I was at a meeting not too long ago of clergy from around Charlottesville. There are, I have come to understand, several rather feeble attempts to draw clergy together around Charlottesville. This is one of them.
This particular gathering consisted of a few clergy serving churches in the general area of the university and a few assorted others—like me. My sense of this group is that given the total religious landscape of Charlottesville everyone there would consider himself on the liberal or progressive side of things. Also, everyone there was white…and straight…and male. (When I used the word “himself” just now, it was not a careless use of language. I really meant that everyone there would have considered “himself” to be progressive.)
At this particular meeting, I was supposed to be leading a discussion on guess what—inclusiveness. The only thing I can remember saying that day was to point out the irony of 8 or 10 straight white male clergy sitting around in a church parlor talking about inclusiveness. No one there had any evil intentions. No one planned it to be an all-male group. On other occasions it had been a little less one-dimensional. But there we were. I cannot speak for anyone else in that room of course but the situation made me embarrassed and uncomfortable and I think a little bit ashamed.
It was this kind of discomfort and embarrassment, I think, that provided the motivation for worldwide communion to come into existence a bit over 50 years ago. How uncomfortable and embarrassing it was for some people to look around the world and see the Christian church as divided, or even more divided, than the world it was a part of—divided not only by differences of belief and religious custom but also by nationality, race, language, culture, class and also by attitudes relating to gender and sexual orientation.
How embarrassing that the Bible says that in Christ there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, slave nor free when reality says otherwise. How embarrassing that the church of Jesus Christ reflects and reinforces the brokenness of the world rather than overcoming it. How embarrassing that among Christians ties to Jesus Christ seem to come in second or third or worse behind the allegiance to race, clan, or culture. Shouldn’t Christians do something to at least make some gesture toward the unity of Christians throughout the world that cuts across race, clan and culture? When we lift up the bread of communion, shouldn’t we in part be lifting up the hope and prayer for unity that at least symbolically lifts us beyond the isolated enclaves of our own worshiping communities? World Communion Sunday was one way of answering yes to these questions.
I have always liked Worldwide Communion, always felt it was important—but not, I have to say, because it lifts up the hope of Christian unity. I do not hope for the unity of Christians. I do not hope for the unity of God’s Christian people, just God’s people. I do not pray for the healing of the Christian church, but for the healing of God’s world. Jesus did not proclaim a vision of the Christian church, not even a gloriously unified Christian church, but a vision of nothing less than the reign of God, God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. And when we lift up the bread of communion, we proclaim not only Christ’s presence amid the church’s brokenness but Christ’s presence in the world’s brokenness, Christ’s presence in my brokenness as a human being—not my imperfections as a Christian, but my brokenness as a human being.
Yes, we in the church are in as much or more need of overcoming our parochialism as anyone else. Yes, we need to confess that our divisions exist and they are not acceptable and they need to be overcome. But they need to be overcome not for the sake of the church but for the sake of God’s creation. Among the distinctions and superiorities we need to put aside are not only those of race, nationality, caste, class, and category, but those of our church and our religion. We who are Christian have been drawn, touched, strengthened, called, inspired by Jesus Christ. But Christ calls us not to reunite the Christian family but to reunite the human family. However distant that may seem, let it be our prayer today as we share the gifts of this table. May Christ be known to us in the breaking of bread. May we see many faces of God today as we lift up people in prayer and story. Amen.
Jim Bundy
October 1, 2000