THE WORLD IS STILL MY PARISH

© Rev. Dr. Gary Blaine

August 10, 2008

University Congregational Church

 

Reading:  Isaiah 60: 1 – 4 (NRSV)

          Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.

          For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you.

          Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.

 

          I begin this morning with a story told by Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia.  He wrote of a reporter who was covering the war in Sarajevo.  The reporter saw a little girl shot by a sniper.  The bullet had blown the back of her head away.  For the next several moments he stopped being a reporter.  He threw down his pad and pencil and rushed to the child’s side.  A man was holding her.  The reporter helped the man and child into his car.

          As the reporter stepped on the accelerator, racing to the hospital, the man holding the bleeding child said, “Hurry, my friend, my child is still alive.” 

          A moment or two later, “Hurry my friend, my child is still warm.”

          Finally, “Hurry!  Oh my God, my child is getting cold.”

          When they got to the hospital the little girl had died.  The two men went into the lavatory to wash the blood off their hands and clothes.  The man turned to the reporter and said, “Now there is a terrible task before me.  I must go tell her father that his child is dead.  He will be heartbroken.”

          The reporter was amazed.  He looked at the grieving man and said,
“I thought she was your child.”

          The man replied to the journalist, “No, but aren’t they all our children?”[1]

          The tragedy of this story is the fact that children die a violent death every day.  Children die every day of AIDS in Africa; warfare in Darfur, Iraq and Afghanistan; earthquakes in places like China; and drive-by shootings in America.  We certainly grieve at the senseless murder of the innocents.  But I wonder if we celebrate enough these two strangers whose lives were suddenly thrown together in an effort to save this little girl?  Do we marvel at the reporter who threw down his professional hauteur and rushed to the dying child; or the neighbor who claimed the girl as his own and held her in his arms in the desperate attempt to save her?  Could we possibly imagine his global compassion that dares to ask, “Aren’t they all our children?”

          This is a profoundly human question and one that we must raise in a world that is increasingly a global village.  The adage, “Think globally, act locally,” continues to bear much truth.  But that truth is diminished when we lose sight of the global dynamics of the local situation.  For example, several Western states are seeing their water tables shrink, especially those that feed into the Colorado River.  It would be naïve to believe that the emerging water shortage is the lone issue of states like Colorado, Utah, and Nevada.  No single state can manage the problem.  I understand that even the watershed of Kansas has some bearing on this issue.  The solution is going to be a universal one.  Likewise, managing air pollution in New York City depends, in part, on managing air pollution in Detroit, Cleveland, and Pittsburg.  Acting locally will be insufficient.  We will have to act globally.  The same is true for nearly every other major issue that I can think of such as global warming, the energy crisis, the AIDS epidemic, world population, and food shortages.

The people whose lives are impacted by these issues are all our children. 

          Never have the words of John Dunn been more true:

“The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all.  When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that head which is my head too, and ingrafted into the body whereof I am a member.  And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated…As therefore the bell that rings a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all…No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is piece of the continent, a part of the main.  If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less… Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”[2]

 

We are all everyone’s children.  Everyone’s child is a member of our household. 

          I think for this reason John’s gospel declares, “God so loved the world” that he offered his Son.  God’s love is not limited to Jews or Christians.  God’s love is extended to every race and family.  John Wesley declared, “All the world is my parish.”  Indeed, John Donne, “all mankind is of one author and is one volume.”

          So, you might be wondering, “What has this to do with University Congregational Church?”  I believe that it has everything to do with our identity and purpose as stated in our covenant.  Now it is easy for us to gloss over the covenant if it has been a part of our lives for many years.  Please understand that the covenant is the first document I studied when I considered applying for the Senior Minister position.  Congregationalists do not have a creed, doctrine, or articles of faith that bind us to the church.  We have no dogma that defines faith and membership.  We only have the covenant that compels us to walk together as a community of faith.  Our covenant shares a vision for our identity and purpose.  As long as the covenant stands I believe that I am compelled to work and live within that vision of our congregation.  That is the shaping document for my ministry with you.  

