Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
September 25, 2005

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Every Sunday morning, if you come in here through the front door, you pass by two images of the UCC seal, one on each side. That seal contains the UCC motto: "That They May All Be One." The line is actually a quote of a statement attributed to Jesus at John 17:21. It reflects something important about the UCC. Our denomination was formed in 1957 when two Protestant denominations-The Evangelical and Reformed Church and The Congregational Christian Churches-merged. Those two denominations were themselves results of two earlier mergers. In the 1950s, when the UCC was created, ecumenical fever ran high in Protestant circles. Ecumenism is that part of the church’s life that seeks to overcome the extreme disunity of the Body of Christ. There are many different ways to approach Christian unity. When the UCC was formed in 1957, unity was understood principally as institutional unity. The goal was to overcome institutional fragmentation; and the UCC, being the institutional union of four different predecessor denominations, was the movement’s crowning achievement at that time.

Concern with Christian unity was hardly a new thing in the 1950s. It was already an issue in the late 50s of the first century CE when Paul wrote his letter to the church he had founded at Philippi, an important Roman city in Macedonia. Christianity was in its infancy. The small groups of people who were attracted to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and who had experienced the truth of the Christian confession that Jesus Christ is Lord were still working out just what that meant, how they were to understand the salvation they experienced in Jesus Christ. They were, as Paul says in the passage from Philippians that we heard this morning, working out their salvation with fear and trembling. Many of Paul’s letters deal with various kinds of disunity among the people of the churches to which he wrote. The big division in the fledgling Christian movement was between those who believed one had first to become Jewish in order to be Christian and those like Paul who did not.

Paul’s letter to the Philippians was, among other things, a call for unity in the church; and, importantly for our purposes this morning, the letter reveals what Paul meant by unity. He didn’t mean institutional unity. There were no Christian institutions yet to speak of, only small groups of people who met in someone’s home. There certainly were no denominations in any modern sense. Rather, Paul understood Christian unity as unity of thought. In the passage we just heard Paul calls on the Philippian Christians to be "of the same mind" and "of one mind." He also calls on them to be "in full accord."

Clearly Paul considers disagreements among the people of the church to be a serious threat. He considers it such a threat that he calls on people to be so humble that they give up their own opinions for the sake of unity. He tells them to consider others better than themselves and to look not to their own interests but to the interests of others. He is telling them in other words that unity of opinion is so important that it is worth giving up their own thoughts and opinions and acquiescing in the opinions of others in order to avoid diversity of thought which, Paul apparently thought, must necessarily lead to disunity.

Paul then buttresses this idea by appealing to none other than Jesus Christ himself. He tells them to "let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus." Now, I’ve always thought that that line meant we should all strive to think like Jesus, loving God and working for peace and justice in this world; but that isn’t what Paul meant by it. Immediately after that line Paul quotes what is probably an ancient hymn, known to scholars as the kenosis hymn from the Greek word translated in the hymn as "emptied." The hymn says that Jesus "did not regard equality with God," which he originally had, "as something to be exploited, but emptied himself...." It goes on to say that, taking human form, Jesus "humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death-even death on a cross."

I’ve long loved this kenosis hymn of Philippians 2 because it makes Jesus human, having given up all divinity for the sake of becoming one of us. We certainly can read the hymn that way, but as I worked on this passage this week I realized that that’s not how Paul is using it here. Rather, Paul is using the self-emptying of Jesus Christ as, to quote one authority, "the prime example of why [the Philippian Christians] should be willing also to empty themselves of their own opinions." Paul’s point is that if Jesus Christ could humble himself and be obedient to God even to the point of death, they could certainly humble themselves to the point of giving up their personal opinions for the sake of church unity. Paul doesn’t say so here, but almost certainly implied in this call is the notion that they should give up their own opinions and adopt Paul’s.

