Patchwork Christianity

This is the week of prayer for Christian Unity and (for Open & Affirming churches like ours) Welcoming Sunday.  The Biblical text is the story of the calling of the first disciples — see how I wove patchwork quilts into all of those themes!  And if you would like to see the quilts, check out the video of the talk I gave in the St. Olaf chapel on Thursday the 22nd.

 Follow Me

Jonah 3:1-5, 10 Mark 1:14-20

I have always been glad that the story of the calling of the first disciples is not the only story of calling in the Bible.

The account we just heard from the gospel of Mark is especially brief and leaves out all of the details that might make me feel better: that Simon and Andrew already knew Jesus, for example, or that James and John would go back and help out their father Zebedee. If I could ask Mark any of my questions, I imagine him saying, “No, no, none of that matters; all that matters is that they dropped what they were doing and followed him immediately.”

Jonah provides an oddly comforting alternative. Not only did he not respond immediately to God’s call, he ran in the other direction. If you read the whole book of Jonah (which will only take a few minutes), you learn that when God called, he got on a boat going the other direction. After his adventures inside the great fish (which we often call a whale), he finally obeys God’s direction to go to Ninevah, and the people there are saved from God’s wrath.

Well today is our congregation’s annual meeting, and these two stories of God’s call have had me thinking about our call as a community of God’s people. Moreover, this is the week designated as The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, so I have particularly been thinking about our vocation, both as a congregation and as a denomination, as a United and Uniting church. Some of you heard my reflections about this topic on Thursday, when I spoke at the chapel service at St. Olaf. I apologize to you, because I am going to repeat some of those same remarks – with the same visual aids – patchwork quilts. Like Christianity, these quilts are made of a variety of elements that can be combined in many different ways. [We could also talk about Interfaith relationships in this way; today I am going to focus on Christian Unity, both because of the designation of the week, and because there isn’t time to explore the theological complexities that Interfaith relationships bring.]

[Quilt 1: Random Patchwork] To the casual observer, the religious landscape in the United States looks like this: lots of variety, in no particular order. There are some beautiful fabrics in this quilt; some of them appear just once, others show up in several places. The quilt is beautiful in its own way, but from a design point of view there is nowhere for the eye to rest, and the overall effect can be a little, well, over-stimulating. There are a great many “casual observers” of the religious scene in America, and it is no surprise that they have difficulty understanding some of the nuances and relationships it contains.

[Quilt 2: Maroon & Black] One way to bring some order into all this variety is to make the visual equivalent of an organizational chart. In this quilt, all the squares are the same size, and even though some are plain, some are striped, and some are checkered, there is a sense that there is pattern here. Every faith community has a equal place in this design. It is reassuring, somehow, to imagine that denominations – and even other religions and faiths – can be sorted, categorized, and understood in a rational and systematic way.

Quilt 3: Stained Glass] The truth is, though, that faith communities are not that easy to sort and categorize. Not only are there theological differences, there are differences in organization, worship styles, and what I can only describe as “personality.” This quilt, like the last one, has many different fabrics, and again, some are unique and some are repeated several times. But this time, they are separated by healthy and respectful boundaries. So another way to imagine Christian unity is to think about each faith tradition as distinct from all the others – though together, there is a kind of harmony.

[Quilt 4: Hidden Wells] There is another very different idea about unity, though – one that is based on the idea that we need fewer boundaries, and that our current religious bodies need to be shaken up and reorganized. This particular quilt was made by sewing narrow strips of fabric together, then cutting those strips into squares and triangles that were rearranged to make this design. The fabric that is at the middle of some of these diamonds is at the edge of others, and none of them look very much like the strips of fabric with which I began. Some people imagine that churches, like those original strips of cloth, need to be cut up and rearranged for true unity to be found.

[Quilt 5: Stacked Bricks] I would like to propose that in the United Church of Christ, we have come to live out unity in a way that is not as chaotic as the first quilt, as orderly as the second one, as divided as the third one, or as drastic as the fourth one. This quilt has as many different fabrics as the other ones do, but this time they are all leaning against one another. The individuality and integrity of each block is maintained, but here the boundaries hold us together rather than keeping us apart.

I said at the outset that the UCC has a particular vocation for unity. While it is true that every faith community has a great deal of variety, the United Church of Christ has embraced “extravagant hospitality” as a core value. We believe that our life together is enriched and our faith deepened when our community includes members from a variety of backgrounds, cultures, experiences, and spiritual personalities.

One of the most visible signs of that conviction is our commitment to being an Open and Affirming congregation. Today, churches from many denominations that have made similar commitments are celebrating “Welcoming Sunday.” These groups include

· the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists

· Integrity (Episcopal Church)

· More Light Presbyterians

· Open and Affirming churches of the UCC and the Disciples of Christ

· Reconciling in Christ Lutheran congregations

· United Methodist Churches in the Reconciling Ministries Network

· Room for All (Reformed Church in America)

· Supportive Congregation Network of the Church of the Brethren & Mennonite Churches

It may seem odd to talk about the full inclusion of LGBT people in the church in the same breath as we talk about Christian Unity, since it seems in recent years that debates about the place of LGBT people has caused enormous disunity in church bodies – including our own, by the way. But what we have learned, all of us in the Welcoming Churches movement, is that Christian Unity is about much more than simply how we organize ourselves. Christian unity is about the ways that we changed when we come together.

