LET IT SHINE
Scripture: II Corinthians 4:3-6
John 16:12-13
Eight days from today, on June 25, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the merger of two denominations that then became the United Church of Christ. And, as most of you know, the General Synod taking place in Hartford, CT, next week (which I and Ann and Jim Beggs will be attending) will help the church truly to commemorate that occasion with several days of hoopla, serious discussion, praise, worship, prayer…and some good old-fashioned fun. The deceptively simple theme chosen for this anniversary event is “Let It Shine!”
I must confess to a bit of ambivalence as we approach this 50th anniversary celebration. On the one hand, as I think most of you know by now, I’m a huge supporter of the United Church of Christ – its polity and positions and place in the American religious scene are all aspects of a religious life that resonate very deeply with me. I try to lift up before you and before God the worth and the manifest good deeds of this denomination as strongly as I can. On the other hand, it may be bordering on heresy to laud one denomination over others in a time when the world needs to see the unity of Christian people. After all, I spent most of my career in ecumenical settings; I fervently wish that Jesus’ prayer “that they may all be one” could come true in our lifetime. It is so important for us constantly to be seeking after Christian unity – not for the sake of the church, but so that the world can see more clearly what the Christian story is and how it can be offered out of a sense of oneness.
Another level of ambiguity about this celebration is the danger of focusing too much on what has happened in the last 50 years – of feeling too smug about a sense of accomplishment. Actually, in its preparatory materials the UCC has done a pretty good job in maintaining a posture of looking forward as well as looking back. The very theme, “Let it Shine!”, implies a beam of light moving forward and illuminating the future. I hope that next week in Hartford that forward-looking direction will continue in the midst of celebrating accomplishments of the last 50 years.
There is a third ambiguity which has to do with an emphasis on either the individual or the community. We sang “This Little Light of Mine” last week at the Southern California Nevada Conference Annual Gathering also, and afterwards conference minister Dan Romero commented that he always felt a bit ambivalent singing that song because of the way it emphasizes “This little light of mine; I’m gonna let it shine.” From the “Me Generation” to Sammy Davis Jr’s “I’ve gotta be me” or Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” there is this tendency to feel that whatever I’m doing or wherever I’m going, I’ve gotta do it myself. You already know how much I emphasize the nature and importance of community, and any religious organization that is going to remain true to its mandate and mission must have a sense that we are doing this together – that we build upon the work of others and help to lift each other up. Fortunately, most of the materials and commentary that I’ve seen coming out about the 50th anniversary do convey that we are both looking back and moving forward as God’s people – as a community called to be in mission together. The theme, “Let It Shine”, actually doesn’t call attention to either the individual or the community, but rather to the love of God which we are called to proclaim as beaming forth enlightening the whole world.
So, bear with me for a few moments while I talk about our denomination and the import of celebrating the last 50 years. (When I told Ann about the theme for this sermon, her reaction was, “That sounds more like a lecture than a sermon.” And I guess for a little while now that is what it will be like. But I’ll try to bring it back to a reflection on the scriptures and to what it means for us in our own situation. I’m taking this risk because I do feel that every once in awhile – as the four people in the confirmation class discovered – it’s important to look at the history of where we’ve come from in order better to understand where we need to be going.)
Probably like most of you, I didn’t begin as part of the United Church of Christ, but made a conscious choice for it when I was a senior in seminary, having spent my youth and young adult years as a Methodist (before they were United Methodists). I came to the conclusion that I liked the UCC’s polity, with its placing of authority in the local church, and its approach to social justice issues better than any other denomination I saw out there. Our General Minister and President, John Thomas, begins his column in this month’s United Church News with this sentence: “When the question is asked at new member classes – ‘How many of you grew up in the United Church of Christ?’ – the number of raised hands typically represents far less than half in the room.” Like Harry and Thomas last week and Jason and Lura before them, each of us has made a conscious decision to be a part of this particular expression of Christianity.
That uniting Synod in 1957, as the confirmation class discovered, was actually the merger of two already merged churches. Some of you may already be quite familiar with this history, but let me rehearse it a bit briefly for all of us.
The Congregational part of our heritage dates from the Puritans who separated themselves from the Church of England in the 16th century, first going to Holland and then to the New World as Pilgrims. One of their leaders was John Robinson whose famous statement, “God has yet more light and truth to break forth out of his holy Word," was the precursor for the UCC’s “God is still speaking” program. Congregationalism established itself in this country with the Cambridge Synod of 1648. Throughout the 19th and early part of the 20th centuries Congregationalists pioneered in education, publishing, church extension, home missions, and social action (as in the Amistad event).
The Christian part of our heritage was home grown in the 19th century also by a group of dissenters, who took the simple adjective Christian as their name since they felt (I guess fairly obviously) that followers of Christ should accept no other label. Congregationalists and Christians put great stress on the covenant that a church made in response to God’s leading – each church was seen as a covenant fellowship. Their beliefs were so similar that these two groups merged in 1931.
The Reformed part of our heritage began in Switzerland with Ulrich Zwingli, but by the early 18th century they were primarily Germans who then came to the US settling largely in Pennsylvania. One of the Reformed Church’s legacies to us is the founding of Lancaster Seminary. They placed a great deal of emphasis on the Heidelberg Catechism.
The Evangelical part of our heritage is also largely German, but they settled mostly in Missouri and around the Mississippi. They had chosen the word evangel because it means “good news” – their mission was to bring the good news of Christ to all they met. Because of their common Germanic background and the fact that they held most beliefs in common, the Evangelical and Reformed churches merged in 1934 to form that new denomination.
