Theological Truth: Deepening our discipleship strengthens our unity, which means we need each other.
Come Holy Spirit, and kindle in us the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and we shall be created, and You shall renew the face of the earth. Amen.
Good afternoon Diocese of Southwestern Virginia! How good and pleasant it is indeed for us to gather together in unity….to be together as community.
Thanks to Bishop Karin and Canon Jonathan, I’ve been thinking a lot lately not only about community, but “thick community.” Are you familiar with that term? New York Times columnist David Brooks, drawing on the work of two UVA professors, says that thick communities change people, they become “part of a person’s identity.” Here are the traits of these “thick communities:”
- They have a physical location…where members meet face to face on a regular basis
- They “have a set of collective rituals”
- They have “shared tasks”
- They tell and retell a sacred origin story
- And they incorporate music into daily life, “because it is hard not to become bonded with someone you have sung and danced with.”
(https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/18/opinion/how-to-leave-a-mark-on-people.html?smid=url-share)
Hmmm? Can you think of any communities like that?? Sounds like church, don’t you think? (Except maybe for the dancing part.) Certainly, the early church described in our reading from Acts is a model of “thick community:” meeting regularly, offering their lives and labors, continuing in the apostles teaching and fellowship, sharing what they have for the common good, welcoming those hungering for a meaningful life, transforming people’s identities, changing the way the see themselves, their neighbors, the world.
Do thick communities still exist? Yes! A “thick community” in Washington DC transformed the life of Jose Andres, the chef, author, and humanitarian who founded World Central Kitchen, a nonprofit dedicated to feeding the hungry in the aftermath of natural and man-made disasters. Andres says he had just opened his first restaurant in DC–a city where he had very few friends and was just barely surviving—when one night, a waiter came to him with a request, “There’s this chef at the table who [just finished eating and] would like to talk to you.”
Andres goes to the dining room and realizes it’s the legendary Jean-Louis Palladin, the godfather of the DC restaurant scene, who asks him, “Are you this young chef who came from Spain? And worked in some of the best Michelin-starred restaurants?” Yes, Andres said. The chef then said in this deep, beautiful French accent, “You have a big future ahead of you and a lot to contribute to Spain and America.” Andres was flattered. The chef continued, “So you see this Spanish tortilla? Go to the kitchen. Throw it in the garbage. And make me another one. Make it like I know you know how to make it.” (Change the Recipe, p. 69).
Andres says that moment changed his life. Palladin could have just written him off, paid his bill and left, but he stayed. And notice Palladin’s subtle addition that turned his complaint into encouragement: “Make it like I know you know how to make it.” That’s the supportive engagement of a thick community.
Andres realized he was right. The tortilla was a disaster. He went back to the kitchen, made the tortilla he knew how to make, Palladin tasted it approvingly, and said, “Okay, now we can talk.”
He came to realize that Palladin was “the chef bringing the DC chefs together into a [thick] community that cared enough to tell one another the truth. He began to understand that they had a vested interest in his success, because it would be their success too. They were all in [it] together.” (Ibid, 70)
Thick communities are agents of transformation. People enter as individuals and become part of something bigger. And they still exist in our churches. Maybe you experienced it on a mission trip to Honduras or Haiti? The one where you laughed, cried, perspired, and felt like you might expire. Perhaps it was the youth trip where you slept in tents in the woods of east Tennessee or the bunk beds at Grace House on the Mountain? The trip where people who had only seen you in and at your Sunday best (and best behavior) also saw you coffee-deprived and without makeup…grouchy and impatient…and loved you all the more? Those trips change us and deepen our communities.
But it needn’t involve travel. Anyone who has sung in a choir, rehearsing week after week, tolerating bad jokes, struggling to learn, risking off-key notes, and then sharing in the wonder of many voices turned into one voice of angel-like praise, knows the power of a thick community. Vestries can be thick communities. So can altar guilds and confirmation classes, Fall Mission Days and Diocesan conventions—all with the power to transform us into the versions of ourselves God made us to be.
But here’s the thing. We can’t do this work on our own. Like the old proverb says, “If you want to go fast, go on your own. But if you want to go far, go together.” Friends, we have far to go on the way to the Kingdom. We must do this holy work together. We need each other.
This was the way of the early church; the way of a thick community being transformed by the power of the Spirit of the risen Christ. They couldn’t do it on their own, and neither can we. And we don’t have to! Together we can be the body of Christ given for the life of the world, a thick community devoted to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and sharing of prayers. A Church that gathers regularly, shares generously, lives gratefully, and ministers collaboratively.
As you receive the body of Christ and the cup of salvation today, also take in these words from our communion hymn:
“I come with Christians far and near to find, as all are fed, the new community of love in Christ’s communion bread;
As Christ breaks bread and bids us share, each proud division ends. That love that made us makes us one, and strangers now are friends.”
Of course it’s good and pleasant to live together in unity. The Love that made us makes us one. We are in this together. We are not alone. We have each other. We have a loving God who promises he will never leave us to face our troubles alone. United in this community of love, strangers become friends, seekers become disciples, loaves and fishes are multiplied, and God’s dream for the world comes a little closer. Friends, this is our work. Let’s do it together.
—The Rev. William AJ Heine
preached at the Diocesan Fall Mission Day on Nov. 7, 2026
