Sabbatical Day 13

Saturday, 17 June 2017
Sogakope, Volta Region, Ghana

The Holy Trinity Spa and Health Farm

I did not know this before I went to Ghana: It is a very ostentatiously religious country! I've called it religiose and pietistic at different times, but there was no moment we spent in Ghana in which we were not reminded of God's sovereignty and Christ's lordship and the Spirit's abiding presence... and the people's reverence in their regard.

The right side of Evans' windshield 

I have not mentioned yet that, wherever we drove with Emmanuel, his radio was usually tuned to a station playing Christian music. I recall, on the day we went to Cape Coast, he rolled the dial round to a program that sounded at first like someone preaching. Then the preacher began singing, and he sang and he sang and he sang! Belted, really. Emmanuel turned down the volume, but it was never lost on any of us that this preacher, who surely sang this same song for half an hour as we drove, was pouring out his heart in praise of the work of Christ and the Holy Spirit in his life. As I recall now, I think that this song also accompanied us for a long stretch, as we traveled that first night from the airport in Accra to the resort in Elmina.

Evans did not have nearly as much religious music playing, but the windshield of the van was decorated with a decal portrait of Jesus and more decals expressing satisfaction with the workings of God. And an Israeli flag; I never got much of an explanation about that. Virtually every other car or taxi or bus carries some message of Christian encouragement. Those that did not, and they were few, expressed an Islamic sentiment.

It is not unusual to hear Christian music playing at restaurants during meals, or at poolside. Everywhere we went were eateries (chop bars) and drinking establishments (spots) and shops with names like "God Is Good Grocery" or "God Did It All Fashion" and other businesses, like "Bride of Christ Aluminum Works" or "Blessed Assurance Car Repair." By far, one of the best I've heard of is in the image at right, "Jesus Is Above All Liquors."

Source: Google Maps

So, I guess it should have come as no surprise that the place where we would stay in Sogakope - a place that Gershon described as a spa and which we chose over the resort he also recommended - should have been called, "The Holy Trinity Spa and Health Farm." In the accompanying YouTube video (scroll to the end of this entry to view it) you will discover, as we did, that our home away from home for the next three days was not only dedicated to the pleasure, health and well-being of its clients but also to the glory of God. Our room, named rather than numbered, was the Royalty Room in the Queen Esther building, which adjoins the King David building. Nearby is the Bezaleel building, which seems to serve as their main storage unit. One lovely enclosed garden is called, the Vineyard of En-Gedi (Song of Songs 1:1). Other locations are the Valley of Beracah (2 Chronicles 20:26), a "block" featuring smaller guest rooms and apartments. And there is the Abishag building, notable for being as Abishag was for David, a comfort from the strains of life. This was where Gwen and Coco went for massages and facials and mani-pedis; it was also the site of the Ruth and Boaz Conference Rooms.

In much the same way as music seemed to be constantly playing in the cars and restaurants wherever we were, at the Holy Trinity there was a constant loop of instrumental gospel music playing in the main courtyard. At first I had thought that I was hearing someone at a piano or electric piano, but - as with the classic jazz music playing in the lobby of our Paris hotel - I became used at certain times of day to hear the same pieces playing. This, I am sure, is intended to direct the mind and spirit but also to provide a measure of relaxation and healing.

The Holy Trinity Spa is, as it turns out, an outreach of the Department of Integrative Medicine of Holy Trinity Hospital in Sogakope. Both institutions are owned and operated by Dr. Felix Anyah. The Spa, for a great part like our own First Congregational Center for Counseling and Healing, is a ministry of healing. It is designed to offer treatments but also introductions to healthier living. Its Ten Health Pillars are announced throughout the complex:

1. Regular and appropriate exercises (sic)
2. Scientific relaxation and restful sleep
3. Health diet
4. Detoxification (including fasting)
5. Management of stress and stress disorders
6. Supplements
7. Positive attitudes
8. Spirituality
9. Health through water (SPA) (C.A.M.)
10. Medical, surgical, and dental treatments