Now as I said earlier, Christian unity is one of the basic themes of the UCC; but the fact is that we have a very different view of Christian unity than Paul did. To us, unity does not have to mean unity of thought. Nothing in the UCC Constitution, for example, requires unity of thought. Indeed, that Constitution specifically provides for the possibility at least of disunity of thought among the local churches and other institutions of the UCC. Our denomination’s Constitution provides that local church autonomy is our most sacred of sacred cows; and that sacred local church autonomy includes the right of each local church "to formulate its own covenants and confessions of faith." UCC Constitution, Paragraph 18. In other words, each local church is free to find its own understanding of the faith and to express that understanding as it sees fit. And, since the Constitution recommends this model of autonomy to the local churches themselves, it also at least suggests that within the local church individual autonomy is to be respected just as local church autonomy is respected in the denomination. See Paragraph 3. To us, unity does not mean unity of thought or belief.

And we certainly embody that notion that unity doesn’t mean unity of thought or belief. In our little congregation we have, for example, a pretty wide range of political opinions; and I know a lot of you who are faithful members of this church disagree with me on many political issues. We also lack unity in our theological understandings. I don’t want to name names, but Manny disagrees with me about a whole lot of theological things and, quite appropriately, isn’t reluctant to say so. And yet we have unity here, and there is even a kind of unity in the UCC itself. But if that unity doesn’t mean agreement, doesn’t mean being of one mind, how are we to understand it?

Let me suggest that we are to understand it under two headings. The first is covenant. In the UCC, and in this local church of the UCC, we relate to each other in covenant. The UCC Constitution explains covenant in this context this way:

Within the United Church of Christ, the various expressions of the church relate to each other in a covenantal manner. Each expression of the church has responsibilities and rights in relation to the others, to the end that the whole church will seek God’s will and be faithful to God’s mission. Decisions are made in consultation and collaboration among the various parts of the structure. As members of the Body of Christ, each expression of the church is called to honor and respect the work and ministry of each other part. Each expression of the church listens, hears, and carefully considers the advice, counsel, and requests of others. In this covenant, the various expressions of the United Church of Christ seek to walk together in all God’s ways. Paragraph 6.

The second heading is the Lordship of Jesus Christ. We may not all agree on what it means, but we all acknowledge the Lordship of Jesus Christ. That, after all, is what makes us Christians. Again, the UCC Constitution give us guidance. It says: "The United Church of Christ acknowledges as its sole Head, Jesus Christ, Son of God and Savior. It acknowledges as kindred in Christ all who share in this confession." Paragraph 2. We don’t require doctrinal unity. We are, however, a Christian fellowship; and as members of a Christian fellowship we all acknowledge Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. With Jesus Christ as our Head, we can live together in covenantal unity. To the world, and to the more hierarchical churches, that covenantal unity of ours can look a lot like disunity. So be it. Here, in the United Church of Christ and in Monroe Congregational United Church of Christ, we have the courage to live with disagreement because we know that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior; and in the end that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?

And here’s the good news in all of that. Because our unity doesn’t require uniformity, we’re free! We are free Christians freely worshipping, freely seeking, and freely finding our way to God through Jesus Christ. We answer to our own consciences and to our God, not to some standard of doctrinal purity and not to any ecclesiastical authority charged with enforcing doctrinal purity. We’re free! And because we are, we can get on with working out our salvation with fear and trembling as Paul told the Christians in Philippi to do so many centuries ago. Maybe in the first century CE the church needed uniformity of thinking. It doesn’t now. Rather, it needs unity in diversity. It needs free exploration of the traditions of our faith, free asking of questions and free seeking of answers, freedom of conscience in the church as well as in society. It needs covenantal not institutional unity; and we can thank God that that’s what we have here in our church and in our denomination. So let’s get on with it. Let’s get on with that holy working out of our salvation, knowing that God and our Lord Jesus Christ will be with us every step of the way, holding us always in the everlasting arms of grace. Amen.