Shortly before our 50^th anniversary General Synod, a retired colleague wrote of his experience in Cleveland, Ohio, in June of 1957.  Fresh from his own ordination in the Evangelical and Reformed Church, he and some friends had decided to fly to Cleveland to witness the union of his church with the Congregational Christian Churches.  The flight was delayed – some things never change! – so they found themselves flying over the city as the great processional moved from Public Square toward the Music Hall where the service was to be held.  High over the city he watched as the two processions, representing the two churches, joined together on their way toward the historic celebration.  What a fascinating way to experience the birth of this new church and the vision that the healing of the church might also lead to the healing of the nations!

            The United Church of Christ was born out of an ecumenical vision that had grown through the twentieth century.  It followed the birth of the World Council of Churches in 1948 and the National Council of Churches in the early 1950’s.  It had been the vision of colleagues from the two churches who had grown to know each other in these international and national communities.  Their vision had been shaped by the calamities of war and the failure of the churches either to fully confront the idolatries of National Socialism in Germany and its program of genocide, or overcome the bitter rivalries of national allegiances that separated Christians along political borders.  The birth of the United Church of Christ was never simply a rearrangement of institutional church bureaucracies; it was to be a sign of the unity both of the church and the world, understanding that a divided church could not offer a credible witness to a divided world.

            The motto chosen for this new church reflected that bifocal vision of church and world.  It came from Jesus’ prayer, “that the they may all be one, that the world might believe.”  This union had not been easy.  Opponents, particularly among Congregationalists, had attempted to block it, and there would be some churches that would refuse to join the new church out of fear of a loss of their own heritage and privilege.  One of the speakers at the 1957 Synod was Bishop Lesslie Newbigen of the Church of South India, a united church which had, like the United Church of Christ, been formed in the 1940’s out of several different denominations.  Newbigen reminded the delegates that this union, as all ecumenical endeavor, would be costly:

A true union of churches, while it means that we bring into the union all that God has given us in our separation, also means that we are ready to bring all our treasures to the test of His word and Spirit, to surrender if need be many long-cherished securities, to venture on new and untrodden paths.  And I would add that it is precisely at those points where union is most costly that it will be most fruitful, provided that we do not try to evade issues of truth, or to be content with mere togetherness, provided that we are really submitting ourselves to the searching mercy and judgment of the Cross.  

The hopes in 1957 were ambitious.  This was not just to be a “united church.”  It was to be a “uniting church.”  The union celebrated in 1957 was, in the minds of many participants, to be the first of many unions that would alter the landscape of American Protestantism.

            Like the Clevelanders who watched the parade that day, who probably assumed in 1957 that they would celebrate a World Series victory in just a few years or so, things didn’t quite turn out as anticipated!  There were unexpected joys and surprises.  Vatican II fundamentally altered and transformed relationships with Roman Catholics.  Relationships between the Lutheran and Reformed parts of the Protestant family, strained since the 16^th century, were healed by the Formula of Agreement in 1997.  A full communion relationship with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) has led to a whole new way of engaging in global mission with world partners who are no longer “daughter churches,” but “sisters and brothers” in our witness to the Gospel of justice and peace.  Partnerships with former Southern Baptists, with members of the Metropolitan Community Church, with new immigrant communities like Congregationalists from American Samoa, and now with evangelicals and Pentecostals who share a commitment to overcoming poverty and to protecting the environment all signal exciting new ways we continue to be a “uniting” church, bearing witness to the one Gospel in the one world.  Just last week I was accompanied by the President of the Unitarian Universalist Association on my pilgrimage to Washington to deliver peace petitions from the United Church of Christ to leaders in Congress and to the White House.  That may not sound remarkable until you remember that in the 19^th century there was no more vicious and venomous conflict than the one between Unitarians and our orthodox Congregational forebears.

