A Sermon Preached by E. Scott Winnette

May 24, 2009

Loved into Unity, Psalm 133 & John 17:20-26

Prayer of Invocation: Gather us in uniting Lord. Gather us into your mysterious Trinity Oh God. Gather us in to wonder, love and praise. We pray in the powerful name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

It’s a small world after all. I purchased a sandwich at the Atlanta airport Friday; its label declared that it was made in and shipped from Bethesda, MD.   It’s a small world after all. How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!   The Psalmist is not talking about free market globalization. The vision is a world-family kind of promise – with peace, respect, and justice for all people. The vision confronts the divisions that seem to rule our world. Division is a dry, cracked thirst. Oh might we cast away the notions that our Loving Creator condones our divisions of worth by creed, skin color, nation, or our so many other preferences.   Divisions are fetid aromas.   We cannot afford to be divided any longer. We cannot afford to be divided nation against nation and race against race. This weekend we give thanks for the so many of God’s children who have died trying to protect their families. God bless them.  We cannot afford to be divided any longer. The earth’s green spaces; its diversity of animals are in peril more peril now than that fabled flood of Noah. And we cannot afford to be divided as Christ’s Church anymore for we are to be the witnesses of God’s love.    Hear of God’s gentle closeness, of God’s uniting not dividing Spirit. Be touched by God’s abundant Grace.  Feel it pouring out on us in worship. With thanksgiving let’s respond with wonder, love and praise. Let’s build an ark of welcoming wholeness. The world needs an ark again.

My ultra-red-headed childhood neighbor Mrs. A was an odd quirky, chain-smoking woman whose house was filled from sidewalk to asphalt shingle with the stuff of her life - a lot of junk. But there was a shiny red treasure in her garage. A cool treasure that held greenish gems filled with the nectar of every child’s summer dream.  I was ready with a helping hand whenever Mrs. A unloaded her garden’s mulch, and compost.   We had nothing in common, an old bottle-colored red head gardening fanatic and quiet, bookish, brown haired me. She chatted and smoked and watched me stumble with every bag.   After her inconceivably broad car trunk was emptied of its humus, I uncomfortably lingered long enough for the reward.  She, I am sure played me a bit, chatting about nothing meaningful to a boy while I waited for her permission to enter her garage.   And she always finally allowed me entry to the holy of holies, and my small hands timidly each time timidly opened her ark of Coke a Cola. She had a coke machine in her garage with the coldest Coke imaginable.   This was before the Coke’s corn syrup sullying; the carbonized sugar water poured down my throat, a refreshing delight. Coke would like for us to think it is the oil of life, but we know another. We all need the refreshment of Grace’s promise to help us love the others in our life.  

We are all odd, quirky and different; we need the grace of God’s relatedness to enjoy, even some days endure each other. God in us yearns with us for the cool, sparkling refreshment of good relationships. 

How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity! It is like precious oil anointing the head, running down upon the beard or smooth chin, running down, running down fragrant and refreshing. Creator God pours fragrant oils of mutual love. Sacramental oil ran down Aaron’s priestly beard as he came close to God in worship. Abundant oil, so much it dribbled off his chin unto his robes as a witness to God’s extravagant love.  

She opened her bottle of funeral perfume, her years’ worth of savings, to pour and anoint Jesus’ feet. She tried, she tried so hard to witness to Jesus - God’s blessed love. She practiced what he preached, God’s abundant love. He was talking about his own death and she could not bear it; it seemed so lonely that this Jesus who called people to gather together for the sake of God’s love die. Imagine the waft of perfume filling the room and pooling upon the floor. God’s abundance is all around us.   It pools at our feet fragrant and refreshing.  Jesus must have still smelled of the sweet aroma of the lady’s funeral perfume.   Jesus still smelling of death, ends, and the absence of futures, prayed for his disciples.   He prayed to God, giving up his greatest ambition for the church. 

We are blessed today to overhear his hope-filled words. He asks God for an amazing unity - that we be one. He prays that the mystical union, his union with God, be ours.  The amazing glory, the splendor and honor of God that he experienced in his life he prays for us to experience that we might be one.  

This is not a uniting like that of a Russian Doll where we are distinctly nested in layers: God, Jesus, the Apostle Paul, and then us layered concentric, and hierarchical. This is a unity akin to the mystery of the Trinity, a unity intimate and boundless, a unity born of dynamic chaotic companionship.   It is more like a disco dance than Hollywood Squares.   It is a dynamic unity born in God’s love.  Jesus prays for us that we, his Church, be love-centered. Imagine it like a new Noah’s Ark centered in God’s protecting love. 

They tried so hard at last month’s Presbytery meeting to pour God’s oil of loving relatedness. We gathered for one task, to debate whether we would advocate for Gay ordination or not.   They placed the Lord’s Supper in the middle of the room to stand as a witness to our unity. They fed us at round tables encouraging conversation. They tried hard to change the old divisive pattern of our lining up at microphones ready with sound-bites for and sound-bites against Gay ordination.  We had conversations at our tables. To my right a pastor explained that he still did not get the big deal. 

The person to his right shared that she was mystified by the biblical debate over sexual morality. I shared my faith that Christ’s Church was being challenged to open its arms fully so that we might witness God’s unbounded love to the world. 

Unity is born in God’s love. Unity is not sameness. Unity is not consolidation. Unity is not the majority wins. Unity is not the result of an opinion’s victory.   We will always differ.  Unity is mutual love. Unity is intimacy in the midst of difference. Unity is born in God’s grace. Unity is family.

