(Scriptures: Genesis 24:34-67; Psalm 145, I Corinthians 12:1-31, Matthew 11:16-30)
A Declaration of
Interdependence
As a lifelong member of the United Church of Christ – the
UCC for short – I’ve heard folks outside our denomination give us lots of
nicknames based on the initials UCC. The
one I heard most frequently growing up was “Utterly Confused Christians”. Some of this was just people being jerky. But besides that, there was also a sense
that, for example, Catholics follow what the pope says, Lutherans follow what
Martin Luther wrote, and Methodists follow what John Wesley wrote – but, since
the United Church of Christ is a merger of the Evangelical & Reformed
Church, based mostly in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and the Midwest –wherever Germans
settled – with the Congregational Christian churches – founded by the Puritans
and Pilgrims, and based mostly in New England – we draw from a variety of
traditions and teachers, and so while we from the Reformed side of the
denomination draw heavily on the teachings of Ulrich Zwingli, other parts of
the denomination draw from John Calvin and from other Reformers….and these
teachings, while broadly similar, also have some differences. And so while I think that, within the
denomination, we understand one another, to those outside the denomination, we
can indeed at times seem utterly confused – or at least act in ways that are
utterly confusing to them.
Another nickname I’ve heard from time to time is “Untied
Church of Christ. This one is easy to
understand – if you’re typing quickly and transpose the “I” and “T”, the word
United turns into Untied. The United
Methodist Church can get a similar rap, sometimes being characterized as the
Untied Methodist Church. But, beyond
typographical errors, the label “Untied” can lead us to ask some serious
questions. Again, comparing to other
denominations, the Catholics are united by allegiance to the Pope, the
Anglicans to the Archbishop of Canterbury; Lutherans and Methodists have
bishops; Presbyterian churches are organized into Synods with their own
governing boards. But while the UCC does
have a denominational structure, based on the concept of covenant, in our
denomination, local churches have much more autonomy than in many other
denominations – and also much more responsibility to clean up any messes that
result. Churches have much more space to
“go it alone” – not unlimited space, but more than in some other traditions. To Christians used to denominations with more
rigid, hierarchical structures, the UCC can feel a bit untied at times, like a
loose confederation of individual Christian churches rather than a United
Church of Christ.
In our reading from I Corinthians, the apostle Paul is
writing to a church he planted in the city of Corinth – a city which I visited
on my recent vacation – and this church, which was united when Paul was among
them, is now in danger of becoming untied.
Corinth was located along major
trading routes, and was also a center for the manufacture of pottery….and so it
was considered a relatively cosmopolitan city for its time. It was also a relatively prosperous city, but
the prosperity was not evenly shared, and so there were very rich and very
poor. The church at Corinth was divided
among a number of fault lines – between rich and poor, between Jew and Gentile,
and also between those who identified as followers of Paul vs followers of
other teachers, such as Apollos and other leaders who came along later – some
of whom did more harm than good. Still
other divisions existed between those who had particularly flashy gifts, such
as speaking in tongues, vs those whose gifts were perhaps even more important
to the function of the church, but didn’t have as much pizzazz. In short, the church at Corinth was
dysfunction junction.
In attempting to heal these divisions, Paul reminded them
that they were all members of the body of Christ, all equally important to the
body’s proper functioning. Now we all
know that the human body has some parts that are lovely to look at and others
that are not so much, some parts we allow everyone to see and some parts we
only allow those closest to us to see, and the body has some parts that are
downright embarrassing. But, Paul
reminds them, whether one’s role in the body of Christ is that of being an eye
or an ear or a nose – or, we could go on to say, that of being a toenail or a
nose hair or a sinus or a sweat gland or an armpit – we all have a
function. No matter how seemingly
insignificant our part may seem, when we function as we are called, the body is
strengthened, and when we go AWOL, the body is weakened.
While our reading from Genesis took place of course
centuries or even millenia before Christ’s earthly ministry, we can see how important seemingly lowly
service can be to the working out of God’s ways. Our reading from Genesis gives us an
absolutely lovely story of the coming together of Isaac, the son of Abraham,
with his wife Rebekah. The story reads
like a match made in heaven – but Abraham’s trusted servant was in the
background, making all sorts of arrangements in order to bring Rebekah and
Isaac together…and as Abraham’s servant is working away, you might think of the
song, “Matchmaker matchmaker make me a match, find me a find, catch me a
catch….”. Had the servant gone AWOL,
Isaac and Rebekah might still have come together, but it would be a very
different story under very different circumstances. And so the servant’s role, however lowly, is
absolutely crucial to how the story played out.
