July 1, 2007 Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, Independence Day Sunday,
50th Anniversary of the United Church of Christ
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Galatians 5:1-6:2
Let me repeat some of what we just heard Paul say, these revolutionary and
uniting words: “For freedom, Christ has set us free….You were called to freedom,
brothers and sisters only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-
indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is
summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as your
self.’…Bear one another’s burdens and in this way you will fulfill the law of
Christ.”
This is the measure Paul and Jesus give us to judge ourselves, our church
and our nation. Do we in our individual lives to try to replace the laws of social
convention or ego—what Paul calls the flesh—with the law of the Spirit? Does
our nation base its actions on the principles of selfless love and service of others?
Does the church use its freedom to make sacrifices to save those who are
oppressed?
For the last fifty years the national United Church of Christ has tried to lead
its congregations to be more Christlike and Spirit-led, more loving and giving,
more prophetic and progressive. It has spoken truth to power and worked
tirelessly to sway the nation to be better at bearing the burdens of its weakest and
most oppressed citizens and neighbors around the world.
Every other year for 50 years the United Church of Christ has gathered as a
national body and deliberated on resolutions and pronouncements designed to
guide all the settings of the church—national, conference, association, local
churches and individuals. In the spirit of freedom, General Synod speaks to the
churches not for them. It makes recommendations not laws, but it has developed a
very clear mission and vision that its leading churches embody.
Earlier in the service I mentioned “extravagant welcome.” That phrase
describes the kind of mutual, burden-bearing love the UCC tries to practice. There
are five ways that the UCC sees our extravagant love being enacted. Here are the
five: we are a united and uniting church; we are a multiracial and multicultural
church; we are a church assessable to all; we are an open and affirming church;
and we are a peace with justice church, or a just peace church.
I saw all five of these at work at General Synod this week, and I would like
to share with you just a fraction of the stories and images that show how we as
free individuals, we as a free church and we as a free nation can live by Christ’s
law of love in these five ways.
I will go through them in reverse order, beginning with being a just peace
or peace with justice church. Even before Synod began it had already taken a
principled stand for justice. The event was all set to take place in the new
Hartford convention center, but then it came out that the owners were refusing to
let the janitors form a union, a union they needed because the owners were paying
less than a livable wage. The UCC national office pulled out of the convention
center and moved to the Hartford civic center. It meant that meetings and
accommodations had to be scattered throughout the city and suburbs, and the
central venue was not nearly as easy or pleasant, but every time a speaker
mentioned the decision to move, the hall erupted with applause. To challenge
injustice we were happy to suffer inconvenience.
Then in the first hours of the Synod our team of top national leaders, called
the Collegium, presented a pastoral letter on the Iraq war, condemning it,
confessing the lack of action by Christians to stop it, and calling for the war to end
and repentance and healing to begin. The delegates were so moved that they voted
to endorse the letter, even though it was not exactly procedurally proper to do so.
Synod passed many other resolutions on various peace and justice issues.
We heard powerful voices like Bill Moyers, Barrack Obama and Marian Wright
Edelman challenge the churches of the UCC to be bold, progressive leaders for
peace and justice in the spirit of Jesus Christ. All three cried out for people to rise
up and save America from its current moral crisis. Moyers asked bluntly, “If you
don’t, who will?”
Perhaps because the UCC is a just peace church, we are also an open and
affirming church, and that was also very much a part of Synod. As I had
mentioned before going to Hartford, two resolutions were on the agenda to reverse
the UCC’s position on equal marriage for all, urging us to proclaim marriage as
being only between a man and a woman. As it turned out, there were no sponsors
of those resolutions present at Synod. Nor was there a push from the evangelical,
conservative members of the UCC to put the resolutions forward. The committee
assigned to review the resolutions recommended that we take no action on them,
and in the end that is what we voted to do—but not without some debate.
The controversy on the floor was whether we should take action on the
resolutions anyway in order to make a second resounding endorsement of gay
marriage by defeating the resolutions. Many of us thought that for the sake of
standing with the victims of oppression, we should do so. But the majority felt
that the denomination’s position on open and affirming and marriage issues was so
solid that there was no need to do this, especially since it would further alienate
the right wing of the denomination, churches that are struggling with whether to
leave the UCC. So what could have divided us or threatened our identity actually
ended up strengthening us, I believe, as truly open and affirming—open to and
affirming of people of minority opinions as well as people of all sexual
orientations.