All but the last of these are provided onsite by a sizable, capable and competent staff. Probably our favorite staff member was Jennifer, a college student from Accra who was able to provide care and companionship for Gwen from lunchtime until bedtime daily. On the 17th when the two of them were introduced, Jennifer offered to put together a team of staff to play basketball with Gwen after Gwen said that this was her favorite sport (actually, softball at that point probably was her favorite game, but they don't play much softball in Ghana). Having seen the Holy Trinity bill of fare for various treatments and treatment programs, I worried a bit that the formation of a staff basketball team might be more than the Lilly Endowment might be prepared to provide for, financially. However, Jennifer just took Gwen out and shot hoops with her, later giving her a tour which included the building which housed a gym with basketball and squash courts. Tennis courts are outside, but Gwen doesn't play tennis. So they rambled round to the stables, where there are horses and camels, and to the bar which overlooks a crocodile pool and (separately) an enclosure with tortoises. After supper, Jennifer took Gwen to the gym building to play a couple rounds of ping-pong and some badminton. Before they left, I handed Gwen a GHc20 note to give to Jennifer as thanks for being Gwen's company. Jennifer delivered Gwen back to our room, looking a bit serious. Gwen reported, after Jennifer left, that Jennifer wished we wouldn't tip her. "She says it's her job to do that," Gwen reported, "and tipping her feels like we're paying her twice."

Coco and Gwen enjoyed facials and mani-pedis, this day (the therapists providing these did not flinch at being tipped). Coco noted that the products used were not the high-end creams and polishes that one might expect at a salon in America or Europe; the most expensive products were by l'Oreal and Oil of Olay. Coco noted that the Holy Trinity Spa's merchandise at the gift shop was somewhat different than what one might expect to see in a typically evangelical place of business - including not only sunglasses, books, and supplements but also sex-enhancing oils and edible panties. When she brought these to my attention, I looked online at the resort's website and found that it is promoted as a honeymoon and marriage enrichment destination. And, certainly, among the very few guests there present with us were couples who appeared to be very much in love and taking full advantage of the provision for relief from the stresses of getting married (just as the website promises).

It was the bathroom of the Abishag building that gave Coco her first clue, however, that the Holy Trinity at least had a different sense of humor from most evangelical institutions with which we are acquainted. There, she was greeted by a sign when she closed the door of the stall she was using:

The Holy Trinity logo

But such was the entire place, full of unexpected things. The cable television provided to our room had fourteen channels, of which eleven provided actual programming and only three of those non-religious programs. Of the religious programming, I discovered one channel with the symbol for the spa pasted in the upper right corner. It ran only the preaching of someone who seemed to be a popular speaker, talking about how just about all medical science agrees with the Bible. Of the few times I tuned in and watched for five minutes or more, I watched a channel with the Spa's logo on it and which featured the Singapore-based evangelist Joseph Prince. He seemed like a curious choice for Ghanaian TV viewers to be watching, considering that he is not even African, but the owner of the Holy Trinity may have found in Rev. Prince's sermons' blending of science and Christianity some resonance with Dr. Anyah's holistic approach to medicine.

That said, Joseph Prince was just one more voice among many on television and radio and promoted on billboards spouting Prosperity Gospel themes and promising miracles. I'll try and address my feelings about this in another article, but let it suffice for me to say here that - seeing the conditions of life in Ghana, which are much like the conditions of its infrastructure and the practices of drivers and pedestrians there - people there as everywhere are simply wanting to make ends meet, and it may indeed require a miracle for most of them to do it!

The Mystery of Singbe Pieh

Singbe Pieh

A sermon by the Rev. David Denoon, delivered March 3, 2013
For audio, listen here (delivered extemporaneously).

References - Luke 13:1-9; “Black Agency, in the Amistad Uprising: Or, You’ve Taken Our Cinqué and Gone – Schindler, Morphed into John Quincy Adams, Rescues Africans — a Retrograde Film Denies Black Agency and Intelligence, Misses What Really Happened, and Returns to the Conservative Themes of the Fifties; with an Account of What Really Happened, and a Few Words about Abolitionists as Fanatics.” By Jesse Lemisch (Souls, Winter 1999); "Cinqué of the Amistad a Slave Trader? Perpetuating a Myth," by Howard Jones, Journal of American History, December 2000

The problem of suffering, Jesus seems to have said, is not really a problem. It is a condition. It is a learning opportunity... or, as a colleague of mine calls such things, "A.F.L.O." The "A" stands for, "Another," and the "L.O." refer to "Learning Opportunity." The F stands for what you think it stands for, when you are confronted with yet one more learning opportunity you don't want.

One such example of suffering might turn out to be the Sequester, now in effect, a singularly foolish and manipulative ploy suggested by the government to convince Congress to cooperate on reducing the federal deficit.  The new recession predicted by many economists as a result could prove crippling to working people across the country.

The people of Galilee killed by Pilate didn't deserve what they got any more than the eighteen underneath the falling Tower of Siloam deserved what they got. Nor does any of us deserve what we get when life proves miserable, at least not when the disaster we experience comes as a result of anything but our own stupidity. The important part of a random disaster is not the incident itself, Jesus argues. It's the positive purpose that may come forth from it.

