Sermon: "One in Christ Jesus"

The Rev. Bryn Smallwood-Garcia
Congregational Church of Brookfield (UCC)
April 27, 2008
 

One in Christ Jesus

Acts 17:15-28
Galatians 3:23-29
John 14:18-20

Prayer:   “May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts and minds be acceptable to you, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.”
 

Becoming “one in Christ Jesus” is one of those Holy Bible phrases that sounds inviting and looks pretty good on paper, but holds some very real challenges when we try to live it out in actual practice.  In Paul’s letter to the Galatians, he says the statement of faith that we make at our baptism makes us all children of God, and therefore brothers and sisters in one family of Christ.  According to Paul, at that sacramental moment, we are “clothed with Christ.”  From that time on, he says, we are no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, but “one in Christ Jesus.”  That may sound good for a moment, but let’s stop and think some more about it.  It’s one thing to see those beautiful 5 Vonk children at their baptism – all red hair and freckles – and rejoice at the unity of their family.  But what does it mean for us to be unified in our church family, where we bloom in a rainbow of colors – red, yellow, black, and white?  Do we gain something in that mix?  We Americans are proud of our independence.  Do we gain something when we unite in Christ, or do we risk the sacrifice of our individuality? 

I can’t speak for the Galatians, but I know from experience that it’s easy to scare people off by the call of Jesus to this oneness that he describes in today’s reading from John’s Gospel, where he says “I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.”   That’s a little closer to God than most Congregationalists like us seem to want to be.  Like most of you, I suspect, when I visit a new church, I sit on a back pew, preferably near a fire exit – in worship, you never know when the wind and flames of the Holy Spirit might get loose!  I prefer to test the waters before diving on in.  My Pentecostal and Baptist and Disciples of Christ friends like to poke fun at us in the United Church of Christ sometimes – they practice full immersion, believers’ baptism while we usually just sprinkle a little baptismal water on our infants and children.  Does that mean we’re keeping our distance and actually avoiding full immersion with our baptism into the oneness of God in Christ Jesus?

I wanted to share with you a kind of funny dream of call I had back when I was really wrestling with the decision about whether or not to go to seminary and take the plunge into ordained ministry.  I was 25, and I had moved to San Francisco to study acting.  I was separating myself from my family of origin – both the faith family of my home church and my extended biological family in North Carolina.  And, I’m telling you, there’s not anything much more individualistic you can do than to order a hundred copies of a headshot and resume. There’s not anything much more individualistic you can do than stand alone on a stage in front of hundreds people and recite a Shakespeare monologue.  For me to then feel called to immerse myself into ministry, to accept the call to enter into the oneness of God in Christ Jesus, felt to me like a huge sacrifice – as if the self I had just found, and was learning to love, was going to be obliterated.

So my dream was this:  I was entering a church, where sort of listless and dull gray people were being directed to immerse themselves into what looked like a giant black cauldron of oatmeal.  Jesus was holding people’s hands to steady them on the stepladder that led up to the rim, and he was helping them both to get in and to take their first step out again.  Inside the pot something mysterious and frightening was happening – it was as if the old person was melting into the “oneness of God” and then re-emerging a new creature, sparkling clean and happy from the rinse waters of new life.  But then the “oatmeal baptized” and newly washed Christian was led, again by Jesus, to a beautiful smorgasbord of national dishes, where men and women and children of all ages and races were laughing together and sharing what they liked and passing on the ones they didn’t like – just the way it happens in our families at home on the holidays. 

It was then I realized that my call to ministry didn’t mean I would lose entirely who I was, but rather that God would take my gifts, melt away my rough edges, and reshape me into a new person who could join millions of others at Christ’s amazing and bountiful table of grace.  We would be “one in Christ” and yet somehow, mysteriously, more beautifully and uniquely ourselves than ever before.  We were not afraid because of that promise of Jesus to always stay by our side: “I will not leave you orphaned,” he says in John. “I am coming to you … you will see me; because I live, you also will live.”

What does it mean, then, to sit down at God’s table of grace and allow our Maker to polish and refine and use our unique gifts at same time as we accept our baptism into the oneness of Christ in His church?  What does it mean to respect and listen with love to a variety of faith voices at that table, especially those that we don’t fully agree with or understand, even as we courageously and lovingly name and claim our own experiences and perspectives?  That’s where our text from the Acts of the Apostles comes in today.

Whatever you think about Paul, you have to admire his courage in taking up the challenge to preach that day from the Areopagus in Athens.  It’s really just a big old rock, about twice the size of the boulder that our kids like to climb on, out there between the Fair Kitchen and the parking lot.  The summer between high school and college I was studying in Greece, and when I got to the Areopagus, I had to climb all the way to the top – because I so wanted to stand where Paul once stood and actually try to see from his perspective.  It’s a windy spot on the slope of the Acropolis – about half-way between the busy marketplace of the Agora, the town square, and the Parthenon, the high place of pagan worship.  The wind was blowing hard the day I climbed up, and it literally took my breath away.  It’s the place where the most famous and eloquent thinkers of the ancient world came to share their ideas about art and politics and religion and philosophy.  To think Paul had the courage to debate them – they called him a “foreign babbler.”   It was like what our poor candidates face today when they get grilled on the TV News.  But for Paul, that promise of the guidance of the Holy Spirit, that “oneness in Christ” he writes about in Galatians, no doubt helped him stand up to their scornful twisting of his words.

And yet, what he preached was no more shocking or outrageous than the “oneness in Christ” that we proclaim here today.  Whether it’s rich merchants or powerful rulers, religious leaders or intellectual elite, society’s upper crust always seems to recoil from this “Good News” of our brotherhood and sisterhood in Christ.  They’d just as soon remain set apart.  They’d just as soon send their kids to private schools and get well in private hospitals with the best specialists and ride in first class. 

Like most successful people, Paul’s listeners at the Areopagus would be proud of their accomplishments.  Like most Americans today, these Greeks believed the gods had blessed them – after all, they were citizens of the most free and democratic society in history.  Naturally, they took pride in their hard-won status and independence.  Like us, they enjoyed being autonomous and self-sufficient.  Like us, they admired successful and prosperous people, and encouraged their kids to compete hard in school and sports so that doors would open to social and career opportunities.  As a society, like us, they tended to look down on those who were dependent upon others, who had to take the worst jobs – such as women and slaves and foreigners.  Although we may be polite enough to disguise our prejudices, we Americans today can be similarly dismissive of poor mothers on welfare or immigrant laborers, or those who are just barely making ends meet on minimum wage or worse – Food Stamps, unemployment or disability income.  And yet, what does Jesus say?  “I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.”  What does Paul say?  We are no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, but “one in Christ Jesus.” 

This is closer than many of us want to be – it may actually make us squirm and feel uncomfortable.  We all have a hard time getting along with people who are different from ourselves.  We have been issued a challenge by our denomination to open up a national discussion about race, which I will address in worship on May 18.  As I said earlier, I invite you to share with me your thoughts on this issue, because it remains a volatile one in our American society, which prides itself on its equal opportunity for all.  But even in a church like ours, where racial diversity is minimal, we face a multitude of other challenges to becoming “one in Christ Jesus.”  We are male and female; we are Republicans and Democrats; we are wealthy and less affluent; we are gay and straight.  Besides that, we are a wild mix of psychological types: introverts and extraverts, feeling types and thinkers, pragmatists and dreamers; spontaneous types and planners.  But we’re all called to join this one Body of Christ – we get to sit together at this one great table of grace with Jesus at our side, now and forever.

Thanks be to God for this Good News.  Amen.