All By Myself!
By guest preacher, The Rev. John H. Thomas
President & General Minister of the United Church of Christ
September 25, 2005
Romans 14: 1-12
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spent a few hours these past weeks writing thank you notes to people who had written to the United Church of Christ expressing words of consolation and encouragement, and offering tangible offerings of help in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
The letters and emails came from our church partners across the globe – the Presbyterian Church in the Republic of Korea, the Church of Christ in Thailand, the Protestant Churches of Indonesia, the Church of South India, the Council of Churches in Cuba, the China Christian Council, the Reformed Church in France, the United Reformed Church in Great Britain, the Churches of Westphalia, Rhineland, and Berlin-Brandenburg in Germany, the Waldensian Church in Italy, the Coptic Evangelical Organization for Social Service in Egypt, the United Church of Christ in Japan.
Three of these letters included financial commitments to Katrina relief totaling almost $75,000.
The notes from the churches in southern Asia were especially poignant, for these churches still struggle to aid victims of last December's tsunami.
Their solidarity with us grows out of a deep sense of shared suffering with those who died, and those who survived Katrina's devastation.
American Christians are accustomed to helping people in
crisis. We do it often, we do it with
generosity, we do it well. In the weeks
following the tsunami members of the United Church of Christ contributed over
$4 million which has been given to our church partners and their ecumenical
service agencies in India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Indonesia to rebuild
shattered communities. What we don't
always do as well, is receive the embrace of our global family in times of our
own vulnerability and loss. We are the
strong, to use Paul's phrases, if not always in faith, then certainly in
resources. We do not easily or
comfortably see ourselves as the weak, as those who are vulnerable, as those in
need of another's embrace. My family's
lore includes the remembrance of my older sister's first complete phrase. It was a defiant, “all by myself!” Churches and nations are just as susceptible
to what I call the “heresies of self-reliance and self-sufficiency.” I suspect some of our squeamishness about
using the word “refugee” to describe those evacuated from New Orleans has
something to do with this. Refugees are
those “weak” folk, those dependent folk “over there” in chaotic places unlike
America. No one wants to face the
reality that we, too, could become weak, dependent, miserable refugees in
search of sanctuary like the Holy Family in ancient Egypt. All by myself.
“We do not
live to ourselves,” said Paul, “and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we
die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's.” The great theologian Karl Barth put it this
way: “There is no such thing as life in
itself; there is only life in relation to God. . . . There is no such thing as death in itself; there is only death in
relation to God.” There is, in truth,
no such thing as “all by myself.” Even
a lonely life in an emergency shelter far from the friends and family who
shared a neighborhood now swept away is life in relation to God. Even a lonely death in the trap of a flooded
attic is death in relation to God. If we
live, we live to the Lord, and if we died, we die to the Lord; so then, whether
we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. Can you hear the great assurance, the incredible promise in this Gospel
message? But can you also hear the
judgment? The judgment on those of us
who believe we can live to ourselves? Those for whom “all by myself!” is born not of necessity, but of
arrogance?
Too many of us are “all by myself” people. Too many of our congregations are “all by
myself” churches. Sometimes it takes a
tragedy to realize the inherent mutuality of our existence, the inherent
dependence of our lives not merely on our own wit and wisdom, but on others and
on God. Times we discover that “all by
myself” doesn't work, even for proud and strong Americans, even for proud and
strong congregations. Times we discover
that “all by myself” was never really true. There is no such thing as life itself, no such thing as death itself;
there is life and there is death only in relation to God, the same God who said
at the beginning “it is not good for the human to be alone,” who promises that
at the end Christ will be raised up to draw all to himself.
In the days of Katrina's unfolding tragedy, people from
across the United Church of Christ held our colleagues on the staff of the Back
Bay Mission in Biloxi, Mississippi in prayer and our staff in Cleveland is in
Texas this weekend meeting with the director to begin planning how Back Bay can
begin serving in the recovery area immediately while planning its own rebuilding. The Council for Higher Education which links
our church related colleges met by telephone and offered to students at Dillard
University in New Orleans, one of our historic African American colleges founded
by our American Missionary Association, placements for this semester. Our church camp near Austin, Texas, opened
its facilities to eighty people from New Orleans, a story featured this week on
NBC national news. The United Church of
Christ Pension Boards is working to ensure that health insurance benefits
continue for the pastors evacuated from New Orleans whose churches are flooded
and who have no resources to pay their premiums. Money from One Great Hour of Sharing offerings, from a special
national endowment, and from the gifts of one of our Conferences is paying the
salaries of the pastors and lay workers of New Orleans area churches until
their congregations can resume operations. Our United Church of Christ Insurance program stands ready to pay for
catastrophic property damages, just as it did last year in Florida. It will mean higher insurance premiums for
all of us, but it means that many churches will rebuild and will continue to be
insured even as commercial insurers flee. And, of course, UCC congregations are donating hundreds of thousands of
dollars to our Hope Shall Bloom appeal so that we have the resources to help
restore communities, congregations, and lives. There is life, there is death, only in relation to God; there is life,
there is death only in relation to the people of God around us.