            But painful divisions have persisted as well, along with new fractures.  Unanticipated ethical issues like abortion have divided us in new ways.  The difficult question of the ordination of gay and lesbian persons, or the privilege of celebrating same gender marriage has created pain and conflict within as well as among churches.  We have failed to address the way race and the legacy of slavery continues to divide Christians.  Paul’s image of the body remains a challenging one.  We are often tempted to say to one another, “I have no need of you!”  Newbigen was right when he said that moving beyond “mere togetherness,” and taking seriously “issues of truth,” would be costly, challenging our old securities.  It often feels easier for the eye and the hand to part ways, as if being part of the body is optional.  How is it that I have need of you when we disagree so deeply, or find one another so disagreeable?  Fifty years after our union, we continue to experience the reality of both the mercy and the judgment of the Cross as we seek to live out the prayer in our costly ecumenical vocation: “that they may all be one, that the world may believe.”

            Almost hidden in one of the prayers offered at the Uniting General Synod, repeated this summer in Hartford, was the hint that the quest for unity would soon reveal an even more expansive horizon.  Listen to these remarkable words spoken fifty years ago long before “interfaith relations” was a common phrase among American Christians:  “By the joy and praise of the Church universal, by every prayer for light in shrines of whatsoever faith, in east or west or north or south, kindle in our hearts the faith that shall be a light upon our way and a song upon our lips.”  Clearly the ecumenical vocation for the United Church of Christ would grow far richer, and in the process far more challenging.

            Initially our closest interfaith neighbors, of course, were Jewish neighbors, a community with whom the church has had a two thousand year history of engagement, much of it marked by bitterness, even violence.  The decades following the Second World War became a time for many in the United Church of Christ and other denominations to begin to come to terms not only with anti-Semitism, but also with the ways our own theology, and even the language of the New Testament, has encouraged anti-Jewish violence throughout history up to and including the Holocaust.  Jews were blamed for the crucifixion, and many assumed that God’s covenant with Israel had been abandoned by God in the new covenant with the church.  Caricature and stereotype were not just cultural realities, but deeply rooted theological distortions.

            In 1987, the General Synod, again meeting in Cleveland (all roads lead to Cleveland by the way!), passed a resolution that reflected a new engagement with scripture, particularly Paul’s letter to the Romans, in the light of post-Holocaust reflection.  “God’s covenant with the Jews has not been broken, but endures,” the Synod said.  As a result, Jewish Christian relations needed to be set in a new theological context.  Paul’s own somewhat tortured argument with himself in our text this morning reminds us that the Synod’s pronouncement was not breaking entirely new ground.  There is language in Romans that makes us squirm – “they are enemies of God for your sake.”  “They have been disobedient.”  Read without care, Paul can indeed reinforce old stereotypes.  But the fundamental argument here is that “God has not rejected his people.”  In our “election” we share a common destiny as Jews and Christians, “for the gifts of God are irrevocable.”  And if the Jews have been disobedient, that is no cause for boasting by Paul’s followers or by us.  “For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that God may be merciful to all.”  God’s enduring covenant with the Jews, and God’s covenant with the church, link us in inextricable and mysterious ways.  To borrow again from Paul, “the eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you.’”

            This is good news.  The 1987 resolution opened up new doorways of dialogue and appreciation and cooperation, born of our own repentance of a history that had nearly exterminated a people.  This year we are embarking on project with the American Jewish Committee to observe the 20^th anniversary of that statement in cooperation with the Presbyterian Church (USA) which issued a similar pronouncement that same year.  Good news indeed.  But what happens when ecumenical commitments and interfaith commitments clash?  When the desire to join Christian neighbors in the struggle for justice and peace seems to pit us against interfaith neighbors who find certain of our ecumenical commitments bewildering, even offensive?  And, to be precise, how do you, the members of Old South Church, live out these historic ecumenical and interfaith commitments when they arrive in a volatile mixture contained in the vessel of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

