We can go it alone. Surely, if the scraggly man we’ve been watching with the paint-bristle beard can survive seventy-four days above the Arctic Circle by himself, so can we. And the video store clerk with the eyes that seem to look just past us, who absorbed every shimmering frame of every movie contained in that fluorescent den on that rundown street — that clerk just won an Oscar. With enough time and determination, maybe we could too. And did you hear about the self-made tech magnate? They were working out of their garage not that long ago, and look at them now! Maybe someday, that could also be us. These oft-told story fragments entice us; they also lie by omission. The billionaire received a generous loan from their family and would have squandered it without dedicated partners and employees; the wunderkind film director surrounded themself with talented actors, technicians, and writers; the survivalist heeded the words and advice of teachers and instructors, without which they could very well have died. The narrative of rugged individualism persists at the expense of the community, nurturing, and fellowship behind it.

There is no such erasure when it comes to our baptismal covenant. We are asked to “continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in the prayers.” The words are lifted from the culmination of the day of Pentecost as recounted in Acts, when three thousand were said to be baptized and received into the community of the nascent Church. The idea must seem alien to us, of committing ourselves as radically as these apostles did, of sharing “all things in common; … selling their possessions and goods and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need” (Acts 2:44–45). We are called just as they were, to give of our selves for the betterment of our neighbors — neither self-aggrandizement nor self-effacement, but self-submission. This is our communion, our breaking of bread among one another. The truth of the baptismal covenant is that of a fuller picture than we are accustomed to, one that embraces our neighbors and ourselves — because ultimately, we cannot go it alone.