"They were no worse sinners than you are," he assured his listeners, "but you do deserve what they got, if you don't make things better, if you refuse the blessings of the realm of God for yourself." Such things are going to happen; that is the condition of existence. What are you going to do about it.

Consider then, a man of Sierra Leone. The title of this sermon is, The Mystery of Singbe Pieh.

The mystery for many of you may be, purely and simply, Who or what IS Singbe Pieh?

Singbe Pieh was the leader of the revolt that took place on the schooner, La Amistad, which was a slave ship which likely had started as a transport of human cargo between islands in the Caribbean, but which in July 1839 was captured by a U.S. Coast Guard cutter off Long Island and was subsequently brought to port in New Haven, Connecticut.

Frontispiece image from A History of the Amistad Captives, compiled by J. W. Barber
(New Haven, CT: E. L. & J. W. Barber Publishers, 1840)

Singbe Pieh is the Mendi name of an Sierra Leonean citizen who, from the years 1839 to 1842, was known as Cinqué or Joseph Cinqué, as his case along with that of 52 other captives was considered by U.S. Federal courts and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Singbe Pieh motivated the initiation of the evangelistic effort of the Congregational Churches in America through the American Missionary Association, an association which funded not only his and his fellow captives’ legal defense but also the liberated captives’ return to Sierra Leone.  (In all fairness, not only the abolitionist Congregationalists funded the legal defense and restoration of the captives, but also northern Baptist and Presbyterian abolitionists.)

For the American public who read the newspaper accounts of his capture, trial, and restoration, Singbe Pieh was either a heroic figure or a fearsome one, depending on one’s opinion of African people.

Freedom Schooner Amistad

In the early 2000s, as part of the 160th anniversary of the span of years during which he and the other Amistad captives were in the United States challenging our identity as a nation based on freedom, equality, and justice, a full-scale replica of the Amistad funded in part by the United Church of Christ toured the seaports of the United States.  In the UCC we are proud of this moment in our history.

But it is important to remember that it was only a moment, just a little over three years.  Singbe Pieh’s life spanned about 25 years before the day in January 1839 when he was kidnapped and sold into slavery, and as many as 60 years afterward, depending on which account you believe.

You see, that is the problem about how we view Singbe Pieh.  We treat him often as if his life began, one triumphant night in June 1839 when, after being terrorized repeatedly by the taunts of the ship’s cook about his Spanish captors’ intention eventually to butcher him and the others and sell them as food, he managed to break free of his chains and then to free others, break into a box of sugar cane swords, and attack the ship’s crew.  They killed the captain... and the cook... and took the remaining crew prisoner.

That’s pretty amazing stuff.  But his life included so much more that we know only shadows of.  He was a husband and father of three, a rice farmer who lived in the Mendi village of Mani; so it is not difficult at all to imagine why he wanted to get back.  But when he did manage to return, his wife and children were gone and the village laid waste – victims of a civil war that started while he was away.  Singbe Pieh survived the Middle Passage and the American justice system.  You would think he deserved a happier reward.

My new favorite author, the professor of history emeritus at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, in 1999 published an article in the Columbia University journal, Souls, which identifies itself as “A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society.”  The article was entitled, “Black Agency, in the Amistad Uprising: Or, You’ve Taken Our Cinqué and Gone – Schindler, Morphed into John Quincy Adams, Rescues Africans — a Retrograde Film Denies Black Agency and Intelligence, Misses What Really Happened, and Returns to the Conservative Themes of the Fifties; with an Account of What Really Happened, and a Few Words about Abolitionists as Fanatics.” By Jesse Lemisch (Souls, Winter 1999)

The Amistad in question here is the 1997 film by Steven Spielberg starring Morgan Freeman, Djimon Hounsou, and Matthew McConnaughey (oh! And Anthony Hopkins as former president John Quincy Adams – what is it, lately, with foreign actors recruited to play American presidents!).  In his article, Prof. Lemisch points out that, for all Steven Spielberg’s good intentions in creating the film which at the time the director referred to as his most important work to date, for Lemisch the film was “a present-minded Nineties screed for white paternalism.”  Prof. Lemisch points out that there was a distinct lack of back story included here.  Singbe Pieh appears to have come up with the idea of revolt entirely on his own.  Others join him, seemingly, because he has managed to free himself and looses their chains too.  There is no indication of conspiracy or planning.

