There’s a great saying attributed to Dorothy Day, the great 20th century friend of the poor, anti-war and labor activist, and founder of the Catholic Worker movement. Dorothy is remembered as saying: “Everyone wants a revolution, but nobody wants to do the dishes.”
After I graduated highschool I was a gangly seventeen year old, bored by school but curious about what a life of faith meant. Not wanting to go to college I signed up for a year with the Mennonite Mission Network Service Adventure program – the same program that Samir from our congregation is currently serving as leader for in Alaska.
But I went to Albuquerque, New Mexico for a year to work at a shelter for unhoused folks and to live with three other young adults and our two leaders and their two cats (Otis & Milo). I wanted to be a part of the Jesus revolution in community and I soon learned that this kind of intentional life together also involved doing lots of dishes.
In the homes of my family growing up – we didn’t have an electric dishwasher – my brother and mom and dad and I were the dishwasher. So I was pretty pumped to discover that this intentional community house where I was living in in Albuquerque had a fancy electric dishwasher.
A couple of days into being there my turn came up to do the evening’s dishes. I loaded up the dishwasher, squirted in a healthy amount of blue Dawn dish soap, turned it on for a full cycle and left to go read my book in the other room. When I returned, soapy suds were streaming out of the dishwasher, covering the kitchen floor in a terrible mess.
“Everyone wants a revolution, but nobody wants to do the dishes.”
Living in a community is messy – it requires doing the dishes again and again. Because where there are dishes, there is eating and fellowship. In community our hunger for connection and our thirst to live a life of meaning is met – but this life together takes work, it requires doing the hard ever-ongoing work of ending relationships and doing conflict well and reaching out and cleaning up and welcoming in and sharing what we need and responding to the needs of others.
Beloved community requires doing the dishes.
In Paul’s letter to the church in Rome – he’s writing in encouragement to this community to persist in the revolution that God in Christ is bringing about in their life together.
“Do not be conformed to this world,” Paul writes, “but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
Figuring out what the wisdom of God is for our lives and communities isn’t something that any single one of us can get to on our own. Changing from a mindset focused on our own self-improvement or on worldly measures of success to a focus on the common good and the needs of those around us requires a metamorphosis of our collective mind, as Paul says. The kind of transformation that beloved community requires is only made possible by the grace of God.
The community of faith begins with the recognition that we are all dependent on the love and grace of the God who made us. All is gift. Community ultimately isn’t something that we make and create through our own effort but is a mystery always bigger than ourselves, which we contribute to and participate in.
“For by the grace given to me,” Paul says, “I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think…but think with wise judgment…For as in one body, we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many are one body in Christ, and individually we are members of one another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us.”
When we gather as a church and I also think of all the others mysteriously connected to one another through the body of Christ, I’m moved by how God’s grace is present in all sorts of diverse ways. Paul in our chapter from Romans gives us a litany of gifts to get our minds reflecting on the myriad ways that God’s gifts are present in the diversity of gathered community.
Generosity, compassion, teaching, encouragement, preaching, prophecy, and more are abundant when we gather. When I look out on you all – I see such a richness of gifts.
Some of you are pray-ers and I know that you remember what is shared here and emailed out to the prayer list. You text and check up on folks and offer petitions and songs of gratitude to God on behalf of others as you go about your day. That kind of prayerfulness knits us together.
I see others of you here for whom generosity comes easily. You instinctively know the right gift to offer someone. You are the networkers who before or after church connect with the newcomer, helping link them up with an opportunity or a place to check out. You remind us that we can all experience a life of abundance when we share what we have.
I see others of you who are encouragers. You notice and point out the gifts of others. You see God’s fiery spirit burning bright in the lives of others and you’re bold enough to say something. Your words build others up.
Others of you, in graciousness, do the dishes so that the real revolution can happen. After all the talking about God, you show up, with a hug or hands ready to work or a spreadsheet ready to balance the budget sheet. You make sure there are plates at a potluck and you pull things together so that someone can be hosted in sanctuary and you make the texts and phonecalls so there will be enough food at the protest.
What makes community such a precious gift is how dependent all of us are on the grace that God has given us.
I think that people on the edges of life are often more keenly aware of this dependence. Children know and welcome all kinds of help from others. Some elders in my life have had an amazing graciousness about them as they offer the steady wisdom of their years to others while also graciously receiving help as the strength of their own body changes.
