One

Early in my ministry, I worked at a soup kitchen that offered a meal to scores of homeless people each week. A noble, inspiring, loving, well-run effort. There was a standard menu that always included a tuna salad sandwich. The production of sandwiches involved an assembly line. Volunteers would lay the bread out on the counter. Others would smear mayo. Then a scoop of tuna. It was a process polished over years.

One week, someone new was put in charge, just for that week. She came up with another system. I wouldn’t say better or worse. Just different. It quickly got ugly. You would have thought she wanted to turn the Nicene Creed into a limerick. She heard, in no uncertain terms, those dreaded church words: “We’ve never done it that way.’ I believe that was her last day at the soup kitchen.

Later in my ministry, I had to negotiate a fight between two groups. One ran a noonday meal for homeless in the neighborhood. The other group ran an overnight shelter for women. Here’s the issue: they had to share a refrigerator. Who used my milk? Who didn’t clean the shelves? It became my pastoral role to resolve the dispute, which ended up in the Rector’s office, reinforcing my sense that most church disputes are about two conflicting good intentions, two good values bumping up against each other.

Today, we conclude the week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Maybe it should be a month. Or a year. Maybe we should just pray all the time for a deeper sense of community. It begs for a spirit conveyed in my favorite Peanuts cartoon (Forgive me if I’ve shared before, but it’s worth it). Snoopy hammers away on his typewriter. Charlie Brown approaches and asks what he’s writing. “A book on theology”, Snoopy answers. Charlie Brown cautions that you need a good title. Snoopy claims to have the perfect title: “Has it ever occurred to you that you might be wrong?”

That sense of humility could go a long distance not only in our churches, our denomination, in the Anglican Communion, but also in our families, our workplaces, and Lord knows, our political discourse. Yesterday in church, we read a portion of Paul’s First Letter (also known as One Corinthians if you’re Donald Trump) in which Paul talks about the church as the body of Christ, many different parts working together, each and all valuable, held together with respect and an acknowledgement of interdependence. St. Paul knew about church fights. The New Testament tells us he got in a few. Which is why right after he talks in this chapter about the marvel of the body of Christ, many spiritual gifts working together, with occasional creative tension, he describes the greatest gift. According to St. Paul, that greatest gift is love.

Take time this morning at the end of the week of Prayer for Christian Unity to read One Corinthians Chapter 13. You may recognize it from weddings, but that’s not why Paul wrote it. He wrote it so that a soup kitchen team can make tuna salad in a slightly different way and live to tell about it. He wrote it so that you and I could reflect to the world the difference made by God’s amazing grace. Reflect that grace today.

-Jay Sidebotham

The love of God creates in us such a “oneing” that when it is truly seen, no person can separate themselves from another person.

In the sight of God, all humans are “oned”, and one person is all people, and all people are in one person

-Julian of Norwich (1342-1416)

 

 

From Jesus’ prayer for his disciples:

I pray that all may be one

-John 17:21

 

 

All peoples comprise a single community and have a single origin created by one and the same Creator God…and one also is their final goal: God

Nostra Aetate, The Second Vatican Council, 1965

 

Contact:
Rev. Jay Sidebotham
jsidebotham@renewalworks.org
RenewalWorks is a ministry of Forward Movement.
www.renewalworks.org

Calendar collision

Today, our nation honors Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a leader who showed us what it means to apply Jesus’ teaching to the complex realities of our world.

In the church calendar, today is also the feast of the Confession of St. Peter, marking the moment when Peter figured out who Jesus was. This feast launches a week, bracketed at its end by the story of the Conversion of St. Paul. The week between the days honoring St. Peter and St. Paul is called a week of prayer for Christian unity. Lord knows, we could use that prayer, in our congregations, in our denomination, in the Anglican communion, in the interface of Christian traditions, as well as in interfaith conversation.

In my reading of the New Testament, which involves reading between the lines, there was no bromance between Peter and Paul. I’m not sure they liked each other much. Both gifted with strong ego, they jabbed at each other, and had a couple of public clashes. But there is no doubt that they shared common purpose, the spread of the good news of Jesus. So it’s fitting that they delineate a week in which we pray for Christian unity. Not uniformity. Not agreement. Unity.

Which is where the collision of calendars helps, as today we give thanks for the witness of Dr. King today, honored not only with a federal holiday, but with a saint’s day in the church. He had much to say about the need for Christian unity, part of a dream for all God’s children. He shared a vision for this common life when he wrote a challenging letter from a Birmingham prison cell to white clergy who had criticized him: “In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be…This is the inter-related structure of reality.”

Dr. King’s ministry was animated by the teaching of Jesus, expressed in the passage from Luke’s gospel printed in the column on the left, selected for the day we remember him in the church. Dr. King’s embrace of this teaching witnesses to its own intriguing network of mutuality. King was a student of Mahatma Gandhi whose embrace of non-violence was informed by the Sermon on the Mount. Gandhi was a student of Leo Tolstoy whose life was transformed by the Sermon on the Mount. Three very different, strong minded leaders brought together by Jesus’ vision, a vision of a network of mutuality, a single garment of destiny.

Pray for Christian unity this week. In the wake of disappointing discord in the Anglican Communion, consider these words from our new Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry: “Our commitment to be an inclusive church is not based on a social theory or capitulation to the ways of the culture, but on our belief that the outstretched arms of Jesus on the cross are a sign of the very love of God reaching out to us all.” He spoke of his vision for the Anglican Communion, as a “network of relationships that have been built on mission partnerships; relationships that are grounded in a common faith; relationships in companion diocese relationships; relationships with parish to parish across the world; relationships that are profoundly committed to serving and following the way of Jesus of Nazareth by helping the poorest of the poor, and helping this world to be a place where no child goes to bed hungry ever. ”

In this week of Prayer for Christian Unity, offer the prayer below each morning. And may our prayers be offered not only with our lips but with our lives, as we consider opportunities to love those who may be enemies, or opponents, or critics, or simply annoying. This Monday, find a way to practice that love in the spirit of Dr. King, St. Peter, St. Paul, Jesus.

-Jay Sidebotham

A Prayer for Christian Unity, from the Book of Common Prayer:

 

Give us grace seriously to lay to heart the great dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions; take away all hatred and prejudice, and whatever else may hinder us from godly union and concord; that, as there is but one Body and one Spirit, one hope of our calling, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of us all, so we may be all of one heart and of one soul, united in one holy bond of truth and peace, of faith and charity, and may with one mind and one mouth glorify thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

 

Luke 6:27-36

Jesus said, “I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.

If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”