We are also a church accessible to all. The Hartford Colliseum where we
had our main gatherings is a professional sports arena. It was not designed to
handle the large number of people in wheelchairs that we had. On the last day two
people with severe disabilities spoke about how wonderful the staff and volunteers
had been in making things work for them. In addition, throughout the entire
synod, there was always a spotlight on the front right corner of the big stage.
There every word was translated into sign language by a rotating team of signers.
We are also a multiracial and multicultural church. Fifty years ago at the
gathering where the United Church of Christ came into being, the vast majority
were white American males. Yet there were significant cultural differences
present between the traditionally German Evangelical and Reformed churches and
the Congregational Christian churches with their Puritan New England roots.
Because of the way the UCC celebrated and encouraged its diversity from the
beginning and sought always to increase it, today UCC churches worship in two
dozen different languages. At this year’s Synod Native Americans and Hispanics
and African Americans and Pacific Islanders and many, many others were active
in leadership roles, and women outnumbered men.
In all our diversity, we still are, finally a united and uniting church. This is
the spirit that was central to the United Church of Christ at its birth when we took
as our motto Jesus’ prayer, “That they may all be one.”
This is and always will be a struggle. How can we be united when we take
such bold and controversial stands? How can we be united when some traditions
clap in worship and some raise their hands and call out “Amen” and some sit and
worship quietly? The answer is by working ceaselessly at uniting our diversity, as
one preacher did who acknowledged our different worship styles and invited us
each to do what was effective for us—with respect for all the others.
There were many moments when I was moved to tears. One came after the
most contentious debate of the Synod which, in true congregational tradition, was
not about gay marriage or physician aided dying or immigration policy, but about
the allocation of a relatively small amount of money in the church budget. It was
the last day. The delegates were tired and feeling pressure to get all the business
done. We had already voted to extend the session into our supper break. The
debate turned a little personal and quite emotional. The apparent losing side by a
show of hands had demanded that the eight hundred votes be counted, taking up
precious time. At the end, after results had been announced, the moderator asked
that we all be silent and turn to Jesus Christ in prayer.
It was the only time during the entire synod when you could have heard a
pin drop in the vast coliseum, and in that silence, with all of us turned to Christ, all
the divisions caused by words melted away and we were united. We were truly
one. We were still, and in the stillness we knew that God was God, the same God
for us all.
A little while later when we were considering another resolution put
forward by the right wing of the denomination, one of the conservative delegates
stood up to talk. I was worried, because the resolution had been changed
drastically from saying that fundamentalist views must be shared at all levels of
the UCC at all times to saying simply that the UCC is open to all points of view at
all times. I was afraid he would be angry. He said that he came from a leading
church of the UCC historically, but two weeks ago they had met to vote on
whether to withdraw from the UCC because of its position on gay marriage. He
told us that he had said at that meeting, “We should stay in the UCC because it
needs us.” But then someone had said after him, “The UCC may need us, but I
don’t think they want us. I don’t think they care.”
The delegate then said that after being at this synod and talking to people
and seeing how we went about working on the conservative resolutions, he was
going to go back to his church and say, “Yes, indeed, the UCC does want us. It
does care.”
That moved me deeply because what I had dreamed would happen had
come to pass. We were divided over issues and perspectives, but we were united
in our Christ-like love and care for one another. That love made it possible for
this person in the small minority to remain part of our church. We accomplish this
unity not by giving up the freedom to take bold prophetic stands, but by using our
freedom to be loving at the same time, bearing one another’s burdens along the
way.
“For freedom Christ has set us free….You were called to freedom…only do
not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love
become slaves to one another…Bear one another’s burdens and in this way you
will fulfill the law of Christ.”
We have done many good things as a denomination, as a congregation, as a
nation, but we do not have to look far to see that there is still much to be done.
We need to continue to ask, how can we be more of a peace and justice church or
nation? How can we each use our freedom to promote a just peace? How can we
be more open and affirming, more accessible to all, more multiracial and
multicultural? How can we be more united and uniting as a church and as a
nation?
We need to go farther in all these directions if we are going to establish the
law of Christ’s love and the realm of God on earth and live by the Spirit. The
whole creation groans, waiting for that day to come. As Bill Moyer said, if we do
not do this, who will?
Let us pray in silence…
Sermon 07/01/2007