The beloved community that we aspire to in the church invites us all to a life of graciousness. Doing things in common demands a gentleness that comes from embracing the truth that every single moment and morsel of this blessed life is a gift from God.
And for all the hard work of life in community, for all the never ending stacks of dishes that keep piling up – when we focus on the gifts and grace present in one another we can find unexpected joy.
That same year that I was living in Albuquerque with Mennonite Mission Network – early one Sunday morning, I was taking a shower. The bathroom we used was in between my room (I was the only guy) – and the other bedroom, where the other participants – three young women stayed. Because we lived in a high desert city and we were trying to conserve water – I would shower with a 5 gallon bucket to catch water with which I could water the plants outside.
Now I’m a shower singer – and so that morning I was doing my best Sunday morning 6:30am rendition of “Now Let’s All Rise, and Shine, and Give God the Glory Glory,” as I craned my neck to wash my head under the showerhead because of the obnoxious 5 gallon bucket. And right at that moment I slipped and with a cascade of crude curse words I took a thunderous fall to the shower floor. I lay there stunned.
There was only silence from the other room , then a few snickers, followed by full on laughter. Finally – someone shouted out – “Hey, Ben, are you OK!?”
Community can be a space of joy – yes, we annoy one another, but we also care deeply for one another, we apologize and forgive and hold accountable and recommit to a shared life all because of the love we have for one another and because of the love of Christ we reflect back to one another.
Sprinkled into the life of community is an abiding joy – a singing in the shower kind of joy and a twinkling joy of caring kindness – that calls out – “Hey, are you OK!?”
Paul knows that the life of communal transformation through Christ isn’t easy, he knows that doing the dishes and living with annoying people like me and you takes work. But Paul also wants the work of embodying the beloved community to be done without hypocrisy. He calls the Roman Christian to lives of embodied love that are genuine. The Message paraphrase puts it this way:
“Love from the center of who you are; don’t fake it…be good friends who love deeply; practice playing second fiddle. Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Help needy Christians; be inventive in hospitality….Bless your enemies; no cursing under your breath. Laugh with your happy friends when they’re happy’; share tears when they’re down. Get along with each other; don’t be stuck-up. Make friends with nobodies; don’t be the great somebody.”
Community embraces us without making any one individual the center. In community we find belonging without puffing ourselves up in self-importance.
On the spectrum of the individual to communal faith – Mennonites have generally leaned pretty heavily in the communal direction. Following Jesus, discerning the will of God, listening to the Holy Spirit and interpreting scriptures is never just an individual enterprise, but is something that all of us share and take part in. After any of us preach – whether it’s me the pastor or someone else – we all take time to listen and share with one another how we are sensing the Spirit of God is moving.
Romans chapter 12 ends with the exhortation to live in peace and bless those who persecute you and love your enemies and to not be overcome by evil, but to overcome evil with good.
To creatively embody peace is possibly the hardest work communities are called to do. As a church we are invited to such a life because we recognize that the ultimate work of making all things right is God’s and we are just participating in it.
Our text encourages us to seek the common good rather than retribution. And it places this interesting thing called vengeance or wrath – squarely as something that God alone should have. The need to get even, to do the judging, to take care of it – is not our work to do – because we have faith in the God who is making all things right and whose love has the power to overcome even death.
Instead, we seek the justice of the kingdom of God in our lives together but we release wrath, the need to lash out, to take matters into our own hands, trusting that all of us, friends and enemies alike, are held in God’s hands. And therefore in beloved community we can creatively focus on creating spaces of safety, accountability, and belonging. We can choose to practice what embodying love looks like – whether thats learning the skills of how to do decision making through consensus, or leaning into conflict rather than running away from it, or confronting injustice without scapegoating or blaming.
Because we trust that the goodness of God overcomes evil, we can release the need for our own communities to be perfect. Trusting in the God who calls us together to live out the love of Christ, we can lean into joy and generosity.
None of us were meant to do this life alone. And there is joy that comes with doing life together, especially the life of seeking to faithfully follow Jesus together.
The Catholic Worker Dorothy Day ended her autobiography this way – and I will leave this with you, dear fellowship, as words of blessing: “We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.”
Thanks be to God for the revolution that Jesus Christ has brought to our lives! Thanks be to God that we get to joyfully do the dishes together! Thanks be to God that love is the only solution to our loneliness! Thanks be to God for the Spirit of grace that makes beloved community possible!