So, what went wrong after Hurricane Katrina?

There has been a great deal of blame thrown around in recent weeks, but one criticism really stands out to me. It seems that the authorities responding to this horrible hurricane failed to learn the lessons of last winter’s Asian tsunami. If they had, the aftermath of this disaster might not have been as devastating as it was.

There were three simple lessons from the tsunami that would have greatly eased the suffering in New Orleans. First, keep families together. Second, keep villages together – in the case of New Orleans, this would have meant keeping neighborhoods together. And third, do not assemble groups of people in large venues. In other words, avoid packing thousands of people into the Superdome!

The bottom line is that people need community. They need it in good times, and even more importantly, they need it in bad times. Community is all about connections – connections that give people help and hope, strength and guidance, inspiration and meaning.

We come today to the third week in our sermon series on the Mission and Identity of Fairfax Presbyterian Church. In week one, we came to see that we are a community of faith that is sent – sent on a mission to be God’s people in the world. The next week, we found that part of our mission is to encounter God in worship and education and service. Today, we take a look at the word experience – here at FPC, we experience the Christ who connects us to God and one another. At its heart, this is an experience of community, one in which we are connected to Jesus, to God the Father, and to one another.

There is no room for isolation in this experience of community. On the night before his death, Jesus prays to God with the words, “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may [my followers] also be in us” (John 17:21). Jesus has a closeness to God that makes the two of them overlap and intertwine, and he desires that all of his followers – including us – experience this kind of intimacy. Jesus goes on to pray to God, “The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one” (v. 22). Jesus wants us to have the very same glory that God has given him – he wants us to be as honored and elevated as he is. But he gives this to us not so that we’ll get swelled heads and think too highly of ourselves. Instead, Jesus gives us his glory so that we may all be one, just as Jesus and his Father are one.

Far too often, we fail to see other people as men and women who share the glory of Jesus and God the Father. We look at them as members of another race or class or culture, and we ignore the words of Jesus when he prays that we “may all be one” (v. 21). It makes an enormous difference when we see a stranger as a brother or sister in Christ, instead of as a person who has no connection to us. It makes a difference whether we have this attitude toward the person in the next pew, or toward the refugee we see on TV.

When my friend Bill Finch, a Roman Catholic priest in Maryland, saw a refugee from New Orleans asking for ice cream for her children, the first thing Bill thought was, “I can be the ice cream man.” He pulled together money and offers of housing from his parishioners, and then headed south to be of whatever help he could. The refugees from Hurricane Katrina were not just anonymous poor people to Bill – they were brothers and sisters in Christ, part of the same Community of Faith.

What’s true in times of natural disaster is also true in times of ordinary difficulties. That is why we gather together each week in this church – to have the experience of being one family, one village, one Christian community. We have a hunch that this is the place where Jesus can connect us to God and to one another, and where we can find help and hope, strength and guidance, inspiration and meaning. When we come together for the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, as we are doing this morning, we remember that Jesus connects us to himself and to God through the eating of this holy meal. And at the same time, we remember that Jesus connects us to each other when we eat and drink together. Communion is an experience of unity, and a sign of our connections to Jesus, God and each other.

My divinity school classmate Peter Marty, a Lutheran pastor in Iowa, writes that the church’s business “has everything to do with relationship, putting people in touch with each other and with God.” But he knows that a real sense of connection is missing in many churches. Inhabiting the same space for an hour on Sunday morning “is not the same as belonging to a community where your presence truly matters to others and their presence truly matters to you.” We have to go beyond simply showing up, and instead focus on being deeply in touch with God and with each other. When we do, we find that God will work through us in a powerful and positive way.

In today’s Scripture lesson, Jesus concludes his prayer by asking that God show love to the disciples, just as God has shown love to Jesus (v. 26). Jesus knows how powerful this love can be, and how it can keep people connected to God and to each another. Without this love, we can lose inspiration and meaning. Without this love, we can find ourselves cut off from help and hope.

I believe it is essential to have this experience of loving connection. Ten years ago, disaster hit the city of Chicago in the form of a deadly heat wave. The temperature topped 100 degrees for three days, and in that period over 700 citizens died of heat-related causes.

Peter Marty writes that a factor in this disaster was the absence of community. “The majority of people who died in the heat wave died alone. They had no one checking in on their attic apartments or their windowless lives. No family, friend or neighbor showed up to discover the severity of their plight.” In the end, 68 died so anonymously that they were buried in a mass grave. (Peter W. Marty, “Breathing together,” Christian Century, August 23, 2005, 8-9)

In good times and bad, it is critically important that we be part of a family, a village, a community of faith. It can be a matter of life and death whether we experience the Christ who connects us with God and with one another.

Let’s keep this experience at the heart of our mission at FPC. Amen.