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.

"Stones" (sermon, May 22, 2011)

Scriptures from the Revised Common Lectionary for Year A, Easter 5, May 22, 2011:
Acts 7:55-60; Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16; 1 Peter 2:2-10; John 14:1-14

Our scriptures today come from the Revised Common Lectionary, the three-year rotation of readings offered by an interchurch body once called the Consultation on Church Union (now called, Churches Uniting in Christ).  The purpose of the unified sequence of readings is to give us mainline Christians something like one voice, making us seem like one people on the one day of the week when we are both the most united and the most segregated, by culture, tradition, format, and style.

So, blame the composers of the Revised Common Lectionary for coming up with this at first apparently misbegotten set of rocky references.  Maybe they meant to create this stony blend in order to demonstrate the plethora of purposes to which stones may be used.  And, what is more, the precise purposes for which we – individually and as a church – have been designed.  But it also puts me in mind of how much throughout history, even up to the present, we have used our religion as a cruelly-aimed stone against people we dislike or who dislike us.

We should be stones...

In Psalm 31, God is lauded as our Rock and our Refuge; in Acts 7, we see the stoning of Stephen; then also John 14, in which Jesus figures himself as a masterbuilder; and finally my own subject matter for now, First Peter 2, encouraging us to think of ourselves as building materials for a new and spiritual temple dedicated to God.

I want to concentrate on our reading from First Peter and to suggest the possibility that we may be at one with God by understanding and cultivating a character for ourselves like that which Christ revealed – accepting and affirming others regardless of differences – living lives that emulate his.

Strangely enough, the author of First Peter encourages us to pursue this, emphasizing how we are like "living stones." 

You would think that the impermeability and hardness of stones would make for us a metaphor for being isolated and closed off, but that is not the case! We are to be living stones, hewn and polished and fitted together into a great and brilliant temple for our God.

Sadly for the Church, this is usually an ought-to-be statement rather than a statement of reality.  Throughout our history, and especially since Christianity became a major Western religion, it has been less common for us to behave as if we are stones being built into a temple, and more as if we are using our religion as a stone to smite perceived foes and competitors.

Our religion is part of ourselves, but historically Christians have used bits of our religion, to abuse others.
The Church has been notorious throughout history, even up to the present, for having exercised a cruel measure of power against others who resisted the good news we were professing because they thought that the good news wasn’t all that great.

Lately and historically, we have also seen people who are either innocent or naive who suffer because they have believed in the missiles church leaders were throwing. Whether they were misguided folk throwing themselves to the lions in ancient Rome, or Rapture-believers giving over everything they own and survive on, these unhappy few suffered because of the stupidity of others. Both of these examples were simply trying their best to do what they had heard God would have them do in order to demonstrate their faithfulness. More's the pity.

Mind you, using their religion as a weapon (and losing innocents who got caught in the crossfire) is probably grounded in the persecution Christians received at the hands of others for the first three centuries of our existence: They once stoned Stephen? Well, then, we’ll just stone them back!  But, based on the knowledge of grace and peace taught to us by our Redeemer, it is indefensible, nowadays and ever since the Fourth Century when we became a world power, revenge is out of the question. 

In other words, we have been justifying our bad behavior of unjustifiably stoning others, using rather selectively the language or meanings we have found in the Bible.

Take as one example our historical responses to Jesus’ words to Philip in the fourteenth chapter of the gospel according to John: “I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.”

These words have been used and, let’s be blunt, abused by Christians for centuries.  They have served as words of comfort in nearly every funeral service I have ever performed, but outside of funerals, the saying has been anything but comforting. Instead, we have tended to use them to create an elitist, exclusionary attitude among Christians, against people of other religions or of no religion at all. We living stones have had a common tendency to hurl this saying like a weapon, when we should not.

Some, like the scholars in the Jesus Seminar, have counter-argued that Jesus never actually said these words.  In fact, according to a majority of the Jesus Seminar, Jesus himself never said anything that has been recorded in the gospel according to John.  Rather, John is a voice of Christian tradition as it would have been heard in the late First and early Second Centuries.  The voice of Christ here, they say, is actually the voice of the early Church.

I can neither confirm nor deny this claim, and (frankly) neither can the Jesus Seminar.  It’s just their best guess.  Mind you, it’s a pretty good guess, I’m sure.  But I suspect that the reason for them arguing against these words coming out of Jesus’ mouth is that they want to discredit the abuses for which they’ve been used.

Unfortunately, by claiming that Jesus never said what he says in John, the Jesus Seminar pretty effectively challenges the authority of John’s gospel when, in fact, what it would be far better to do – for the sake of Christian history and tradition – would be, to make an alternative interpretation of the gospel as accurate as possible.  Because even the strictest readers of the gospel have to admit, the saying, “I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me,” can have numerous meanings. 

