Sunday May 6, 2007 Fifth Sunday after Easter
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Psalm 133; Acts 11: 1-18; John 13:31-35
The 133rd Psalm says how good and how pleasant it is when all people live
together in harmony. It says that the unity of the human family is our sacred calling from
God, a blessing God ordains us to live into, and that it is like the dew or the rain. It is the
water of life. Without unity we will dry up and die.
Someone was telling me about a film that interviews many of the astronauts who
have gone up into space. There is a common reaction to being up there. They see how
small and alone Earth is in the expanse of the universe. They see how fragile human
existence is, they see how important it is that we learn to live and work together as one
human family, living in peace and taking care of this beautiful, perishable planet. They
have something like a God’s eye view. They see we must live together or we will die
apart.
The problem is we have not learned to live together, despite how good and
pleasant it can be. Nation wars against nation, race against race. The wisest and
most holy people of every religion see that all people are one family and that all
religions can and should live in harmony, and that all the different paths to God
meet at the top of the one common spiritual mountain. And yet religions expend
great amounts of energy arguing about who is right and who is wrong and who is
in and who is out, like overtired children playing a game at a birthday party after
the sugar has started to go sour in them. Even within denominations this goes
on—even within the denomination that calls itself the United Church of Christ.
Like a parent standing above all this squabbling and excluding and judging one
another over differences, God asks, “Who is there big enough to love the whole
world?” (I believe E. B. White first framed this question at the outbreak of World
War II.)
Apparently Charles Darwin thought the answer was “No one.” Darwin said
that if a species ever made a single adaptation solely for the benefit of another
species as a completely unselfish act, it would disprove his entire theory of
evolution. No species could love its neighboring species as its self.
The writer and scientist and spiritual thinker Loren Eisely wrote a story
called “The Star Thrower” partly in response to Darwin’s assertion of the
selfishness of the species. In the story Eisely came upon a man on a beach who
was picking up starfish and throwing them back out to the sea before they dried up
and died. Eisely’s first response was to think the man foolish. This was a stretch
of coastline configured in such a way that multitudes of starfish and shellfish and
other sea creatures got caught up in the waves and thrown onto the shore. It was a
part of nature. It was simply a deadly place. There was nothing that could be
done.
But something stirred Eisely as he reflected on the Star Thrower. He was
moved by the beauty and heroism of this one man who had so much love that he
would spend some of every day throwing starfish back into the sea—with no
benefit to himself. Eisely realized that here was the hope of the world’s survival,
the hope that humans might break beyond mere selfish evolution and become big
enough to love the whole world.
This year is the 50th Anniversary of the founding of the United Church of
Christ. I will be representing the Vermont Conference as one of eight delegates to
General Synod. Others from this church will also be there and you are all urged to
come. It will be a grand and glorious celebration of the UCC’s amazing
accomplishments, starting with the idealistic uniting of four denominations into
one, and going on to become a leader for social justice, inclusiveness, equal rights
and peace. This will be a historic event because of how many will gather and all
the luminaries who will speak or perform, but it will be historic for another reason
as well.
General Synod happens every other year when the entire national UCC
gathers and, among other things, votes on resolutions. The resolutions are not
binding on local churches. The local church is the highest level of authority in the
UCC. Local churches are asked only to consider the resolutions. But the
resolutions do shape our denomination’s policies and pronouncements—what we
stand for and how we work together.
This year’s General Synod will be historic because some to the twelve
resolutions will determine the identity and future direction we take as a
denomination. Along with resolutions on immigration and depleted uranium
weapons and the rural church, we will vote on two resolutions that would define
marriage as only possible between a man and a woman, and a third resolution on
increasing the voice of conservative, evangelical and Biblical-literal members of
the United Church of Christ.
Next week I will talk more about the marriage issue, but this week I want to
point out that behind these resolutions is a struggle to stay united. The national
UCC voted at its last General Synod two years ago to extend marriage equally to
homosexual couples as well as heterosexual. Many conservative churches have
left the UCC because of this. The resolutions this year are hoping the UCC will
reverse its stance on marriage so that more churches or church members will not
leave the denomination.
