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From October 1, 2006 Shortly after moving to Utah, I accompanied a parishioner to the hospital while she underwent a procedure. While I waited in the hall, I could hear wild laughter in the exam room. What was so funny, I wondered. Suddenly the door flew open and in the threshold stood the nurse; she was grinning from ear to ear. "So you're the new Winkel!" the nurse exclaimed, shaking my hand. "Mrs. Jones just told me you were here. You won't believe this but you and I are related. We share the same great-grandparents!" I looked into the nurse's big beautiful eyes. Related? You and I are related? I searched her face for any hint of likeness, any clue that might confirm our shared bloodline. I came up short. But we were related. In our veins danced a whole lot of Hendrick and Everdina, giving us something to claim and celebrate together. It's not every day that a stranger turns out to be kin. A few years back, the Winkel family held a reunion. Someone had a bright idea. Because the family had gotten so big, folks attending would know they were related but might not know exactly how. So to keep embarrassment at a minimum, everyone wore color-coded polo shirts with stitched-on windmills over their hearts. My grandfather's progeny all wore yellow shirts. His brother Anton's offspring wore blue. And their sister Rose's children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren each wore green. You get the idea. What a sight--all those color-coded Winkels scattered across the grassy park, sharing stories and recipes, chatting and chuckling, all pointing back toward the Dutch immigrants whose blood flowed freely through their lives. ******* Gathered in a thatched hut in a village in Zimbabwe, assembled in a gothic cathedral in Stuttgart, clustered together in an adobe-covered iglisia on the outskirts of Antigua, Guatemala, drawn together in a small living room in Seoul, Korea, and meeting in thousands of communities and in hundreds of nations the world around, Christians today are celebrating our shared lineage. Today we remember that wherever we are, we are Christ's family. On this day, on World Communion Sunday, we come to Christ's table to share that meal he prepares for us. On this day, we remember and celebrate the fact that we have relatives in almost every nook and cranny on the planet, sisters and brothers who today--just as we will do in a few moments--lift to their lips the spiritual flesh and blood of the one in whom we find our common identity: Jesus of Nazareth. Christ's family gathers much like the Winkel family did that summer's day; we come to celebrate our shared heritage and yet we aren't even close to identical. Some of us wear UCC shirts, others wear Presbyterian shirts, or Evangelical Lutheran shirts, or even Church of God in Christ shirts. Some wear Episcopalian shirts. Others bear the bright colors of the Methodists, Disciples of Christ, Southern Baptists, American Baptists, Mennonites, and the Metropolitan Community Church. The World Alliance of Reformed Churches reports that there are well over 700 different Protestant denominations around the globe--that's a lot of shades of shirts. But don't forget that the Christian family also includes family who come from the Eastern Orthodox side of the house. And of course we best not forget our Roman Catholic kin. The differences between the members of Christ's family are many. Like my new-found relative and me, some of us look almost nothing like the others--something we who are regularly confused with the Church of Christ know quite well. And yet no matter whether we appear or even act related, we are. We are. In a most intentional way on World Communion Sunday, we come forward to take our place at Christ's table , looking not only toward the one who has invited us here but--through imagination--turning our gaze from side to side. We look into the eyes of the many whom Christ calls family. And we marvel at how varied are we and how beautiful, this family of followers. At Christ's table, again through imagination, we hear the music of the many languages we use to express our faith: Urdu and Spanish, Persian and Lakota, Swahili and Armenian and Japanese and Polish and French. All these languages giving voice to what we hold in common: sacred stories and the sacramental rites of baptism and communion. On this day, we incline our ears to hear whispers and shouts in every imaginable tongue, all different and yet all filled with the same things--gratitude for graces given, hopes for healing, longing for forgiveness, expressions of utmost joy, prayers for peace. From his place at the table, Jesus' kind eyes take us in. What a stupendous family has gathered about him on this feasting day. As varied as we are, Christ sees beyond our many differences. Christ sees past the myriad ways we worship, past the habits and traditions of each denominational stream. As Christ looks around the table at the community he calls his own, plain to him is all that we have in common: the same Spirit flowing in us, the same inheritance as Christ's family. The apostle Paul expresses his understanding in this way: "...For in Christ you are all children of God through faith... There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:26, 28) The huge differences in the Christian family which are apparent to you and me all fall away when Christ looks at us. He sees past all the labels and categories we have created. He sees us--his brothers and sisters, his own, his beloved. And yet what Christ sees, you and I are not always so quick to perceive. Even within our own denomination, we have tended to identify differences rather than affirm our common identity. I was especially aware of this yesterday as our brothers and sisters from around the Evansville Tri-State Association gathered. Ours is an association struggling with differences around biblical authority and interpretation, and is wrestling with what it means, exactly, to be radically inclusive disciples. One of the ministers who came yesterday made a comment on the way out of worship that had me suspect that he experienced my spiritual orientation to be far different from his. I confess his remark made me nervous, even made me feel a tad defensive. Here we go again, I thought to myself, another occasion when I am left feeling a need to explain or justify how I experience and serve Christ. When I was in seminary, a professor sent me to the library to read about the many years of conversations that led to the forming of the United Church of Christ in 1957. Having grown up in this denomination, I had never given much thought to its origins. The UCC just was. In my reading, I ended up feeling much like those who do genealogical research. I felt an enormity of excitement and pride. More than that, I felt a profound gratitude for the risk-taking that enabled the United Church of Christ to come into being. Those who helped birth the United Church of Christ did so not because our four predecessor bodies, our four grandparent churches, were alike. They labored diligently because they took seriously Christ's prayer that we might all be one. That the Christian family might live together in unity. Unity is not the same as uniformity. Unity is having a sense that we are part of a whole. A sense of having a place in the circle, and then being bold enough to take that place, no matter how much we may differ one from the other. Uniformity is what humans think is a condition for unity. But that--the expectation of uniformity--only gets us into trouble, as it did yesterday when I allowed myself to feel defensive because my faith happens to differ from someone else's. We are not called to uniformity. We are called to unity, something deeper and more real than our differences. A drawing together spurred on and sustained by the Spirit. World Communion Sunday is a day that asks us to stretch. We stretch our imaginations to consider the many Christians in many places joining together in many ways to celebrate that we are made family in Christ. We stretch to embrace those who look and sound least like us. And the most challenging task of all--we stretch to embrace even those refuse to embrace us because we look and sound so different we couldn't possibly be related. Amen. ©
Rev. Karen Winkel |
"Never place a period where God has placed a comma." - Gracie Allen
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