The Sovereign Individual: The Difference Between Uniformity and Interlocking Yet Removable Parts

Aside from my own personal struggle with trying to become a part of the Methodist church (I grew up Evangelical so it was like visiting another planet, one I arguably like way more but still have a hard time adjusting to), it was unsettling for the first few weeks to try and get down the call and response phrases. “Peace be with you” was the hardest thing to nail down because I could never get the timing just right to join in so I sounded like I had a delayed reaction/it sounded like I was a laptop stuck in “buffering”. As if I was lagging. “Peace be with…Oh they just finished saying that oh God they’re doing another phrase great I’ll just shut up now”. My thought processes were exactly that for the first few months of trying to give Methodism a shot. There was one sermon that was glued to my head and it was the one they gave the Sunday before Thanksgiving. It was a guest pastor but the regalia and formality was still there with the white gowns and all (look I don’t know the proper names for this stuff so deal with me as I stumble and try to explain myself). 

Paraphrasing:

“Some churches look at the leadership here and go ‘You do communion every week? That’s so often!’ Doing communion every week is what this church does. It’s who you are.”

This sermon is glued to my head for so many reasons which I’m sure I will get to in future writings but the way he talked about the church, confidently united instead of uniformly separate parts, is what made it special for this point he was making. It was as if one person was coming together, the church as a personified figure, to partake in communion and show gratitude. Not dozens of separate individuals but a united body and united mind coming together. He didn’t argue against the individual experience that communion gave to the partaking person. The church has consistently affirmed that Christ in all the ways and manners He presents Himself is an individual moment that should be treasured and cherished. But now we can say that the church has almost forgotten that we are part of a unified body in Christ. Not sovereign individuals but a community.

This is the only discernible time that I’ve ever heard a pastor give a sermon where he addressed the audience as a uniform collection of believers.  The first time that I’ve ever heard a pastor speak to the congregation as if it was one person. The way we talk to other Christians about Jesus and doctrine (free will, Hell, religiously politicized issues that have nothing to do at all with Jesus or the Bible, etc.) is uniquely singular. “What do you think about…”, “Do you believe that….”, “Well I think…”, and so on. It’s not about what the pastor has said about Scripture, it’s not about what  trained religious thinkers have said about the passages you may bring up in a discussion, it’s not about what your denomination thinks about certain issues pertaining to the Christian life. It’s about what you think and come what may to the contrary.

Individualism, while a potent staple in modern ideology, doesn’t stand for long when it comes to the Bible. God was a largely communal phenomenon. There were different gods for different tribes. YHWH was for the Israelites and Baal was for the Canaanites. Jesus did visit and heal individual people during His ministry but He did feed the five thousand and His death was for all people’s redemption. Paul writes in Ephesians that you are supposed to work good things with your hands so that you can give to your neighbor. You don’t work for yourself. You work for others. It’s not about you. It was never meant to be about you. If Christianity was selfish then Gethsemane would’ve ended with Jesus going “Screw this I don’t wanna die.” And nobody could blame Him for doing that but that’s not what He did. Far from it and we still don’t fully understand what happened in Gethsemane that day. Except our sense of community is dead and rotting and I’m going to get slightly political here so strap in, kids.

I need not mention that the leaders of our country are, to say the absolute least, a mess. If you didn’t notice the last election cycle then let me sum up the problem here that I haven’t seen anyone clearly point out: If we had healthy and trusting communities then we wouldn’t have had to pick between those two candidates.  You don’t get to the place that our politics are currently at right now if you trust the people you live next to and it is that easy to just trust the people you live next to not to break into your house and murder you. If you’re reading this then it hasn’t happened yet so breathe easy even if it’s just for a little while. The church, by functional definition, is communal. It was meant to be a place where believers went to have a home (I’m convinced of that at least). A home provided by a loving God and that loving God was to be reflected by the people in the church community. NOW CLEARLY THAT HASN’T HAPPENED. I get that the church isn’t perfect and I’m not going to be dreaming that that day where the church is made complete again is going to happen in my lifetime because it won’t. But because we as Christians are meant to live in community with each other, and that community reflecting the love of God, we have an ethical obligation to fix these problems to the best of our ability, short of sinning.


 At least one communal endeavor we have is making memes about the President. We have SOMETHING at the very least.

You don’t fix cuts and scars that your community has with voting. The people you vote for are products of broken communities. Change the community and you change the candidates you get. And it’s supposed to be hard. It’s supposed to be tedious and soul crushing. After all, you’re dealing with people. Replace the phrase “change the community” with the word “ministry” and the concept stays the same. It is tedious work but it must be done if you want to actually fix and have a better place to live for your neighbor.