Mystic Congregational Church, UCC

Mystic, Connecticut

Sermon from May 28, 2006

“The Church In the World”

Rev. Thomas Ratmeyer

Scriptures:

Psalm 1

John 17:6-23

We are one week away from Pentecost, from the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that will enable the church of Christ to speak and be understood even after Jesus has left.  In the calendar of our faith, Jesus ascended to be with God this past Thursday—forty days after Easter and ten days before Pentecost.  For all we know, we are in limbo—without Jesus and not yet with the Spirit of God.  It is as good a time as any to think about the fate of the church in the world.

It seems odd, then, that the main scripture that is designated for this Sunday is one from before Jesus’ death.  It is the prayer of Jesus that is uttered before his arrest in the garden of Gethsemane.  Yet if you read this prayer, in fact the whole of chapter 17, it reads like Jesus’ last will and testament.  It includes the intercessions for the church and the admonitions to the church for the time when he is not there any more.  Only that his not being there anymore is not just in reference to his death but to his ascension to heaven after the resurrection.

Jesus prays for our church, for our safety, for our sanctification and for our success.  He expresses the hope in his prayer “that we may all be one,” and that, in the way we love one another, his identity and his love may be known.

Jesus prays on behalf of a faith community that lives in a hostile world—a world hostile toward God.  You might think that a secular world, a secular society, would be hostile toward God.  You might think that a society that used to have the name of God on its lips but does not any more is hostile toward God.  You might think that replacing “Merry Christmas” with “Happy Holidays” for political correctness’ sake is hostile toward God.  But neither secularism nor political correctness are a form of enmity toward God, and certainly not the kind of enmity that Jesus is talking about.  The secular world, at its most pronounced, does not care what you believe and who you profess as your God, if anyone.  The hostile world that Jesus is talking about, in my opinion, is a world of intolerance.

Is intolerance the way of the world?  I don’t know.  It often seems that way.  Maybe we can tell by asking, “What is the opposite of intolerance?”  Is it tolerance?  It is, only in a very special sense of the word, in a sense that implies hard work, but not in the sense that just simply lets something or somebody be when, really, we would prefer otherwise.  I tolerate noise.  I tolerate TV commercials if I care enough about the program I’m watching.  I tolerate—barely, but I tolerate—red beets.  I believe the opposite of intolerance is more than mere tolerance:  it is equality and justice for all.

If the society at large has yet to fully realize a state of equality and justice for all, if our civilization has not evolved to a state of equality and justice for all, if humanity has not evolved to a state of equality and justice for all, then we as Christians have to defy the world we live in and embody equality and justice for all.  It is our calling that comes from knowing the love of Christ, and it ought to be our message that we speak in the same breath as we proclaim the birth of Christ at Christmas and the resurrection of Christ at Easter.  We seek equality and justice for all.

Jesus says to love one another as he loved us.  Jesus says to treat all people with equality and to practice justice.  But Jesus also says that we don’t belong to this world just as he doesn’t belong to this world.  Is it because we are so otherworldly and esoteric?  No, I think we are a pretty worldly bunch.  But by our nature as those baptized in the Spirit of God, we do not belong to a world of intolerance.

 That we, as a church, embody and advocate equality and justice for all should neither make us aliens nor should it make us inappropriate in our society.  Those are the values upon which this country was born.  They are at the heart of our constitution.  I hope that some of our conversations this Memorial Day weekend will be about how we, as a society, can yet more fully live up to our true calling of equality and justice for all.

Yet this morning, as we gather as the church, let us acknowledge and own up to the great irony that so many acts of intolerance in this world are committed in the name of religion and faith.  How ironic that the secular world often enough teaches religious folks about tolerance, where you’d think it ought to be the other way around.

Equality and Justice have many synonyms in the life of the church.  I consider love and acceptance the ultimate position of strength, because only those can truly love in a selfless and unconditional way who are secure in who they are and whose they are.  It is out of weakness and insecurity that we try to shape the rest of the world to look like us, just as it is a position of weakness to want to divide the world into those who are like us and those who are not. 

Our world is diverse.  Diversity is the reality and the beauty of God’s creation.  Frankly, if we are created in the image of God, then a diverse humanity makes for a more interesting God.  It keeps us humble that God is always a lot more awesome than any of the concepts we may use to describe him—“him”, of course, being the first concept that falls short of the full reality of God.

We have a diversity of religions in the world.  It ought to be a testimony for how rich it is to be human and to possess a sense of the divine, and yet we make it an excuse for intolerance.  Even within our own Christian faith, we have a diversity of beliefs.  I find that as beautiful as the diversity of creation itself.

Let there not be a Christian church that tells any people that they are not children of God,  that they are outside of God’s grace merely for they are.  If Christians practice intolerance, it defies the love of Christ and the central hope and prayer of Jesus in our scripture:  “that they may all be one.”   

Jesus’ message has the truth and the power to overcome the divisions of the world, and it most certainly can overcome the divisions in the church.  With hundreds of denominations in Protestantism alone, we have a ways to go toward unity in the Christian faith.  But our own denomination, which describes itself as “united and uniting,” is a witness to the fact that what unites us with other Christians outweighs that which sets us apart.  Almost fifty years ago, in 1957, the founders of the United Church of Christ brought churches from four traditions together into one body of Christ that carries in its seal of identity the very hope of Jesus Christ that we are talking about today:  “That they may all be one.”

The anniversary year of the founding of our denomination will begin this November with an All-Saints Day celebration.  We will have an opportunity to remember and to celebrate how this congregation came to join the UCC in the 60’s, as well as to explore what our denominational identity means to us today. Like true Congregationalists, we might not all feel equally close to our United Church of Christ.  But like true Christians, we can live with that diversity and we can celebrate it.

Praise be to God!  Amen.