Pacific Currents - May 2008

CHERISHING OUR DIFFERENCES IN AN ELECTION YEAR: It’s Gospel

by Rev. Dr. Mary Susan Gast, Conference Minister, May 14, 2008

Five years ago, just before Annual Meeting, I received a letter. It was probably a difficult letter to write. I know it was a painful letter to read.

It came from a life-long member of the United Church of Christ, someone whose views on social issues and political realities would most assuredly be at odds with mine, someone whose faith is indisputably rooted in the same gracious Love as mine.

It was a difficult letter because it slashed at the connections between Christian faith and social justice which, to me, are inseparable and inescapable.

It was a painful letter because it captured so well the frustration of a person who feels her views demeaned, her faith unheeded.

From her perspective the United Church of Christ has dismissed her and reduced Christian practice to the band-wagon support of trendy causes.

1. For a number of years, I have been talking to just about anyone who displays a glimmer of interest about my three abiding hopes for the United Church of Christ:That we be very clear in the articulation of the Biblical bases of our beliefs and practices, embrac- Cherishing our differences in an election year: It’s gospel ing diversity as a “given” aspect of our unity in Christ for “no one can say, ‘Jesus is Sovereign’ except by the Holy Spirit” [I Cor. 12: 3b];
2. That we never give up our historic commitment to movements of liberation, to what I perceive as our dedication to working out the understanding of Genesis 1:27, that all people are created in the image and likeness of God; and
3. That, in the process of carrying through on hopes No. 1 and 2, we treat one another with kindness.

Seemingly, in the eyes of my correspondent, the UCC’s reach for hopes No. 1 and 3 had fallen short of our grasp.

In the current election year I have received many letters regarding the overlap of faith and politics within the United Church of Christ. Most of them have been copies of letters, written to and by various individuals with concerns for the I.R.S. investigation of the UCC’s tax-exempt status or John Thomas’ statements about Jeremiah Wright.

In the current election year it is probably wise to remind ourselves as a church that there will be times — and there have been times — when our beliefs, our faith, our understanding of discipleship, impel us to actions in the sphere of politics.

And to remind ourselves that as a church we know that we could count up the number of times when we’ve ever all agreed on anything and come up with a number that wasn’t much bigger than the number of candles on a toddler’s birthday cake.

So it shouldn’t surprise us a whole lot when we disagree. On faith, on politics, or on the intersection, the “coincide-ence” of the two.

What can we make of it when we find that fundamentalists and near-Buddhists, farm owners and farm workers, McCain and Clinton and Obama supporters are all clustering around the same communion table?

What can we make of it, except that Jesus has called each one of us to be here — in the church and in the world?

That the Creator loved the universe into being with lavish and tender attention to all manner of diversity?

How can we live with our differences, not merely tolerating them but cherishing them, except by reminding ourselves that The Almighty has created each of us in the divine image? That’s life beyond the bandwagon. It’s Gospel

                                                                                                        ~ Mary Susan