But the fact that, historically, the captives used a file to cut through their shackles – not a loosened nail to unlock them, as the movie shows – they must have devised a system together to hide the file.  Furthermore, their knowledge of a sealed crate filled with swords and the speed with which they must have acted to open it and distribute them – since the crew on deck appears to have been taken completely by surprise – points to quite a bit of premeditation.  Lemisch argues that the real story of La Amistad is not about a group of black people set free by the magnificent justice of a white people’s system of government or about black and white cooperation.  The Amistad incident is about resistance and rebellion; it is about, as Lemisch puts it, “black agency.”

"The Revolt," one in the Amistad Mutiny series of murals (1938) by Hale Woodruff

Not only was much of Singbe Pieh’s life stolen from him, but the moment of his triumph toward liberation is made to seem more like an accident than a well-planned victory. And yet it must have been.

Then, the most abiding story about him after his return to Sierra Leone is that he became a slave trader there.  And, no matter how much evidence there may be to the contrary the allegation keeps getting repeated.  The most damning evidence to the contrary is that this part of his biography is actually taken from a novel, the author of which admitted that where there were gaps in the story, he made things up.  ("Cinqué of the Amistad a Slave Trader? Perpetuating a Myth," by Howard Jones, Journal of American History, December 2000)

Why?

Not, why would people believe this?  We know that!

No, Why, after his life was so piled high with misery, would Singbe Pieh not at some point have seen some enduring happiness?  At some point, hasn’t he suffered enough?  At some point, haven’t we all suffered enough?

__________________________

I don’t know if it’s a satisfying response for you.  I know it isn’t entirely satisfying for me, but Jesus offered this response to his followers when they pressed him to know why people who seemed innocent should have been the subject of suffering... the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices, the eighteen who died when a tower fell on them.  He said, “Were any of these less righteous than any other ordinary people trying to live life as best they could?  No.”

And then he told them a parable about a garden and a fruitless tree.  The owner of the tree wanted to cut it down and replace it.  The one who tended the garden, however, pleaded with the owner to allow him to fertilize it.  “Let me dig around it and put manure around it,” the gardener said.

That, Jesus seems to say, pretty well sums up our condition: we are given lives abounding in manure because that is what enriches them.  Granted, in the moment of suffering, these words do not come as much comfort, saying as they do that suffering is inevitable and perhaps even necessary, even if in it we can find new meaning and purpose for ourselves.

People caught in disaster don’t deserve it.  There's no real mystery to it.  They simply were as they were when misery began.  It isn’t God’s will that people suffer, and they don’t go through it or succumb to it because they are worse sinners than anyone else.  The world is as it is, says Jesus: Manure happens.  But because it happens, we can be better; life can be better than it was.

Singbe Pieh and his fellow captives deserve to be recognized as something more than victims of their times or as justifiers of the American system.  They deserve to be seen as more than people saved from perdition by a single man (John Quincy Adams) or group of people (abolitionists).  They deserve to be recognized as human beings who when they saw the opportunity to reverse their fortunes, together tried.  However difficult it may be this century and three-quarters later to see them clearly, we owe them at least that much recognition.  And this is the day we in the UCC celebrate Singbe Pieh and all of them and the mystery of the tragedy they shared and the life we all share.  From sadness and hardship, they were able to wrest redemption into the light of day.

And their story bore brilliant fruit: Something not often remembered is that their was the first of three great slave rebellions in a period of five years.  In November 1841, nineteen slaves aboard the Creole, which was loaded with 153 slaves bound from Hamption Roads, Virginia, to New Orleans, Louisiana, overwhelmed that ship's crew and ordered them to sail for Liberia.  Insufficiently provisioned for a trans-Atlantic voyage, the crew convinced the mutineers to allow them to sail for Nassau, the Bahamas, instead.  Once arrived in the port of that British protectorate, despite repeated protestations from the American consulate, because British law forbade the ownership of slaves, Bahamian police set all but seven of the captives free.  Those seven - three women and four children - elected instead to sail on to New Orleans.

Furthermore, in November 1842, hundreds of slaves of Cherokees in the Indian Territory, walked away from their masters and headed for Mexico, which also had outlawed slavery.  [Here, the audio version of this sermon misrepresents the actual history. I apologize for the inaccuracy. -DD]  The Cherokee Nation raised a militia which captured the slaves, just north of the Red River (Texas border).  It is interesting also to note that, after this rebellion in 1842, there was not another slave rebellion until Harper's Ferry in 1859.