We sat at table together with the same Bible, and our different readings of it. We can get so divisive in our interpretations of scripture. Can’t we? Yet, the Bible is a great example of unity in the midst of diversity. God uses this library of conflicting opinion to usher in a new life-loving world. The Old Testament is filled with a conflict between the offensive prophets and the controlling priests – yet both their words are scripture. The New Testament does not have one thematically unified Gospel; we have four Gospels in cooperation and competition with each other.   The motley scriptures guide the motley disciples’ witness to the world of God’s love.   In Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address he said, Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other….The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully.   As Christ’s Church we should not center ourselves in particular elements of the scriptural story. Hear its wholeness, its unity. Be centered in God’s Love.   Perceive God’s revelation of a new way. 

Imagine with me Jesus’ prayer to God fulfilled: The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. One, God in you, God in me, Christ in you, Christ in me, God in the other even the most different others- we are one in Christ’s prayer, we are one in God’s promise. We are called to create a wonderful new ark filled with all the animals of the world, peacefully protected, mutually valued -- but not quiet, a cacophony of hoots, hollers, moos, and whale songs. It smells of the dung of a million species. It is a family dance. It is not easy to live together but it is God’ family in the ark. We can barely imagine it; and only experience it for it is a promise, a promise, a promise that our minds cannot comprehend, an experience overflowing with God’s uncontrollable abundance.  

God’s New World is unity in the midst of chaotic diversity – the lions’ hair stays wheat-yellow, the zebras keep their stripes, leopards their spots, mosquitoes buzz and bite, beagles smell, cats shred sofas, organized people organize, poets challenge, introverts find quiet places, extroverts seek stages. In God’s promised New World the black people stay black, very short people stay short, maybe the blind stay blind and beloved, the Muslims stay Muslim and the Christians share Christ. And in the midst of all the diversity Creator God is praised. Fantastic! Fantastic the ark of God’s family is fantastic.

And so are we. We are fantastic! Here we are proof that the people of God’s Church can deeply love each other. We are not the same. Look around! We differ in so many ways yet we all belong. We are all wounded and we all long for Love. Some of us like sentimental sermons others prefer intellectual ones.   Some of us like grits others oatmeal.  Some like intinction others want to pass the plates. Some of us have been deeply touched by Jesus and some aren’t quite sure who or what he is. We are different and nonetheless we love each other. It’s fantastic. We are united even though we differ on whether we think shared Jerusalem is the right answer for peace or not, united voters against Barack Obama and for him. We are family washed in God’s graceful oil of love. It’s fantastic.

But everything does not go within this vision of God. The lion lies down with the lamb. The lion does not devour the lamb. Christ calls us to move towards justice. We take sides now and again against the ones who seek legislation of their opinions.  God’s abundant love is diminished when freedom and diversity is devoured.  

The Presbytery tried to embrace all the sides of the Gay ordination debate. The fragrant oil of God’s love was poured. There was new respect.   We hardly even debated the issue. We actually spent more time debating whether we should declare an opinion or not.   

But after debating whether to debate, we decided to debate and debated (so Presbyterian). We had hardly discussed the issue when the moderator discerned that the debate was over and called for a vote to stop debating.   We voted to stop and a lone man stood in protest, a gay man wearing a bright large rainbow scarf.   He protested the end of debate. His very presence meant that he was likely ecclesiastically illegal.  A person with voice at Presbytery is either an elder or a minister.  He was likely illegal for our current polity does not allow sexually active gay elders, deacons or ministers.   And he cried there before us. He cried his anger, frustration, and pain. I sat there praying for this wounded man; I pondered why he so desperately wanted the debate to continue when it was apparent that our Presbytery always votes for Gay inclusion in ministry (It did again!). 

A pastor previous to me in my West Virginia church tells a story about her hen, her hen that lay upon uncharacteristic eggs.   She nurtured the odd eggs. And one day when they cracked out came little ducklings, “yes” ducklings. But she continued to mother those different baby birds. And one day the inevitable happened the brood at the edge of a stream jumped in and swam. 

The hen squawked up and down the stream bed. And when they were ready, they re-joined their mother on the bank. In God’s family we love the different others. 

I pondered why the odd man cried for more conversation? It came to me; I believe he wanted to smell God’s oil of grace and love a good bit more. I believed, he might have wanted to hear people say God loved him, a gay man and that he was family too. He yearned for his side of the debate to be said, to hear an abundance of acceptance in a world riddled with laws that shout his diminishment.   He yearned for refreshment so much he was willing to hear the opposition just so he could hear some of us say, God loved him. As an extraordinary minority in that room, he wanted to experience how very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!  

We are God’s family. Do you yearn to hear that you are included too? …  Do you feel different? … Do you yearn to hear that you are included too? … We all do at times. Break open God’s love over each other. Welcome each other over and over. Be the Church of Christ. Witness God’s vision. Make it so in our troubled world? Be the Church of the Ark of God’s unifying love. How? Trust in God’s promised new world.  Trust in God’s creative power to make it. Trust in God.  Pour out God within you. Pool it. Trust God. Cast out the dry, cracked and lifeless divisions.   We are God’s family.  God is within, Christ within, you in me, me in you. God’s love runs down our chins and pools on this holy floor: pools of peace, pools of love, pools of joy, pools of welcome, pools of grace, pools of unity. Family! Family! We are family.   Amen.