Of course, life in relation to others sometimes means
life in relation to those we don't understand, don't agree with, perhaps don't
even like. This summer the General
Synod of the United Church of Christ passed a resolution affirming the right to
a marriage license for all, including gay and lesbian couples. While many in the church and beyond hailed
this decision as an authentic word of the Gospel inviting all couples into the
embrace of the church's blessing and discipline where marriage rights and
marriage responsibilities can be lived out, others were quick to disagree,
sometimes sharply, and quick even to pull back from fellowship. “All by myself” is a seductive response to
those things – and those people – that make us angry or uncomfortable. Paul knew this reality – proving that at
least in the church there is very little new under the sun! He was dealing with issues that seem quaint
to us, but that were just as divisive as gay marriage in his day with
proponents and opponents lined up on either side with their favorite
texts. Those who ate meat and those who
refused on religious grounds, those who drank wine and those who abstained,
those who honored the sabbath and those who did not. As he put it, they “quarreled over opinions.”
Now Paul had strong opinions. He labeled some of these Christians “weak.” (He, of course, was strong!) And he didn't ask for casual compromise. “Let all be fully convinced in their own
minds,” he writes. But he lifts up a
higher criteria for the church than “who is right” and “who is wrong.” In Corinthians he calls it love, “the more
excellent way.” Here is speaks of
“honoring God” and “giving thanks to God” as the higher value. Eat or don't eat, drink or don't drink,
honor the old Jewish sabbath or don't, as long as you do it to honor God, to
give thanks to God. Why? “Because we don't live to ourselves, and we
don't die to ourselves.” In the end,
“all by myself” – which tends to lead us to despise and pass judgment – is the
greater sin. In the end, the church is
not the community of the like-minded or the likable; it is the people God has
called together to live in relationship to God.
Four years ago in September I was in Germany visiting our
church partners. On September 11, 2001,
news reporters at a press conference we were holding on the church's resistance
to the rise of right wing violence against foreigners and migrants in the
former East Germany were the ones to break the news of the terrorist attacks
back home and quickly took us to their studios so we could use phones and see
what was happening. I remember being
interviewed by a reporter for the radio in the studio; as she asked me
questions she watched a screen behind me, tears streaming down her face. I don't remember much of what I said to her,
except this: “Today the violence that is an everyday experience for so many in
the world has come to the United States. My hope is that rather than simply retaliating, Americans will become more
sensitive to this painful global reality, and will find ways to be in
solidarity with the truly vulnerable of our world.” Four years later that hope remains largely unfulfilled. America has largely reverted to “all by
myself.” Made vulnerable by those awful
attacks, we have sought to reclaim the privilege of our strength, our
insulation from the suffering world beyond our shores, and in the process I
fear have made many in the world even more vulnerable.
As was the case these past few weeks, four years ago I
received countless letters of consolation from colleagues around the
world. One came from Ricardo Escivia, a
lay leader of the Mennonite Church in Colombia, a man who risks his life every
day to promote peace and justice in a country that has been torn by terrorist
and government sponsored violence for decades. His letter ended with hope: “A
fraternal hug, crossing borders, united in faith.” For 175 years Bethel has been living these realities, both within
this rural community, but also in covenant with the whole United Church of Christ
through your extraordinary financial support of wider mission, through people
like Lorin and Nancy, through your prayers. A strong and vital presence in this community, you have not lived to
yourselves, for you have demonstrated that you live in relation to God, that
“all by myself” is not your way of being church.
Today the Stillspeaking God who has called the United
Church of Christ to extend an extravagant welcome to all while demonstrating
evangelical courage in a violent and unjust world, speaks this enduring word
about costly and challenging community to a church and to a society that still
struggles to hear it, that still struggles to honor differences because it
honors God more, that still struggles to resist the privilege and the idolatry
of “all by myself.” An embrace across
every imaginable border, born not of self-interest, but of faith. Katrina, like 9/11 reminds us that, in the
end, we cannot simply live to ourselves. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord;
so then whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. What God said at the beginning, God still
speaks: “It is not good to be alone.” Amen.
© 2005
John Thomas.
All rights reserved.