Which brings me to the Christmas Quilt.

[Quilt 6: Christmas Quilt] More than twenty-five years ago, I decided to make a Christmas quilt. I chose red and green and white fabrics, and I made 12 blocks with cute embroidered centers. [Show block] I wanted the quilt to be a little bigger, so I decided to add fabric between them (those strips are called “sashing”). I had seen a quilt in a book where the sashing was artfully pieced so that little stars we formed in the corners where the blocks came together. I got some yellow fabric for the stars and went to work.

Imagine my surprise when I looked at the completed quilt [Show quilt] – it had been transformed from a quilt of red and green blocks into a quilt of yellow stars. I thought I was just adding one small design element, but that one element changed the relationship among all the other fabrics and shapes in the quilt.

Being a “united and uniting” church is like that. Every time our congregation welcome new members I say that we have become a new church – and that’s true. Each person’s gifts, experiences, traditions, and contributions serve to transform us, as the body of Christ, into a new creation. We are not just bigger, we are different.

Being an Open & Affirming Church is like that, too. We are all transformed by the process of welcoming people who are often unwelcome in other religious settings. We are all transformed by the process of being advocates for justice for LGBT people. We are all transformed by being witnesses to the wideness of God’s mercy and the inclusiveness of God’s call.

Which brings us back to Simon and Andrew, James and John, and Jonah. There are many ways that God calls us into faith and service, and many ways that we respond to that call. In the end, it may not matter very much how we organize ourselves to express that faith and do that work. What does matter is our willingness to be surprised, to be transformed, to find out that our red and green and white quilt is really a quilt of yellow stars.

Prayer for January 25, 2009

Almighty and everlasting God, creator of all things seen and unseen, hear now our silent prayers, as we open our hearts to you in the sacred quietness.

God of faith and hope, we bring before you our prayers for those we have named this morning – we especially remember … Bring to each of them the gifts of mercy and grace that are most needed, according to your wisdom and love.

We profess, O God, that your Holy Spirit has called us into your church, and so this morning as we prepare for our annual meeting, we pray for the mission and ministry of our congregation.

We thank you for the tradition of outreach and concern that we have inherited from the founders of this faith community. We remember their determination and persistence in bringing their faith to their new city. We thank you, too, for the long line of our ecclesial ancestors who have found a spiritual home here, and who have shared their gifts, resources, and convictions as members of the body of Christ.

Holy One, we know that you have promised to be with us, whenever two or three are gathered in your name. Help us, we pray, to recognize your presence among us, and to hear your voice above the clamor of the world around us. Support us as we grow in the spiritual disciplines of our personal lives and our community life, so that we can move with courage and direction.

God of all times and places, in years past we have committed ourselves to being a Just Peace Congregation. We find ourselves today in a nation at war, and though we love and admire many who are fighting that war, it troubles us deeply to hear of the death and destruction that are neither just nor peaceful. Help us, we pray, to find ways to voice both our prophetic protests against the imperialism and excessive nationalism of our country, and our prophetic hopes for the reconstruction and healing of Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, and Palestine. Help us to live out our vocation as forgers of plowshares and pruning hooks.

We bring you, also, our commitment to be an Open & Affirming Congregation. As we watch legislative bodies move to impose further limitations on gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender persons, we pray for the courage to stand in solidarity with our GLBT brothers and sisters. As we watch other American Protestant Denominations debate whether or not to ask God’s blessing for same-sex unions and whether or not to honor the religious vocations of GLBT persons, we pray to be articulate Christian spokespersons for radical hospitality and inclusion. And we pray that the whole church, in all of its denominations and traditions, will not use these issues as a way of avoiding our deeper calling to be disciples.

This morning we specifically bring to you our hopes and aspirations for the ministry of this congregation in the months and years ahead of us. We pray, O God of community, to be aware of our own spiritual needs, and conscientious in working together to address those needs. We pray to be aware of the practical and the spiritual needs of our neighbors, and creative in devising plans and building alliances that will help us to address those needs. And we pray to be wise about the ways of the wider world, especially those ways that camouflage exploitation by invoking economic necessity and injustice by invoking political expediency.

We ask your blessing on the leaders of this congregation: those who are completing their service, those who are continuing, and those who begin new positions today. Fill them with energy, imagination, persistence, and good humor, and let them see the sometimes hidden holiness of what they do.

All these things we pray as members of the Body of Christ, the continuing incarnation of God’s love and mercy, and we pray now in the words that Jesus taught us, ….