus is the Christ, the promised Messiah. Jesus tells Simon that his name is now “Peter” which means the “rock” and that on that rock Jesus will build his church, and the Adversary will never overcome it. The village of people around the world who believe in the gospel of Jesus is now more than 2 billion strong because it was shared widely by those 11 original disciples.
Our final scripture reading for today involves the salvation story of Moses. Moses was born to a Hebrew slave in Egypt during a time where Pharaoh had decreed that all Hebrew infant boys should be killed (because there were too many Hebrews in Egypt). Hebrew midwives of that village made sure that male babies were not killed as ordered. Moses’ mother hid him and then set him afloat in a basket that was discovered by the childless daughter of Pharaoh. The Hebrew midwives, his mother, his sister and the daughter of Pharoah all worked together to ensure that the baby would live. God made certain that Moses would thrive in the household of Pharaoh so that decades in the future, Moses would return to lead God’s people out of bondage in Egypt.
Even before humanoids dropped out of the trees, they gathered in small family bands or troops. In these gatherings there was a division of labor, and everyone had a role to help the band thrive. Babies were born and looked after by all members of the tribe. As humans evolved, these bands became larger and roamed the land together. There was safety in numbers and humans learned how to work together to accomplish larger tasks. Once farming developed about 10,000 years ago, many humans stopped hunting and gathering and settled down into villages.
Since the Industrial Revolution, our villages have grown into massive cities, many millions deep in some cases. Yet, those much larger aggregations of people have not really changed how they operate. Small bands of people still get together to get things done – because no large community functions as a coordinated whole. Have you ever wondered why that is? A British anthropologist suggested in a paper that the human brain limits the number of “stable social relationships” that we can have. Those relationships are broken down as follows: up to five close friends, 15 good friends, 50 friends, 150 meaningful contacts, 500 acquaintances and 1500 faces you can recognize. The 150 meaningful contacts is now referred to as “Dunbar’s Number”.
You may have heard about Dunbar’s Number as it applies to social media connections and the proposition that we can have unlimited numbers of “friends” and “followers”. It turns out that we still only operate in the breakdown that Dunbar originally postulated. Each of our villages consists of a maximum of about 500 people with whom we are acquainted or who become ever more meaningful parts of our lives. Lucinda has long believed that in the world of Pharmacy leadership there are really only 500 people and everyone is known by a subset of all the leaders. I’m not sure she knows about Robin Dunbar’s research, but she certainly agrees with his conclusion! Likewise, I know (because many have told me) that you are drawn to this size of church because it hits the “50 friends” number and you find comfort and joy in knowing everybody. You have found your village, and you are settled down in it.
The Virginia Conference of The United Methodist Church is proposing a new model of connection that seeks to employ Dunbar’s Number in ministry. Using the 150 meaningful connections number, the Conference has divided the Commonwealth of Virginia up into 47 different “micro communities”. The micro community in which our churches exist is named the “Charlottesville Metro” community. Now, this is a large village with more than 220,000 people and it stretches from near Ruckersville, south to Afton, to below Fork Union and over to our neck of the woods topping off just beyond Blue Ridge Shores. That’s a big surface area comprised of a major metropolitan center with a lot of sparsely populated rural spaces around it.
The statisticians suggest that by multiplying the 150 meaningful connections number by the average worship attendance across the 26 United Methodist Churches in the micro community, that we UM’s are connected to approximately 195,000 of the 220,000. This sounds good in theory, but I soon realized that there was not an even distribution of UM church locations and thus there couldn’t be an even distribution of meaningful connections. We do know, however, that UM congregants are connected to many people in this micro community, but there are a lot more connections to make.
Being village people is important in our lives just like it has been for more than 10,000 years of human development. Being part of this village of The United Methodist Church brings us all into connection in shared worship and ministry empowered by God’s abiding and unconditional love. God’s transformative love works through individuals in order to build larger villages – to fill out the body of Christ about which the Apostle Paul wrote. From a covenant with Abraham, God made a great village – of which we are a continuing part. The village people that surrounded Moses’ mother made sure that he would live and grow and ultimately work with God’s power to release God’s people from bondage.
Being village people brings meaning to our lives. The connections support us, empower us, exhort us, correct us, teach us, enliven us and show us how it looks and feels to have God’s love at work in us and through us. This faith community continues to exist because of the indwelling Holy Spirit and the meaningful connections that comprise it. Our task is to continue to build out the body of Christ in this area, connecting in meaningful ways with other Christians and with those who have never heard the gospel. For each person in this village belongs to Christ and to each other. Thanks be to God for creating us to be village people…amen!