It can surely be no accident that, with the sensationalism of the Amistad story in the news in both the North and the South almost constant from 1839 until 1842, that the affirmative decisions in 1841 of the Federal District Court in New Haven and the U.S. Supreme Court influenced the resolve of those slaves to assume freedom when the opportunity presented itself.  Slave revolts and rebellions such as those on the Creole and in the Indian Territory could not have occurred without conspiracy and planning of individuals convinced that freedom was within their grasp if they would only take it.

The inspiring agency of the Amistad captives continues to bear fruit today, in articles I have cited here, and in Civil Rights and Human Rights movements, here and across the globe.

And much as the Sequester threatens to recede our economy, because we know the story of the liberated Amistad captives, we know that there is hope.  But we knew that already didn't we.

The one who told the parable of the fertilized fig tree is one who lived this reality himself.  Our Jesus was arrested unjustly, and tortured, and executed for no good reason.  But he would not be kept down; on the third day he was restored to life, gloriously and for ever, as a living example for us all.

We have that hope for ourselves, so let us be examples of the freedom that makes us free and the love that gives us life.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

What We Say (sermon, September 16, 2012)

[Our seminarian, Reina Ueno, a native of Sendai, Japan, was the reader of scripture for the morning's service. To hear her reading Isaiah 50:4-9 and James 3:1-12, please listen to the audio version of this sermon.]

The scriptures we have heard today I think are unusually apropos of our particular moment in history.

Furthermore, for a church in a denomination which asserts that “God is still speaking,” these readings are pointedly significant.  And to have them spoken among us by one whose first language is not English I think may add light to just how important what we say can be.  Then to be aware that the language in which the letter of James was written was not English but Greek, and that even though translated from Greek into English, the letter (by evidence of some untranslated Hebrew or Aramaic words in it, such as Gehenna) probably was collected from sermons preached in Aramaic by James full of the Holy Spirit, it is entirely fitting to our purposes today that a non-native English speaker should be working so diligently to make James's message understood.

As to this moment in history...

Of course what I am referring to is, when an anti-Islam radical in Hollywood made a scandalous motion picture about the Muslim prophet – of whom their holy book and tradition insists that no image (graven or otherwise) shall be made. Muslims with perspectives similarly limited as the radical producer’s reacted violently.

I have heard speculation that the producer of the film is probably a Coptic Christian with an agenda to humiliate Muslims as he remembered having been humiliated for his Christianity growing up in Egypt.  But he ought to have resisted the temptation to do what he did.  “Not many of you should become teachers,” the apostle James once said, “for you are judged more severely.”  What that producer expressed in fourteen minutes... what he said incited violence to the extent that innocent and genuinely good-hearted, helpful people got killed.

Now, the fact that good people got killed indicates that what you say may not be the only concern we ought to have as we seek to restore the whole, which of course is the focus of our new Sunday School curriculum.  No, also, what you do is significant, and next week’s sermon is titled, “What You Do,” so I’ll get to the murderous mobs next week (I imagine that will still be timely.).  What we say is enough of a topic, for now.

Over time, we have always acknowledged that things we say carry weight, even power.

Christianity includes a very important clause, in the law on which our practice of faith is based, namely the commandment, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”

That law is in our holy canon, because we know deeply – having as one of our myths of creation a story in which what God says causes things to be – words have power.

That law (“You shall not bear false witness.” (Exodus 20:16)) is there, because we affirm in that creation story, that words have power.

That law (“You shall not bear false witness.”) is there, because the power that words have originates with the speaker.

That law is there, because we who speak claim to be people of an invisible Creator whom we give substance!  We are God’s physically existing representatives, and when we misrepresent God by saying something as scandalous as to disrespect someone else’s religion, someone else’s prophet, we invite God’s judgment upon us and the world’s judgment upon God.

Even if some members of that religion deserve to have God’s judgment brought against them because they once persecuted you simply for being a follower of another faith tradition, our law says that it does not give you the right to bear false witness against them.  The things one knows to be untrue, and the things one only speculates are true, and the things that one just really, really wishes would be true – all of which appear to have been contained in the testimony made against Islam in the fourteen minutes of video available about that crazy movie on the internet – are false witness, once you say them.

“Brothers and sisters,” James said, “not all of you should be teachers.”

What we say as people of God – and by virtue of our baptism, there is never a time in our lives when we are not the people of God – what we say has potential for a profound effect, to do what God’s words can do – to bless or to destroy.

What we say may not only have a profound effect on others; it can affect us, too.  Words are powerful, and at their best our words give sound and substance to a silent Spirit waiting to be revealed.

But church people over the past many decades have begun to stay away in droves.  Christian communities have seemed more interested in delivering a good message than in allowing that message to activate with power.  We struggle as faithful people to demonstrate the power we have experienced God’s word to have in our lives.  I witness daily the perseverance with which you all endeavor to make your lives resonant with the power you have found in the word you have received.

