When I first got the task to talk about unity in the community, I was not sure which community to talk about. I thought about the world community, too big. The national community, someone else's topic and given the state of the elections battles, I am glad not to wrestle with that bugaboo. The family is a community, but thankfully I can cede that territory to another. That left me with the faith community. Great! Talk about fractious and expansive. I am in the process of reading Prothero's God in not One. The book is wonderfully informative, but it only points out how much the major faith communities are as dislike as similar. Where we focus on sin, our Muslim cousins focus on submission, and Buddhists seem more concerned with right living as right believing.
With all that in mind, I think I will stick with unity with the Christian faith community. First, I want to state without apology that unity is not uniformity. Let's jump to today's primary text.
Christ is just like the human body—a body is a unit and has many parts; and all the parts of the body are one body, even though there are many. We were all baptized by one Spirit into one body, whether Jew or Greek, or slave or free, and we all were given one Spirit to drink. Certainly the body isn’t one part but many. If the foot says, “I’m not part of the body because I’m not a hand,” does that mean it’s not part of the body? If the ear says, “I’m not part of the body because I’m not an eye,” does that mean it’s not part of the body? If the whole body were an eye, what would happen to the hearing? And if the whole body were an ear, what would happen to the sense of smell? But as it is, God has placed each one of the parts in the body just like he wanted. If all were one and the same body part, what would happen to the body? But as it is, there are many parts but one body. So the eye can’t say to the hand, “I don’t need you,” or in turn, the head can’t say to the feet, “I don’t need you.” 1Cor 12:12-
Paul talks about the body of Christ as a reflection of the human body. The last time I looked, none of us is uniform. Yes, the clay God picked up to form us in the poetic story of creation was uniform, but once the breathe of life turned the clay to creature, we became a wonderfully differentiated set of organs and tissues that learned to praise God with heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Before anyone starts to look back to the good old days and long from the unity they had back then, think about that creation story, which is our own story in every way. When there was just one person, there was no problem. Once there were two, they found ways to blame each other for the disunity their decisions caused. While he blamed her and she blamed the Serpent, we all play the same game.
In the early church, there must have been strife that led to disunity. Why else would Paul spend so much time talking about what unity could look like. As sure as I know human nature, Paul knew a number of “eyes” complaining about the “feet” who got to go everywhere and the feet who complained about how the “eyes” never looked down to thank them for taking the body to so many exciting places. When God's people come to talk to about lack of unity in the Body, we can find all manner of people to blame. Well, the Baptists just don't understand grace very well. After all, if the amount of water makes a difference then that's almost “works,” right? If the Methodists would just relax a little and allow the Spirit room to move, they might not be the frozen chose. They kill the Spirit with all those committees. And what about the Orthodox churches, nobody really knows what they believe anyway. And on, and on and on. Perhaps if we look at each of the families within the Christian faith community as parts of the Body and not hindrances to growth, we might be able to work together more to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and visit the sick and in prison.
Let’s look at another barrier to unity. Again we turn to Paul and again to his letter to the church in Corinth. Had there been an annual conference back then, my guess is the Corinth was the short straw. From the third chapter of the same letter, starting with the first verse:
Brothers and sisters, I couldn’t talk to you like spiritual people but like unspiritual people, like babies in Christ. I gave you milk to drink instead of solid food, because you weren’t up to it yet. Now you are still not up to it because you are still unspiritual. When jealousy and fighting exist between you, aren’t you unspiritual and living by human standards? When someone says, “I belong to Paul,” and someone else says, “I belong to Apollos,” aren’t you acting like people without the Spirit? After all, what is Apollos? What is Paul? They are servants who helped you to believe. Each one had a role given to them by the Lord: I planted, Apollos watered, but God made it grow. Because of this, neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but the only one who is anything is God who makes it grow. The one who plants and the one who waters work together, but each one will receive their own reward for their own labor. We are God’s coworkers, and you are God’s field, God’s building. 1 Cor 3:1-
Paul describes an age-old problem we now call the cult of personality. A strong, often charismatic, leader gets in place in a congregation or maybe even helps to launch the congregation. Over time, the church becomes “Pastor Smith’s church” in the hearts and minds of the parish and the community. Within a short while, Pastor Smith's opinion is the only one that matters. Before long, Pastor Smith can get away with almost anything he or she wants to do. The results can range from the dysfunctional to the disastrous to the deadly. Recent headlines tell about the Schuller family walking away from the ministry founded by Dr. Schuller years ago. After his retirement, the family members in place could not lead in the same way as the founder. I cannot say that the end would have been different had there been a plurality of leadership, but a ministry built on one person does not often survive once that person steps away. For the disastrous and the deadly, we do not need to go back all that far to find cases where people have been hurt, abused or killed as a direct result on one-person rule within a congregation or a religious group.
