Scripture: John 17:20-26
In 1957 two denominations came together to form the United Church of Christ. Each of those two denominations were themselves mergers of two denominations that had taken place about 20 years earlier, so the UCC was effectively the coming together of four denominations. The organizers took a verse from scripture, from the scripture that is one of the lectionary scriptures for today and that Beth read as our scripture for the morning, and made it part of our official emblem or logo: “that they may all be one”. John 17:21. They even put “united” in our name.
UCC leaders have often liked to refer to us as a united and uniting denomination. I wasn’t in the UCC at the time, but I’ve picked up that people were proud of making this modest move toward Christian unity, proud of taking a step that would reduce the number of denominations and thus in some small way reduce the confusion of having all these different denominations that hardly anyone understood the reason for anymore. The irony was and is that instead of reducing the confusion, the UCC has probably added to it, since we created a new group with a new name that many people don’t recognize and don’t understand the reason for and that often gets confused, especially in the south and some other regions of the country with the Church of Christ, which is actually a pretty drastic confusion.
Another irony is that this united and uniting denomination has never been very united and has often not acted in a very uniting manner. I should make clear right away that I do not say that in a critical manner. In fact my attitude about it is, “Thank God!” Thank God the United Church of Christ does not put unity at the top of its list of priorities. Thank God that we do not in every way live up to the motto we have chosen for ourselves.
I chose the United Church of Christ not because it was a united and uniting denomination but because at various levels it had the courage to speak and act on issues where there was no unity and to say and do things that were much more likely to be divisive than unifying. I was drawn to a denomination that had ordained a woman to the ministry in the 1850’s, an almost unthinkable action at the time, and that continued throughout its history to be ahead of its time on gender issues both in the church and in the larger society. I was drawn to a denomination that was willing to become involved in racial issues from a very early time, contributing voices and bodies and money to the anti-slavery movement, starting high schools and colleges for people of color, calling attention to issues that were not in the headlines, such as racism in the media and environmental racism, and much more. I was heartened when there was heated debate in associations and conferences and at the national level about whether we should invest church money with companies that did major business with South Africa during apartheid. I was proud that in what was by then my denomination, an openly gay man was ordained to the Christian ministry in 1972, many years before other denominations were even considering the idea, and did so knowing that a backlash was sure to follow.
These stands, and many others, were not calculated to keep or bring about unity in the church. They were aimed at making the church and the world we live in a little more just and a little more loving. I am glad the United Church of Christ has not backed off its commitment to racial justice, even though keeping that commitment is likely to cause dissension. I am glad the UCC at national and regional and local levels continues in various ways to be involved in seeking justice for lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgendered people and has not backed off that involvement even though it is a major source of division in the church.
Not to say we are always steadfast and courageous about the commitments. We aren’t, and the times I am most frustrated with my own denomination is precisely when I feel it has forgotten those commitments and perhaps sacrificed them in favor of keeping peace in the church. I am frustrated when this happens at conference and association meetings, which it does. I am frustrated when local churches never talk about anything important because important matters tend to be controversial matters. I am frustrated when I recognize that I myself have been avoiding a subject that maybe I think will be divisive to the congregation or that I am conflicted about myself and therefore am unsure what to say and therefore don’t say anything. So I am glad that the goal “that we may all be one” has on the whole not meant in the UCC that we avoid important and difficult issues in the misguided hope of maintaining unity in the church. I am glad that the prayer of Jesus we quote on our emblem is not the only value we hold, and that we recognize there are things more important than unity.
I also realize, though, that in saying everything I have just said, I am oversimplifying these matters. I do believe that individual Christians and individual Christian congregations ought to stand for something and often when they do, the result is not so much that disunity is created as that the disunity that was there all the time comes to the surface and out in the open and can cause conflict and hard feelings and separation. We don’t have to look at the open conflict among Methodists, Episcopalians, or Presbyterians to see examples of the failure of Christ’s prayer to come true. It has been and continues to be true for the United Church of Christ too. It’s just that right now we aren’t making the headlines.
Individuals and churches have left the United Church of Christ because of stands we have taken on civil rights, against the war in Vietnam, or more recently because of a variety of issues relating to homosexuality in the church. Some people and congregations have left the United Church of Christ simply because there are in the United Church of Christ churches like Sojourners, and though from my perspective there are still too few churches like us, to some people there are way too many churches like us, and they have become angry and have sometimes left the denomination in anger. And I have to admit that sometimes when that has happened I have been glad—sad too but glad in the sense of thinking that this is probably the best thing for all concerned. Surely there are better things for us both to do than to be fighting with each other, and so sometimes it is best just to go our separate ways, to disengage, not unlike situations where a divorce though not an ideal state of affairs becomes the best thing for both people. And I know that there are many people who have beliefs very different from mine who also feel that it may be best for people just to go their separate ways, that it has become too hard to try to live together under the same roof and requires too many compromises from people on matters that are important to them.