The first meaning you might find, is the most traditionally recognized: Jesus is the only way to heaven.  I’ll admit right now, this might be what it means.  It might have been what Jesus meant.  Given what else we know about Jesus, however, if most of the rest of the sayings attributed to him are true, then to affirm in these words some sort of exclusive right to heaven for his followers is ridiculous.  And, further, to use these words to marginalize and exclude, or even villify, others is sinful.

You see, in John and all the other gospels, Jesus has numerous encounters with non-believers, or – at least – people who do not believe in God the way that he does, and in two cases (that of the Canaanite or Syrophoenician woman whose daughter is demon-possessed, and that of the Roman centurion who appeals to Jesus on behalf of his dying slave) Jesus actually praises them for their faith... a faith or a religion which is not the same as his. 

Furthermore, no Gentile whom Jesus helps is ever reported to change stripes.  But all are deemed worthy at least of recognition and honor by God’s very own Son.  This appears to me to indicate that the idea of faith or belief in Jesus as the only way to heaven is at least somewhat questionable.

Jesus lived in a pluralistic society much like ours.  And nowhere other than here in John, chapter 14, in this moment at the table of the last supper, has it been alleged that Jesus himself claimed for his followers exclusive access to God.  Heaven would appear, instead, to be attainable by people who – perhaps unbeknownst to themselves or even despite themselves, or (even more!) despite the efforts of Christian believers – happen to act as if they trusted in God.  As if is close enough, it is clear: so stop worrying about what other people think or believe, and work on yourself!

One more way of interpreting the saying,“I am the Way and the Truth and the Life,” is to hear in those words first of all the words “I am.”  For Jesus, a Jew, to be speaking these words is in a very important sense for him to be acknowledging and revering the Holy Name, "I AM THAT I AM" –  אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה – pronounced Ehyeh asher ehyeh. (Exodus 3:14)

Thus, “I AM: the Way and the Truth and the Life” (or “Yahweh [is] the Way and the Truth and the Life”) could be viewed as a statement of reverence for the Creator – Jesus’ own personal creed, you might say.  (see The New Interpreter's Bible, Vol. IX, p. 568: note for John 4:26)

With these words in John 14, Jesus might not be referring to himself (or, at least, not himself alone), and neither would he be doing so in the five other “I am” statements and discourses in John (“I AM” – the Bread of Life; the Light of the World; the Good Shepherd; the Resurrection and the Life; the True Vine). 

Throughout John, Jesus by these statements affirms and extols the presence, the power, and the faithfulness of God.

Read in this way, for him to say “No one comes to the Father except through me” is his faith-filled exclamation.  The Messiah here proclaims his cosmic role for the persecuted and long-suffering people of God. 

Maybe it’s time-bound affirmation of protection as salvation, a word for a particular empire.  Maybe it was as much as for him to say to Rome, “If you want to claim the lordship of the earth for yourselves, to usurp the one true God, you’ll have me to deal with me.”

But maybe it’s less time-bound, and as I consider many of us to believe.  Maybe anyone who wants to get to heaven will eventually have to go walk in the ways and teachings of the Christ.  “No one gets to the Father except through me,” could be the crowning affirmation that there is something timeless, something religiously boundless, something that everyone in the end must face.  The only way to know God is to practice compassion.  The only sure measure of whether you save yourself and others will be in whether your life unfolded as Jesus’ did: Did you live and love and show compassion and die to yourself and find new life?

Not everyone can handle that rock of a religion.

The stone that the builders rejected is the chief cornerstone, and how shall we – living stones with our Messiah – not be joined together into a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God – honoring our God, defending God’s people!

Jesus is our builder and our cornerstone, our keystone: our way, our truth, our life!  We have come to this moment, this place, through the one who is our rock, our refuge, our first and only and insurmountable line of defense against Rome – the evil and the cruelty of this world – and who is shaping us living stones to be for the world as Christ is for us. 

So, we must not, we may not, we shall not use Christ’s words as projectiles and blunt instruments – slinging religious stones to exclude or isolate those others who are just as beloved of our God as we are, whether they are faithful to related traditions, to other traditions or to no tradition.  Goodness is goodness, in God’s eyes, and should be so in ours as well; righteousness is righteousness; and in a world so bent with misery, shame, and cruelty, in a world so broken and torn by sin, we – like Jesus – shall recognize and receive righteousness where it resides...

But we must, we may, we shall continue to express the invitation as well!  God is our way, our truth, and our life, and anyone who would practice as we practice and live as we live, with the assurance of salvation (of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our trials and rejoicing), must eventually and ultimately go through Christ.  The realm of heaven is at hand for everyone, everyone, and Jesus presents us an acceptable – albeit also challenging – way, truth, life.  The compassionate among us invite others to travel along with us, so that we may all anticipate and endure whatever joy or hardship may come.

We are stones hewn for building a temple not made with hands, a realm not seen with the eyes... for salvation, and neither we nor the religion we profess ought to be used for the destruction of others.  We are living stones fitted together for the protection of the vulnerable and the similarly compassionate, not for their abuse.

May God bless us, to not only possess Christlike faith but to express it and live it, as well.  Amen.