In the same way, our individual roles in the body of Christ, be they
ever so humble, are crucial to the way the body of Christ functions.
Families can come untied….as the twin sons of Isaac and
Rebekah, Jacob and Esau, became untied from one another, viewing each other as
enemies for much of their lives Churches
can become untied as well. And so can communities,
even countries. On this July 4 weekend,
when we celebrate our nation’s independence from British rule, I have to say
that, given the degree of political division in our country, one might wonder
if we should rename ourselves the Untied States of America. It goes without saying that we have sharp
divisions between liberals and conservatives.
We have regional divisions – the old wounds of the American Civil War
some 150 years ago still haven’t entirely healed. We have divisions between rich and poor,
racial divisions, divisions between native-born and immigrant – or, more
accurately in most cases, between those whose families immigrated recently vs
those whose families immigrations took place several generations ago, in the
more distant past. Our state of
Pennsylvania has sharp divisions between urban and rural areas – political
consultant James Carville famously characterized Pennsylvania as having
Philadelphia on one end and Pittsburgh on the other end and Alabama in the
middle. Those city vs suburb vs rural
divisions routinely create complications in the ministries of the Pennsylvania
Southeast Conference, as many folks from the ‘burbs or the boonies are afraid
to drive into Philadelphia, lest their cars be stolen and their wallets stolen
and their persons violated, and many from our city churches either can’t drive
to the suburbs, let alone farm country, because they don’t have cars, or they
don’t want to drive to the suburbs or rural areas because they’re afraid
they’ll have targets on their backs because of their skin color. And I feel these divisions too. I grew up in what Jim Carville called the
Alabama part of the state, in a very rural area – Hamburg, Pennsylvania, at
that time population 3,000 or so if you count the chickens and cows along with
the people - but for the past 30 years
have spent most of my time in or near the city of Philadelphia. And I’m comfortable here. As beautiful to look at as my home area is, I
don’t get back to farm country much, and there are reasons for that.
Certainly as human beings we’re going to be more comfortable
with some people and in some situations than others. But when we say of someone else, “I have no
need of him or her”, then our society starts to become untied. As
it’s becoming untied in Detroit, where roughly half of Detroit residents,
because of inability to pay their bills, are threatened with having their water
shut off – and the shutoffs are coming neighborhood by neighborhood, some 3,000
households a week.[1] What happens to a city when nearly half the
residents have no access to safe drinking water? When America’s auto industry was booming, we
had plenty need of Detroit then, but now we’re quick to say to the residents of
Detroit, “I have no need of you.” Or,
closer to home, as our country has also said “I have no need of you” to large
sections of Camden, NJ, once a center of manufacture but now in many
neighborhoods an urban wasteland, where the drug trade and the scavenging of scrap
metal are the two major sources of cash.
Or as our country has said, “I have no need of you” to any number of
Philadelphia neighborhoods that were once humming with industrial activity, until
the industrial jobs went overseas. Or,
looking very close to home indeed, when churches band together to feed poor
residents of Port Richmond and Bridesburg, and neighbors object to the food
cupboard, might not those neighbors be telling those getting help at the
cupboard, “I have no need of you.”
We Americans have taken our historical declaration of
Independence from Britain very much to heart.
We’re very individualistic, looking at policies in terms of how they
affect ourselves or perhaps our immediate families, with much less
consideration to how they affect those further from us. But while we are indeed independent from
Great Britain, our Scripture reading today reminds us that we are dependent on
God, and interdependent – that is to say, mutually dependent - on one
another. What we do affects others, and
what others do affects us.
Our Gospel reading today goes off in several different
directions, but it ends with Jesus inviting us,
“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and
I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle
and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is
easy, and my burden is light." We
might well wonder, looking at Jesus’ life, how he could call his burden
light. I would say that the burden is
light because Jesus is helping carry it.
To live in isolation apart from Christ and community is to carry a heavy
burden indeed, and we inevitably end up carrying burdens we were never meant to
carry. But to live in community – to
live as part of the body of Christ, with Jesus at the head – is to carry the
burden we were intended to carry, to live as we were intended to live.
“Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of
it,” Paul wrote. May we at Emanuel
Church live as those connected to Christ and one another, and reach out in love
to those who are not yet part of the body with words of good news and deeds of
love. Amen.
[1]
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/true-north/2014/jun/25/detroits-water-war-a-tap-shut-off-that-could-impact-300000-people
