We are always members who belong to a larger organic whole

 

Sunday November 8, 2020

The 46^th President Elect is Announced

It was around 1987, my friend and colleague Ric called me at church to invite me to lunch the next day. I said sure, I’ll meet you at Redeemer. From there we got in his car and drove into the Hampden neighborhood of Baltimore, pulling into the parking lot at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church. “What are we doing here?” I ask. “You’ll see,” said Ric. We go down into the basement where there were about 20 or so people to have lunch the The Reverend Everett Leslie "Terry" Fullam – a worldwide leader of a charismatic renewal movement in the Episcopal Church. I felt like I had been punked. Ric knew I considered Terry to be a bit of a cult leader. And Ric knew I would never choose to be there myself. And Ric knew I needed to be there.

 

We sang a few songs over lunch and then Terry taught me an important lesson of just how wrong I was about a lot of things. It was during the time Jim Baker had just been convicted on 24 counts of fraud and conspiracy, and fellow televangelist Jimmy Swaggart had been found with a prostitute in red-light motel. Terry allowed as how easy it is for people like Episcopalians to snicker at the sleazy televangelist empire being exposed as hypocritical. But then he said that like it or not, they, like us, are fully incorporated members of the Body of Christ. They are our brothers and sisters in faith. And when one part of the Body of Christ is hurt and in crisis, we are all hurt. My bigotry had been exposed. My understanding as being a part of a larger organic whole, the Church, had just widened. I was changed. I was beginning to learn what it really means to love my neighbor – which always includes those who are fundamentally “other” – fundamentally different from us. I forever owe Ric thanks for leading me a little closer to the light. Our love as disciples of Jesus can know no bounds. I have no idea what else Terry said that day in the basement of St. Mary’s, Hampden, but I have never forgotten what I was there to learn. I have been thinking about this lesson as we have moved through this year’s pandemic and presidential campaign.

 

The late, great Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple (1881-1944), once reminded us that, “The Church is the only society that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members.” In that, Temple was recalling the wisdom of Richard Hooker (1554-1600) who characterized the church not as an “assembly,” but a “society.” We may assemble as a congregation with the name of a church, like Christ Church. But such an assembly is not the church – for assemblies always have an exclusive agenda, while God’s Spirit includes everyone and everything. We are part of the larger inclusive Society of Christ. Assemblies may come and go, but the church gathered by Christ continues no less than when we gather as assemblies – and long after assemblies are gone.

 

That is to say, no matter how we subdivide ourselves into parties, whether in church or in society, we are always members who belong to a larger organic whole – which in church we call The Body of Christ, and which society calls the United States. The church goes so far as to say that the bond that incorporates us into the Body of Christ is “indissoluble” – it is eternal. This is exactly what Paul seeks to convey to the assembled Christians in Thessaloniki who are concerned about what will happen to those who have died before the Blessed Son of God returns “to make us like him in his glorious kingdom.” They will hear the trumpet call and be the first to be reunited with God in Christ – for we come from God, we return to God, and God is all around. Be more concerned about all the others who are still here, especially those beyond the assembly of the church. For all creatures great and small are of God. [1 Thessalonians 4:13-18]

 

We find ourselves surrounded by a Pandemic that knows no boundaries, no restrictions on one side, and a nation that is as divided along party lines as any time in our history since, perhaps, the Civil War. Like the foolish bridesmaids we are distracted and unprepared for the bridegroom’s arrival. [Matthew 25:1-13] Like the endless generations of Israelites who, after being liberated from slavery in Egypt, are pictured in the texts we have studied at Noonday Prayer for the past few months allow themselves to be distracted by foreign idols – something which the Bible describes as religion cast as money. Idols were made of wood or stone and overlaid with gold and silver. But, as Psalm 115 contends, they have mouths but they cannot speak, eyes but they cannot see, feet but they cannot walk, and cannot even make a sound like, “uh-uh-uh”, clearing their throat! The argument being, any god or idol that cannot make a noise in its throat will ever get you out of slavery or exile. You will never be saved by idols.

 

But we seem to never give up on idols. We never give up on the works of the devil! Whether it is money, or denominations, or parties within and outside of the church, that Society of Christ which is greater than the sum of all of our assemblies. Oh yes, we have the “right to assembly” all right. Yet, we pray that we aspire to a higher calling than any party or assembly: we pray to become children of God, heirs of eternal life, and if that is not all, to be made like the Blessed Son of God! Oh, and we pray that we will “purify ourselves as he is pure!” Wow. Such hubris.

 

When Jesus urges us to “keep awake,” he knows that we tend to sleepwalk through this life on a hope and a prayer, all the time forgetting that we do in fact belong to a larger organic whole. Belong. We are the property of the Church, the Body of Christ. Or, the Society of Christ. Or, children of the living God. We must never lose sight of this, for this ought to regulate how we treat others who associate in assemblies other than our own. For the Living God looks to include all of creation, creatures and peoples. Ultimately, we are all One. May we remember this now, and in the days ahead. Amen.