It’s the word of life, and it has restorative potential.  What choice do we have but to respond, thus demonstrating that not all church people are hypocrites!

To the end of presenting a new and vitalized word for others to speak, theologians will revise concepts of the divine, or propose new interpretations and patterns of those concepts, in order to get to the heart of God’s pure message.

The Rev. Dr. Charles McCollough at work

Our friend Charles McCollough is here, this morning, with the express purpose of visualizing God’s word anew, through his sculpture.

Our friend Libby Reimers is encouraging us to invite others to re-envision their search for faith in a Wednesday morning series, starting October 10.  In that study, some very creative writers and illustrators and videographers invite us to consider our beliefs in new or innovative ways.

Because what we say about God and ourselves in relationship with one another gives the rest of the world a pretty strong impression about who we are and what ends we are seeking to accomplish.  And it says profound things about how we think of ourselves.

What we say as people of faith (and there is no time in our lives, once we have joined the church by baptism that we are NOT people of faith) will provide a centerpoint of focus for those who do not somehow know God.  It will further provide a centerpoint of concentration for those who are seeking to know God more fully and are trusting us to be accurate representatives... people like our children and others with formative minds and hearts.

What we say is important.  “Not all of you should be teachers,” said James.  “You bring greater judgment on yourself.”

But what choice do we have?  What choice is there?  Words have power, even if we don’t want to use them as if we were teachers.  We serve the word of God – Christ the word – spoken from the start of creation and still being spoken today.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

Chief Rabbi of Great Britain Jonathan Sacks has said,

The greatest single antidote to violence is conversation, speaking our fears, listening to the fears of others, and in that sharing of vulnerabilities, discovering a genesis of hope.  

He has used as evidence the parents in Israel and the Palestinian territories whose children have been killed in violent conflicts there, seeking reconciliation for the sake of future generations of children and for the continuation of their homeland in peace.  When they have been able to be vulnerable with one another, they have found new ground and invited others to it.

Perhaps on what you would consider a more mundane level, but which affects me greatly as a minister, if divorcing couples can talk together, maybe with a moderator present, and take the time really to speak from the heart and to listen from the heart, respecting and not insisting on one’s own way, the parting can be peaceful.  Thus, Rabbi Sacks has further observed, "It’s when you can feel your opponents’ pain that you're beginning the path to reconciliation."

We can underestimate sometimes just how crucial it can be to actually listen to somebody and to make yourself heard.  The premarital course of study that I share with couples includes a section that I emphasize probably more than they care to perform.  It’s called Assertiveness and Active Listening, and through it what I try to do is to strengthen the couples’ understanding of the importance of stating their hopes and dreams and feelings, and the equal importance of paying attention to what the other says.  It is the discipline of echoing what the other has said and checking in with the speaker that one has understood, and only then offering back one’s own feelings and thoughts, constantly checking in with the other about the vicissitudes of the human conscience and heart and spirit, until new ground is reached or familiar ground affirmed.  If we lose that, if we fail to allow the other to say what they need to say, if we fail to allow their words to have the power that they can have with our own, then we weaken and disrespect the other.

This way of speaking and hearing affirms what we all insist is true about the power of words, and as a fellow person of faith I think Rabbi Sacks is right.  If we can simply learn to practice respectful patterns of speaking and listening, affirming our own and others’ power of words, the world will be a better place.  "The greatest single antidote to violence is conversation."

Maybe the best we can do is to try not to forget how much power our words may have... and how important it can be to say them rightly, properly...  Maybe the best we can do is to live our speaking as Reina was having to live it a while ago: endeavoring to say the English words that represent the Greek words that represent the Aramaic speaker who sought to represent the heart of God.

We will not necessarily say our words with the same kind of precision that a foreign-born reader might be seeking, but we will be endeavoring to represent faithfully to our world One who speaks beyond words and, perhaps through us, with words, in Christ’s name.

We Will Be Changed

(sermon, January 22, 2012)

I am intrigued that this year’s expectation for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity has been identified as “change.”

“We will be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:51), the literature prepared for this year’s Week proclaims.  And it uses as its primary text the first letter of Paul to the church at Corinth, the fifteenth chapter (vv. 51-58).  Paul there describes his own experience in the faith, having put on for all practical purposes a new identity, having died, seen the end of his world, and engaged fully and completely a new beginning likened to Christ’s resurrection.

