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.
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| 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)
("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.