Yet that is not at all all there is to be said on this matter. I also know in my heart that it won’t do for us to just divide ourselves up into camps and prepare to fight it out. That’s what I hear political talk radio doing. That’s what I think the Southern Baptist Convention did as it gradually became less and less willing to tolerate differences and eventually drove away many loyal members, even people who had lived in that very large tent for generations. Some Episcopalians talk of seceding from their denomination because there is a gay bishop. Some Methodists talk of seceding from their denomination because church law still prohibits gay clergy. Yet at the end of the day somehow seceding from one another doesn’t sound like a very promising long term strategy.
Of course trying to achieve some superficial unity based on being nice and never really dealing with issues, pretending to some phony unity that is not real, is also not a very promising long term strategy. Somehow I don’t think that’s what Jesus had in mind when he prayed that they (we) may all be one. Somehow I don’t think he ever imagined his followers agreeing on everything or never talking about anything except what they could agree on. But he also made it quite clear, for instance in this prayer, that the goal of the Christian life cannot be to draw clear battle lines, any more than it can be to pretend that there are no battles worth fighting. There has to be some other way.
And we struggle with it every day, don’t we? We work side by side with people who have different ideas and values and attitudes from us not just on those matters where we can easily tolerate differences but on very important and fundamental issues that we care deeply about, like racism or homophobia. We belong to organizations which come together for one purpose but where on all sorts of other issues we are miles apart. I attend wider church affairs of all sorts where I work with and pray with people I differ deeply with on issues I know about and probably many more I don’t know about. We live in families that include people who are radically different from us, who do not share our beliefs, who we find to be bigoted, sometimes with the bigotry directed against other family members, sometimes against us. And in all of this we struggle to maintain our sense of who we are, we struggle to be true to who we are in some way, to not give up our values, to not let ourselves be buried, and at the same time as we struggle not to lose ourselves, we also struggle not to write off other people. Life would sometimes be easier if we could just dismiss other people, write them off because of their bigotry or their deeply misguided ideas. But we can’t. Because they are our colleagues, our co-workers, our acquaintances, friends, parents, sisters, brothers. And most of all because whoever they are, whatever relationship we have with them, they…”they” are children of God, which means not to be written off, which means “they” are part of “us”.
This is, of course, not just a matter of organizations and strategies. It is not just a matter of making judgments about when it may be a good or a necessary thing for someone to leave a church, a denomination, a club, or a place of employment because we can’t belong to it in good conscience vs. when it is better to try to work to change an organization from within. It is not just a matter of trying to decide when it is maybe best for people to go their separate ways because their differences are irreconcilable and destructive to everyone vs. when it is better for people to stay together and try to work out their differences. We have all probably had situations like that in one way or another and they involve decisions that can be difficult and heart-rending, and there are not clear rules about how to make such decisions, and so I don’t mean to minimize either the difficulty of such decisions or the emotion that can be involved.
But these are also matters that go to the center of our inner life. How do we seek justice, sincerely and earnestly seek justice, and at the same time affirm in our souls our oneness with people we are not at one with, people we see as standing in the way of justice, who oppose our efforts to bring justice, and act in ways that would preserve injustice? How do we seek common ground with people who don’t want there to be common ground? How do we act bravely for justice and lovingly toward those who oppose us all at the same time? How do we discern when it is important to be in conflict with others vs. when it is important to try to look past our differences to our oneness? Or is it possible to do both at the same time?
I don’t know about you, but for me these are not easy questions. I had lunch with a colleague not too long ago, someone I like and respect. The discussion turned to churches and issues relating to homosexuality. We found ourselves not exactly on opposite sides of the issues but with very different feelings and approaches. I did not like being in conflict with a friend. I also did not like the fact that I did not state my own feelings even stronger than I did. I am still troubled by our exchange. Of course I would like to be one with my colleague. I would like him to agree with me, but then he is no doubt wondering why I don’t agree with him. And so we live in uneasy relationship. And we all live in many such uneasy relationships that are part of the fabric of our lives these days. And I raise all this not because I have any clear rules to follow but because I am standin’ in the need of prayer, and because I believe we all are standin’ in the need of prayer as we continue to try to be strong in the pursuit of justice and at the same time as we yearn for oneness among all God’s people and pray as Jesus did “that we may all be one”. Amen.
Jim Bundy
May 23,2004