          There are two elements of our covenant that calls us to a ministry of love and justice.  The first phrase reads, “…this Church exists to serve those who believe that the Christian faith affords our clearest insight into the nature and will of God.”  I would challenge anyone to remove from any Christian church its most essential foundations of love and service, compassion and justice, mercy and sacrifice.  The second phrase reads, “…we join one another to worship and work so that peace, justice, and brotherhood may prevail in this world.”  Serve, work, and worship are the key ingredients of our covenant, all in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ.

Service, work, and worship necessarily imply a larger world, a greater community.  Service, work, and worship are ipso facto communal events.  One cannot serve, work, or worship in isolation. 

          I want also to point to our Congregational history to remind us of this great tradition of love and service.  Let us go all the way back to 1630, on the good ship Arbella, off the coast of North America.  Aboard ship is Mr. John Winthrop, future governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and a leading Puritan.  I am sure you recall that the Puritans and Pilgrims are the forebears of Congregationalism.  Mr. Winthrop wrote an essay entitled, “A Model of Christian Charity.” 

          Mr. Winthrop had a vision of the new Massachusetts Bay Colony as a “city upon a hill, the eyes of all people upon us.”  The new colony would be like a beacon shining out across the Atlantic, a new light to all of the nations.  This city would shine for one primary reason: the light of this city is nothing less than charity.  The guiding light of the new citadel will be love and justice.  He believed that if the new colony abandoned the principle of charity it would shipwreck.  Winthrop declared:

“Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck, and to provide for our prosperity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God.  For this end we must knit together, in this work, as one man.  We must entertain each other in brotherly affection.  We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of other’s necessities.  We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality.  We must delight in each other; make other’s conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body.  So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.”[3] 

 

It is in the marrow of Congregationalism to live the ways of mercy and justice.  We are most faithful to our founding principles when we see every child as our own.

          Yet again, “What has this got to do with our Congregation and its future?” 

          Last Wednesday, fifty of us gathered in fellowship hall.  These included the Strategic Planning Committee, the Committee on Ministry, the presidents and members of our boards, including Deacons, Trustees, Guild, Outreach, and Christian Education.  We were reminded of our covenant and mission.  We then began to articulate the goals that would empower us to fulfill our mission.  The goals that we began to sketch out are still roughly defined.  The boards are now charged with the responsibility of refining and sharpening those goals.  We expect them to be specific, achievable, and measurable.  They will then identify the strategic steps that will be necessary to bring them to fulfillment, including such details as leadership, resources, timelines, and budgets. 

We expect to have this work approved by the Church Council by December.

          As this work of goal setting and strategic planning matures, I would like to hold up to us all the vision of Christian charity.  May we discern in all that we do acts of love, compassion, mercy, and justice.  It is my hope and prayer that we be a bridge not only to those in need, but also with others who join us – or would join us – in the quest for peace, justice, and brotherhood.  It is a challenge to all of us to range beyond the confines of this beautiful sanctuary and enjoin the hands, hearts, and heads of other Christians, other religious traditions, and secular leaders and organizations to these very ideals.  We are all in this together.  All of us.  The future depends not so much on any specific act of charity as it does on the larger relationships of charity with our community and world.  Let it be said of University Congregational Church that all of the children are our own.  All of them.

          Finis


[1] Sen. Sam Nunn, address to the National Prayer Breakfast, Washington, D.C. 02/02/96; Prayers for the Common Good, A. Jean Lesher, ed. (Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 1998), 151-152.

[2] John Donne, “Meditation XVII,” Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, this translation found at the Indiana State University; http://isu.indstate.edu/ilnpro/ENG451/ISLAND/text.html, downloaded 8/08/08.

[3] John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity: 1630,” Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston: Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1838), Third Series 7:31-48.