I suppose that the expectation ought to go without saying.  If you begin attending a church, either change has occurred to you – such as a move for work or to be closer to loved ones – or it’s been foisted upon you – as when crisis or disaster strikes, those sorts of things we have come to call an act of God, so that you need a new location in order to set things straight.

But sometimes, as in the classic sense, we will ourselves choose to connect with a faith community because we sense that there is something not quite right, or even entirely wrong, with ourselves, and we need to set ourselves on a new path to “get right with God” or our neighbor… or ourselves.

We will be changed.  Won’t we?

So, maybe the planners of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity are merely stating the obvious.  The planners, this year, were clergy from Poland, which is a country that has had more than its share of change, over the last decade and a half.

For they know, as few of us in America nowadays seem to, that unity will change us.

In the United States, perhaps ironically, unity has often been a fearsome prospect.  That was the great fear in the 1940s and 1950s of the Congregational churches across this country in anticipation of the formation of the United Church of Christ.  The hue and cry went forth, warnings of a loss of the Congregational Way in the face of the organic union forming this new denomination.  Try as we might to quiet our concerns with scripture by giving the new organization a motto from the gospel according to John – “That they all may be one.” (John 17:21) – the desirability of unity was problematic, because unity changes things.  We will be changed, sometimes whether we like it or not.

And now, 55 years later, we must admit it’s true.  Things have indeed changed.  We’ve kept a lot of our former trappings, but many have changed.  I’m wearing an alb, not preaching robes.  We’ve got new liturgies in our official worship books and hymnal, seeming more Episcopalian or Lutheran sometimes than historically Congregational... worrisome for a branch of Christianity founded by Pilgrims who referred to themselves as Separatists.

But we Separatists have at least given lip-service for centuries to ameliorating the differences between ourselves and others, for the sake of doing the most good wherever possible.

We were ecumenists from the start.  About a hundred years ago among the Protestant denominations that have come to be known as “the Mainline” — Congregationalists yes, but also Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Episcopalians, and Reform and Evangelical Christians of German and Dutch ancestry — there arose a movement that came to be called ecumenism.  The word comes from the Greek word for “to inhabit,” oikoumene, but includes an understanding of ordering a household.  The word “economy” is derived from it also.

We seek common ground, within our diversity and separateness, and sometimes in spite of it, for the purpose of expanding the realm of God. 

So, within the movement, there have been groups concerned with “faith and order,” or developing a visible unity across Christian boundaries.  A “life and work” movement also arose, promoting a combination of efforts for relief and care in trouble-stricken areas of the world.  Similar groups that instead promoted religious education and evangelism across denominational lines also formed.



Logo of the
National Council of Churches of Christ
in the United States



Eventually, in 1908, the Federal Council of Churches was formed in the United States, from churches favoring the Faith and Order and Life and Work movements.  In 1950, the Federal Council became the National Council of Churches.  The founding religious bodies of the United Church of Christ were constituent organizations of the National Council, and UCC members to this day hold positions of high standing in the organization.

Catholics joined the movement in 1966 as a result of Vatican II, but refuse to join either the U.S. National Council or the World Council on the principle that reunion needs to be a return of the Protestants and Orthodox to Catholicism.

Ecumenists were the ones most identifiable in leadership against slavery, alcohol consumption and the liquor trade, women’s rights, child labor, and unjust wars... and for the 40-hour work week (claiming, “8 hours of work, 8 hours of play, 8 hours of rest, for every day”) and minimum wage.  Recently, the Christian right has often identified ecumenists as socialists or even communists.  But how many of them would trade the strides we have taken, ecumenically?

The ecumenical movement has softened its emphases over time.  Faith and Order now finds little expression except in community Thanksgiving worship services, or in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, January 18 – 25 each year.  Individually, our local churches celebrate World Communion Sunday on the first Sunday in October.

But the Consultation on Church Union, which now continues as Churches Uniting in Christ, was an outgrowth in 1960 of the ecumenical movement which had been seeking the goal of bringing under a single structure or banner the nine denominations that have participated in it, but now simply seeks to retain much of the same sort of dialogue to be found in the Faith and Order discussions of the National and World Council of Churches. 

Imagine! A reunion of Community Churches, various brands of Methodists, the Disciples of Christ, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and the UCC.  We never quite made it, but we did develop a Common Lectionary, used by many of the constituent denominations and even our local church occasionally.

The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, which we use in our worship services for readings, was translated by leading ecumenical scholars from various Christian traditions and is published by the National Council of Churches, as was the Revised Standard Version before it; and the American Standard Version prior to that by the International Council for Religious Education, which was related to the Federal Council of Churches.