When the Uniting General Synod was held, then, in 1957 a new thing was born: a denomination that was, in fact, a merger of four different groups – the first time that had happened in American religious life.
Fred Hoskins, one of the architects of the UCC merger, offered this prayer at the 1957 Uniting General Synod: “We move in the hope…that God will provide us with light according to our need, guidance according to the demands of the time, and strength to the requirements of every situation. Our hope is that we may keep ourselves enough out of the way that God can move in and find us useable instruments for doing God’s will.” That’s the kind of spirit out of which the UCC was born and into which we are still being called today: to let ourselves (meaning our egos, our wants, our hang-ups) get out of the way enough so that God can use us as willing instruments to do God’s will.
It’s easy enough to list what the United Church of Christ stands for and
desires to be. It can almost be done as a litany:
We are a united and uniting church.
We are a multiracial and multicultural church.
We are a church accessible to all.
We are an open and affirming church.
We are a peace and justice church.
Doesn’t that sound like something you would like to be a part of?
About that “peace and justice church” name. I was having a conversation this week with Jim Beggs about how you can’t have true liberty (or freedom) without justice, and the same holds true for peace. Any peace that is just the cessation of hostilities without justice being achieved for those who have been oppressed is a false peace and will not hold – that’s the central message of Martin Luther King Jr’s Letter From a Birmingham City Jail. The United Church of Christ has been involved with myriad efforts to achieve justice – from the Amistad uprising of the 19th century to the Wilmington 10 in the 1970s. Let me lift up just one example that is especially dear to my heart: in 1964 the television station WLBT in Jackson, MS, would systematically cut out coverage that related to black people, whether locally or nationally (such as when Martin Luther King came on the news – the station would cut to alternate programming). The UCC’s Office of Communication, under the leadership of Everett Parker (a mentor of mine), challenged this pattern by carefully logging the station’s programming performance and collecting other evidence of its discrimination. Ultimately, the Office of Communication achieved a landmark Federal Communications Commission decision that paved the way for the public to be able to challenge the licenses of broadcasters when they were not serving in the public interest.
I don’t mean to suggest that all is “peaches and cream” for those who are a part of this denomination. Back in 1975 Oliver Powell wrote an article for A.D. magazine that got widely circulated and celebrated in which he called the UCC “a heady exasperating mix.” Actually, Powell’s line also included the words “beautiful” and “hopeful”, but it was that “heady exasperating mix” that garnered all the attention. From its beginning the UCC has been an activist church with a penchant for looking for places where injustice occurs – and this can be exasperating for some who come for a quiet, peaceful worship. Here’s how J. Bennett Guess, editor of United Church News interprets Oliver Powell’s line: “Organizational theorists might have well advised this still-new church to stay close to home and mind its own fledgling institutional concerns, but the UCC’s ‘heady exasperating’ membership – and leadership – would have none of that. They had more important issues with which to contend than mere ecclesiastical order. They were busy being the church in the world: joining protests, resisting militarism, confronting racism, supporting the Equal Rights Amendment, standing alongside migrant farm workers – and talking about sex long before other Christians knew it existed.” (Well, OK, maybe that last is something of an over-statement, but dealing with issues of human sexuality certainly has been central to the UCC’s mission over these 50 years.)
I want to come back to that “united and uniting” phrase. There was a strong sentiment on the part of some in 1957 that the name should be Uniting Church of Christ in order to point to the dynamism and growth that this denomination was to be an expression of for the ecumenical movement. Even though the preference for United won out, I rather like the sense of the dynamic flow and openness to a still speaking God that Uniting brings with it. I hope we can continue to see ourselves having this kind of vibrant approach to God’s call for us in this day and in the years to come.
In the brief passage Ann read from the Gospel of John Jesus is creating for his disciples an expectation for dynamism and continual learning about the world about us. Jesus is not interested in control but in opening up the disciples’ horizons. He says, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” But he doesn’t stop there. He promises them the comfort and guidance of the Spirit of truth – which is a wonderful synonym for the Holy Spirit
-- who will speak about the new things to come. In other words, God is still speaking. So, the church, the life, the organization, the individual, and the community that embrace the Spirit embrace God’s continually unfolding future. Is it any wonder that Jesus said and keeps saying to us today, “Be not afraid?”
Lillian Daniel, in reflecting on the “veiled gospel” that Paul speaks of in our passage from II Corinthians remarks, “’God is still speaking’ is just a clear and simple way to reflect our Reformation tradition, history and witness. It is not some trendy thing we just came up with. It’s a deep theological truth that stands for the best of who we are. It allows the United Church of Christ to be a church in which you are not required to drop your brain at the sidewalk, but are actually expected to bring it into church with you. God is still speaking. Let light shine out of the darkness. Tell your stories of faith. Do not be embarrassed to admit that God lives in your church, and that we are always listening for God’s word….. We need to live as though the most important person in the church is the one who has not yet walked through the door.”
So that’s the practical application out of all this history and celebration and anniversary marking: we are to let our light shine so that everyone we meet will know that this is a church that offers an extravagant welcome to all. Jesus said, “You are the light of the world” – and that means you and me and each one of us. May the light that shines forth from this place and the light that will shine in celebration next week in Hartford illumine our paths for all future days.
Amen.
Dave Pomeroy
First Congregational Church/United Church of Christ
Las Vegas, NV
June 17, 2007