Harmony

Harmony
February 7, 2010
I Corinthians 12:12-26

I am sick of it. I am sick of all the fighting, all the bickering, all the hostility and hate.

Sometimes I feel as though that is all that is left of the world. Division, discension, tension. It is ridiculous. I want to say it is childish but children are way smarter than this.

Last week I watched the state of the union address and while the President was speaking every 8 seconds or so half of the audience would stand up and clap while the other half grumbled and booed. And then the president would say something else and the other half of the audience would stand up and the president’s own party had their own time of grumbling. And that was nothing compared to the media madness that began the moment President Obama spoke those last words, God bless America, instantly Republicans had this to say and Democrats were arguing with the Republicans and on and on and on. And I am sick of it.

Are you? I am sick of us thinking the right way to do things is to fight about everything, to be disrespectful, to work against each other and not with one another. Now I am not so naïve as to believe that there are not real problems in our country or that everyone is ultimately just saying the same thing. No there are real differences of opinions that cannot be minimized and that is good right we shouldn’t all agree, that is how we hold each other accountable…but the way that we do it, its not ok.

And it isn’t just politics. We are a divided people. We divide over football…who is cheering for the Colts this afternoon? Ok, who is cheering for the Saints? Since we are pretty indifferent to both teams there might not be too much tension but imagine if the Bronco’s and Raiders or Broncos and Chiefs were playing each other in a huge game like this…it would not be pretty. And its not all in good fun. I’ve been to Bronco/Raider games there is real anger – people are truly divided and hostile about it.

And those of us who know better, we really don’t. Religious division is probably the most dangerous this world knows. And not only between different religions, the fighting between Christians has killed too many and scarred even more in Ireland and even here, in our own country we divide…not just Catholics and Protestants but Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Pentecostals, Baptists – American Baptists, and Southern Baptists, United Church of Christ, Church of Christ…Disciples of Christ.

As I was teaching our new members class I was telling them about the history of our church. The founders of our movement, Barton W. Stone and Thomas and Alexander Campbell were sick of it too. Over 175 years ago they too were in a world where division was the norm, politically, economically, socially and religiously. These men, Stone especially was mad, fed up with the way the church defied the biblical mandate of unity heard from the Psalms, the gospels, and in many letters from the Apostle Paul. Stone saw the division created by creeds – a statement that everyone must agree to word for word to uphold fellowship in the church and be welcomed to the Lord’s Table. The Campbell’s were more upset by the divisions of denominationalism and within denominations that prohibited believing Christians from sharing communion together. These men, and their movements were both looking for unity. They chose names that sought to unite instead of divide: Christians for Stone and Disciples for the Campbells. It was only when they chose to fully live into their beliefs and to unify, followed by nearly a century of discussion on the name, that we became the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). What is important for us to hear is that our church was created on the ground, the basis, the foundation of unity. Unity is at the very heart of who we are as Christians, as Disciples, as members of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). But I think this history, this core to who we are as church has been forgotten. In too many ways we have become exactly what we were created against – we as a church appear to be one more line – one more division in the body of Christ. And on some level it is true because we are not perfect: The union between Stone’s Christians and Campbell’s Disciples in some ways has led to more of the same. Our church split in the late 1800’s over the use of an organ and you can go to down the road to the Church of Christ – who shares the same history that we do and hear no instrumental music and some other big differences like no women speaking during worship or serving as Pastor, Elder or Deacon. We are not perfect, no one is, but what is important to realize is that for us, for our church, division is not an easy way out of conflict…division is sin.

Division is sin, not because our church founders didn’t like it or like me were sick of all the fighting, they believed, I believed and our church was built on the understanding that through scripture we are called to be united, we are called to be one.

In the first verse of Psalm 133 we hear:
How very good and pleasant it is
when kindred live together in unity!
In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians that we studied last summer we hear:

therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

There is a whole sermon there, maybe more than one – but hear those words: humility, gentleness, patience, bearing with, effort…it takes all of this to maintain unity and peace.

Paul goes a little deeper in his letter to the Colossians. He tells us what that effort is…how it is we uphold unity in the bond of peace, in chapter 3 he writes:

13Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful.

Forgive and be forgiven
Be thankful
Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts
Clothe yourselves with love which binds everything together in perfect harmony.
…perfect harmony…
There is something there we must not miss. Perfect harmony.

