Is interdependency a strength or a weakness? I remember hearing the old adage, “up by my own bootstraps,” as if self-sufficiency were something to be proud of. And as if it were actually possible, too. In this interconnected world it’s hard to even imagine being raised all on one’s own and finding one’s own way, without receiving some guidance or insights or encouragement.

I love this quotation from John Muir: “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” It’s no wonder the Nature Conservancy quotes it, since all of God’s creation is so linked together, from the tiniest seahorse to the galaxies and stars.

But people are connected, too, and made for human community, particularly for the community of faith. I think of that every time I see a child being baptized. Not only do the parents promise to raise the child a certain way, but also the entire congregation promises “to live our lives in such a way that she comes to know our Lord Jesus Christ.”

New Testament imagery is full of corporate images for the church as “pictures of what, by God’s grace, the church can become.” John Driver’s Images of the Church in Mission highlights several of them, in part including the New Humanity, New Creation, People of God, a Spiritual House, and a Witnessing Community. All these metaphors remind us that we are innately connected to Jesus Christ and to one another.

Augustine pictured our connections like a wheel with God as the hub, and us as the spokes. So the closer we move toward God, the closer we also come to one another. In the Bible, the ancient Hebrew idea of corporate personality saw the king as the bearer of Israel’s destiny (Jer. 30:18-22). In Christ’s kingship, Driver says, obedience to God and the vicarious suffering of God’s Anointed are closely related (Rom. 5:12-21). So as the second Adam, “Jesus is not simply the image of God. He is also the image of humanity as God intended it to be.”

All these deep connections come together – with God, with Jesus Christ, and with one another – whenever we experience another person baptized: brought into this interlaced connection, deeply belonging to one another as well as to God in Christ. What a gift of grace we continue to receive and live more deeply in, as part of God’s connected, interdependent community!

Your partner in ministry,

Betsy Schwarzentraub