We will be changed.  Won’t we!

In the year 2000 there were also concordats signed between the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the American Episcopal Church, affirming that their celebrations of the sacraments are virtually the same and that their clergy may lift the chalice and paten together or interchangeably at the front of their separate constituencies.  Similarly, the same Lutheran body maintains a dialogue with the Reformed tradition churches in the U.S., including the UCC.  And a world alliance of Lutherans are advancing a program of talks with the Roman Catholic Church about commonality of purpose and practice.

Meanwhile, the strongest and clearest expression of the Life and Work movement here in the Saint Louis area is the CROP Walk for Church World Service, which is a hunger relief arm of the National Council of Churches and which we participated in during October.  But another, subtler version of that same fundraiser is the springtime One Great Hour of Sharing offering, collected by mainline churches for Church World Service on the third Sunday of March, each year.

So, dare we hope for a reunion of the Church to stand together again undivided?  Need we hope for it?  Is that what we want?  More importantly, is that what God wants?

Or, is it even something reasonable to hope for?

Well, the more that we look into the distant Christian past, back to the First Century shortly after the wonders of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection took place, the more we are able to see that the union which came in the Fourth Century under the Roman Emperor Constantine was the exception rather than the rule of the Church up to that time.  Christianity was in those first three hundred years pretty much as it is now, with communities that shared expressions of faith separated from Christian communities that had differing expressions or understandings of it.

Some were united by national interests, some by charitable ones, some by persecutions they were suffering, but all by the love of God they discovered through the Messiah.

So, maybe the variety is OK.  And it’s really up to us not to permit our lack of a monolithic, over-arching, all-encompassing organization to mean that we do harm to each other.  I mean, yes, theology is important; seeking to practice our faith rightly is important; endeavoring to correct the deceptions others have accepted may even be essential.  But not if we’re going to kill each other over it, or excommunicate or even exclude.  People are people, and though we may celebrate "one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Parent of us all" (Ephesians 4:5), we sin against one another and against God, but most especially against our neighbor, if we make war or pitched battle with each other.  Let us open the eyes of our hearts to accept the diversity and wide-ranging understanding of who Christ’s people are, so that we can enjoy the reunion when it comes, or comes available!

I’m reminded of the story in John, chapter 2, of the jars of water at the wedding at Cana, which Jesus changes into jars of wine.  Once Jesus interacted with them, they changed from still, simple, unassuming water into water with such potency that the guests remarked that the host had saved the best for last!

Something you may know is that in the creation of churches, if they are to grow, one of the first things we have to do is to form small groups – interest groups, age-based groups, affinity groups, groups focusing on spiritual growth and social interaction.  We intentionally divide our congregations for the sake of growing them, demanding that group members invite newcomers to be part of their groups.  We use the groups, separated though they may be, for the sake of greater unity.

And maybe the Church in the world is the same way.  We started out as many different traditions – North African, Palestinian, Asian, European.  Then, with our acceptance by the Roman Empire, we made an effort at being one, giant, monolithic, over-arching group, and endured the painful reality of empire, how human power will be imposed and exercised by the few or the one so that commonness may be the order of the day.

We would eventually learn, despite the powerful… with the Great Schism of the 1100s and the Reformation of the 1500s: Separate jars contain the same wine.  Many gifts can emerge from the same Spirit.  Many denominations can make up the same church.  Many names can nevertheless assemble the same family of God.  Uniqueness actually can promote unity.  And, everywhere in that, we will be changed!

How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord,

Is laid for his truth in his excellent Word.

What more can he say than to you he hath said,

To you who for refuge to Jesus have fled.

Fear not, I am with thee, O be not afraid!

For I am thy God and will e’er give the aid:

I’ll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause the to stand

Upheld by my righteous, omnipotent hand.

The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose,

I will not, I will not, desert to its foes;

That soul though all hell should endeavor to shake,

I will never, no never, no never forsake.
("How Firm a Foundation," from K. Rippon's A Selection of Hymns, 1787)

We will be changed.

We will be changed, but we need not be afraid.

Whether that change is imposed by our environment, by our God, or by ourselves, we will be changed.

If there is one certainty in living, it is that.  If there is one requirement of unity, it is that we allow others to change us, and God to change us.  And if there is any hope for us, it is the very change we will engage.  For with that change we will require unity, maybe not of mindset, maybe not of ideology, maybe not of theology, maybe even not of worldview, but of spirit.  Of spirit.  Of Holy Spirit.

We do this, willingly, in Christ’s name.

Amen.

Easter Invitation

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Be sure to watch to the end!