Listen to how these new resolutions propose uniting us. One says, “Let it
be…resolved that the Twenty sixth General Synod of the United Church of Christ
reaffirms in accordance with the historic creeds of the Christian faith and the
insights of the Protestant reformers that Scripture is the supreme authority for all
matters of Christian faith and practice…” Another resolution urges the UCC to
reaffirm its “classical and centrist theological heritage.” These resolutions are
seeking unity based on the way things have always been and on conforming to
what is the middle ground.
These are reasonable and safe grounds on which to base unity when
confronted with the possibility of serious conflict and division: keep things the
same and hold to the center.
But today’s passages from the New Testament show Jesus and the Holy
Spirit changing the way things have always been and even going against the
scriptures, in the case of Acts. Jesus and the Holy Spirit are doing something new,
leaving common ground for new ground. Jesus said, “I give you a new
commandment.” And the nature of that commandment is such that it requires us
to respond anew to every situation.
In the Book of Acts the majority of the Apostles sounded like the
conservative members of the UCC. They did not approve of this scandalous new
thing Peter had done. He had gone against the scripture and tradition by extending
equal rights to the excluded, impure, sinful group, the Gentiles, much the way the
UCC has extended equal marriage rights to those the church has traditionally
excluded and declared impure and sinful according to Scripture. In time the
Apostles came to see what Peter did as the work of the Holy Spirit.
Nor did the Spirit stop working this way when the last word of the Bible
was written. It has continued to open our hearts ever wider. Slaves, women and
children have benefited over time, and today people of all sexual orientations are
gaining inclusion as the Holy Spirit moves us to new vision.
Tradition and scripture are not adequate as a basis for unity. The certainty
of solid theological middle ground is not a secure basis for unity either, because
we can be sure that sooner or later the Holy Spirit will come along and expand and
redefine our understanding. The basis for unity we see in the Book of Acts is the
guidance of the Holy Spirit and the presence of the gifts of the Spirit. Paul defined
the fruit of those gifts as “Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity,
faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” (Galatians 5:22f) All those who share
those signs of the Holy Spirit are already securely one, if only they could see the
truth.
Jesus gave us the supreme basis of unity. It is to love our neighbor as if our
neighbor is our own self. Or as the passage from John has it, Jesus said, “I give
you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you,
you also should love one another.” The key phrase in that commandment is, “Just
as I have loved you.” Christ-like love is different from other kinds of love. It is a
self-giving, self-emptying, self-sacrificing, totally unselfish love. It sees that the
other truly is our own self. It is unconditional and compassionate and all-
embracing love. It is a love extended to sinners before they repent and improve, a
love for the sick in their sickness and the weak in their weakness. It is a love that
trusts that love is the best thing that can be done to improve a situation, that the
force of humble love will bring about whatever good can be accomplished, even in
the face of violent hate. To love like Christ is to love first, and let it teach us what
else needs to be done.
That is exactly how the United Church of Christ began 50 years ago. The
denominations agreed to come together and love one another, trusting that if the
did, love would show them how to work out the practical details. The good that
has come of this trust in love has been abundant and miraculous, but unity has not
been perfect and probably never will be. The details challenge us constantly. And
now we need to let love teach us what it means to love each other as Jesus loved
when we believe that the other is totally wrong about the issue of sexual
orientation and marriage. Love needs to show us how we can be united when
some say that we need to live within traditional, centrist or scriptural limits, and
others say that love demands that we break through to new ground.
The best hope for unity lies in staying focused on loving our way through
those questions, not trying to force a compromised unity on one opinion or
another. We need to vote and take a stand. There will be winners and losers no
matter what, but love may show us how to live together as one even as we
disagree. It may show us how our diversity can be embraced by our unity.
This is not just one denomination’s problem. The human race cannot
afford to let divisions on specific matters stop our progress toward unity. The
dangers Earth faces require that people learn how to be big enough to love the
whole world with Christ-like love. The starfish are dying on our embattled shores.
Can we love them for their own sake and become selfless Star Throwers to save
them? Can we learn to love those who are different and even our enemies for their
own sake and for the sake of the God who is love? Can we adapt and evolve
beyond self-interest to love the whole world? That is the blessing God has
ordained us to live into—the blessing that gives life forever more.
Jesus is still praying the prayer that the United Church of Christ takes as its
motto: “That they may all be one.” (John 17:21) Let us pray that, too. Let us
pray in silence…
Sermon 05/06/2007