            As your General Minister and President, I want to offer you three words.  First, a word of gratitude and encouragement.  You, with your pastor and your leaders, have declared your willingness to enter into a conversation that involves profound risk and that will bring – already has brought – deep tension to your life.  To listen to, and learn about the painful narrative of Palestinian Christians enduring Occupation is difficult but critical if we are to be faithful ecumenical partners and responsible citizens. This is a tiny community that is shrinking every year, offering the very real possibility that the day will come when there are no Christians living in the land of Jesus’ birth, life, ministry, death, and resurrection.  Such a reality would be tragic for the church, for the wider Palestinian community, and I believe for the prospects of peace.  Palestinian Christians need our prayers, our visits, our solidarity in their own struggle for a viable future along side of, and at peace with Israel.

            But Jewish neighbors bring a painful narrative as well, a narrative many of us know far better than that of the Palestinian Christians.  We need to listen carefully to that narrative as well, even when it comes into conflict with the other.  The Jewish narrative, woven through the history of the Holocaust and the establishment of Israel, is also one we need to attend, a narrative fraught with pain and loss.  But how do we honor both when they seem to compete?  Here is my second word:  Resist the temptation to privilege one narrative over the other.  It is perhaps simplistic to say that you may feel as if each of these two “neighbors” is seeking to become your “best friend” at the expense of the other, even threatening to break a relationship if you do not distance yourself from the other.  But I suspect that is what it may feel like.  Two cherished neighbors.  One living next door, well known to us with a faith that is deeply related to ours, yet also distinct.  One sharing our faith, yet living in distant Palestine.  Each seeking to be “first neighbor” with us.  Here we come close to the heart of the pain and peril of the hour for you.  

            It is pain and peril that is inevitable and necessary if and when we attend to the very real narratives of suffering that have bound two communities in a struggle in which both believe their cause is just and their future is at risk.  It is pain and peril that makes us vulnerable to threat, to intimidation, to bitter allegations, to profound suspicion.  It is pain and peril that is deeply uncomfortable.  It is pain and peril that we cannot fully alleviate with dialogue.  How easy it would be to walk away, to allow one neighbor to cause us to say to the other neighbor, “I have no need of you.”  Here Paul offers us the reminder that by virtue of being part of the body of Christ we never have the privilege of saying to other Christians, including and perhaps especially our Palestinian neighbors, “I have no need of you,” that by virtue of God’s enduring covenant with the Jewish people, we never have the privilege of saying to our Jewish neighbors, “I have no need of you.”  This means conflict we cannot resolve ourselves short of walking away.  We must live with it, endure it, persist through it trusting not in our own capacity, but in the grace and mercy of God.  Paul ends his theological analysis by almost throwing up his hands:  “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!  How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways.” 

            Which leads to my last word:  You should not be surprised to find yourself in this difficult place as part of a church that, from the beginning, has taken both its relationships – all of them – and its search for the way of justice and peace, equally seriously.  For we are a people of the Cross, where unity is costly, and justice and peace require, above all else, courage.  At the Fifth World Conference on Faith and Order in Santiago de Compostella, Spain, a friend, Mary Tanner of the Anglican Church, offered these powerful words which I hope can sustain you through this month:  “

I hope we shall grasp at a deeper level that difference, tension and even conflict will always be a part of the life of the church this side of the kingdom.  We are called to stick with the pain of difference and to live through it:  Sharp things that divide us can paradoxically turn out to be gift.  The world with all its divisions is not used to such a possibility as this:  that those on opposing sides should stay together, bear each other’s burdens, even enter one another’s pain.  If we are able, by grace, to live together in visible communion while bearing the cost of difference, never again saying, “I have no need of you,” we shall get hold, at a deeper level, of a communion with a God who suffers and we shall be rewarded with an experience of reconciliation and unity grounded in the unity of God the Holy Trinity at whose heart is forever a cross.         

May you sense the prayerful embrace of the whole church as you live through these days.  And may the mystery of the Cross in this deeply conflicted moment guide you and sustain you.  Amen.