When I think about unity, it seems easier to find the barriers. Let's try to see how they could be knocked down and turned into bridges. I cannot resist the temptation to squeeze the unity theme into my favorite parable of all time, The Parable of the Forgiving Father. We have two sons and a whole lot of disunity. The younger son tells his dad he wishes his dad were dead, as in "Give me my measly share of my inheritance and I am out of here!" The older son stays home confident in his double share and works without complaint. Sometime later, the younger son comes back, humbled by his failure and throws himself on the mercy of his father. The father is loaded with mercy and only has eyes for the fact his son is back. “Let's celebrate! My son was dead and has come back to me!” The older son's thoughts turned quickly to his own inheritance. “My soft-hearted dad is sure to give that bum of a brother some of my share of the inheritance. Bad enough he squandered all his own money with loose women and fast living.”
The Forgiving Father did not reject either of his dysfunctional sons. He loved them both. We can only hope that the Father's example of overwhelming grace and unconditional love finally won over the older brother. When we use this lens of the Forgiving Father to look at disunity in the Church, we have to find ourselves in the story and seek forgiveness. The younger son possibly did not trust the father’s goodness. In their culture, the younger son did not inherit nearly as much as the older son. The younger son looked into his picture of the future and did not like the outcomes. If only he were in control of his own future, if only he could call the shots, then he would be successful beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. We have younger siblings in the church as well.
These younger siblings have goals and hopes and dreams to see the church rise up in new ways to bring joy to God’s heart and glory to the God's name. What they lack is patience and support. I can easily recall times in my own life when I jumped ahead of the course of God’s will. Like the seed planted on the rocky soil, my visions for ministry sprang up quickly and then dried up for lack of foundation. Think about the people you know who have seen the church they loved split over some issue that could have been resolved over time, if those involved had given time and consideration to one another. Keeping a calm spirit is one of the reasons we focus on the guidelines for Holy Conferencing when we conduct business as a church.
Think of the difference between a church splitting and a church helping to launch a new congregation. In both situations, the “mother” church loses people and resources. When one faction takes it's marbles and goes to another playground, all that is advanced by the split is the fiefdoms of some small minded, hardhearted people. In a split, both congregations are weakened by rancor and unresolved issues. In a church plant, both congregations are strengthened by the unity of spirit to see God’s Kingdom advanced. Both churches involved in the plant will grow over time as God's riches supply the needs of all concerned.
Before we pile up to much blame on the visionary, we need to confront the issues of the elder brother. He did his job over the years. He faithfully, if begrudgingly, served the Father all those years. He followed all the rules. He did not step out of line, even for a moment. If you will give me permission to peek into his heart, my guess is that he was so busy trying to follow all the rules that he forgot why he was following them. We all know how the Father reacted with the younger son came home. Is this the same Father who would have treated the elder son as harshly as the elder son claimed when confronted by the Father's generosity to his brother? Now, let's flip this around. Have you been part of or know people in a church, most likely one in a denomination with a long shadow and deep roots, which is not growing as fast as the new kids on the block? The new kids might have all the bells and whistles while the elder brother is stuck with “We have always done it that way.” The elder brother church in this case needs to learn what the elder brother of the parable missed, the Father's overwhelming love and grace. God has love enough for all God's children. The One who called us also had a generous heart with an inexhaustible supply of patience. Coming forward to today, each of us needs to do what she does best, collaborating with the God. The younger one is a visionary. She can work with God to put foundations under her castles in the air. The elder one knows who to execute the plan. She can work with God to know the purpose behind the plan. Together, the children can bring joy to God's heart and glory to God's name. Yes, they may not do it well in the same endeavors, but they can take joy in each other’s successes.
So let’s roll this all into a few simple statements. We all serve differently in the Body of Christ; this is good and necessary. We all react to culture and change differently. We need to grant each other grace a patience to allow us to work together for the sake of the Kingdom. Christ is the head of the Church. Keeping this in mind allows us to work with leadership as a gift and grace rather than a right and privilege. Whatever your role, whatever your gift, whatever your grace, we can all work together to advance the Kingdom to bring joy to God’s heart and glory to God’s name.
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