When we talk about unity, some people think the way to unity is to get everyone to think or speak or act or look exactly the same. Unity as sameness as homogenous. And there are even scritpures that seem to support this. Often 1 Corinthians 1:10 is used to support such an argument where Paul writes:

10 Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you should be in agreement and that there should be no divisions among you, but that you should be united in the same mind and the same purpose.

But these words must be held in context. There are divisions in the church at Corinth which Paul goes on to talk about. Paul tells us some are saying I belong to Paul, I belong to Apollos (another diety known at the time) and some say I belong to Christ. They are not arguing over theological semantics but over the core of their faith, do we follow Christ, put Christ first, or someone or something else. This is the fundamental principle of a community of faith. No creed but Christ we say in the Disciples.

Furthermore we must hear this verse in the context of all of I Corinthians of which today’s scripture comes as well.

The body and its many parts…as we read in verse 12:

12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.

All the members must work, more than that were created to work together as one, one body and cannot be separated. Just as Paul says:

If the foot were to say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body’, that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16And if the ear were to say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body’, that would not make it any less a part of the body.

There can be dissent, I do not belong to the body but there is still a oneness about it, inherent within the body and inherent within the body of Christ. And yet nothing works if all the members do not live into their unity. If the eye refuses to observe the gifts of the ear, if the foot refuses to move with the leg…the body cannot move, cannot function, cannot thrive.

Remember again those words from Colossians…perfect harmony. The body must move and work in harmony, not in melody, not in sameness but in harmony. Harmony, as any musician will tell you, is not so simple as everyone singing the same notes – it is complex, it requires diversity but the most amazing thing is that the more diversity there is, the more voices that sing different notes the more beautiful the sound.

I was surprised to find that unity is a synonymn for harmony because it seems like a new idea. Too often we hear the words of I Corinthians one and we think that we all must be the same to have unity, we all have to have the same ideas, we all have to agree in order for there to be peace, to unify – and yet that is not true, it is has never been true. The unity that the scriptures call us to, the unity that Barton Stone and Thomas and Alexander Campbell wanted, needed, demanded of their church is a harmonious unity – unity in diversity.

Unity that allows for disagreement. This is essential to who we are – Campbell and Stone did not agree on everything when they founded a church together, actually they disagreed on quite a bit. They were very different one highly educated immigrant family the other Kentucky born and educated. The two did not always share kind words, nor did they find consensus on theological principles but they both believed that the body of Christ was created to be unified and so through the elements laid out by Paul: patience, love, forgiveness, humility and occasional gentleness they came together as one.

This is the story of our church. These are the roots of our faith and our calling. Harmony. Unity in diversity.

You know there are a lot of churches in this town, in this county. 24 in Fort Morgan alone! And so we have to ask ourselves, what makes us different. What is it that First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) can offer to our community? And on a larger scale, what is it that the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) can offer to our nation or our world? Are we just one more line of division or do we have a purpose, a calling?

I believe we do, in the lives of individuals, here in Morgan County, in Colorado, in our nation and our world. We are a people of unity. We are the people that go to a church where we do not agree on everything. We sit next to people who vote differently than we do. We study the scriptures with people who interpret differently and maybe even contradictory than we do. We have the freedom, we even celebrate that we have the freedom to disagree with each other because at the end of the day or the end of the argument we remember that we need each other. We, in the Christian Church know the good news that unity is not sameness, harmony – unity – the body of Christ only works when we hear the voice of others, when we have the patience and the humility and the love and the gentleness and forgiveness to come together around a table and share a meal of love and sacrifice and hope and peace. Imagine what would happen if the most anxious and hostile Colts fans sat and ate a meal with the most anxious and hostile Saints fans and they practiced humility and gentleness and patience and love…no one would go home a loser this afternoon. And that is just a game…

What if religious leaders, the leaders of our country and the leaders of our world…pursued unity. What if they worked together for peace, what if they had patience and gentleness and humility along with determination and persistence that leadership requires. What if unity wasn’t a soundbite but a commitment – what if we really treated the divisions of our world as sin? What if those who seek to create divisions that stand on whatever suits them, whether that be left and right and north and south were seen for what they are, self-interested…

We have a message for our world. Diversity does not equal division. Harmony is a gift from God. It is a calling from God and it is not easy, but it is worth it.
Amen.