We decided to take a day off for Easter Monday - but some of the events of the past week have made me ponder anew about the amazing community of God's family.
On Wednesday I had the opportunity to attend an interfaith symposium on "My religion's answer to world peace". It was fascinating to hear women of different faiths speak of peace and how their faith viewed it. While some spoke more academically and others spoke more personally, each spoke of her understanding of Faith's answer to peace. The women who lead and attended this symposium varied in age, race, occupation and, of course, religion. Yet we gathered together to talk to each other and share this experience of listening to each other and learning more about other faiths while putting faces to faiths and getting to meet other women as friends. We were all different but could meet and learn and even pray together.
On Thursday and Friday I attended inter-Mennonite Passion Week services. People from several Mennonite Congregations gathered to worship God, celebrate communion, and generally ponder and give thanks for Jesus' sacrifice. If asked, we would not agree on a lot of specifics of faith - as to forms of baptism, response to various ethical questions, even to usual style of worship - yet we could come together and have a meaningful time of praising and learning about God together.
I have also been reading a book by Bruxy Cavey, The End of Religion. In one of the earlier chapters he speaks of The Council of Nicaea where 250 bishops gathered as brothers in Christ. They worked at defining their faith through the drawing up of an official creed (The Nicene Creed). Through this process "the group of formerly united-although-diverse Christ-followers could now be officially divided into "orthodox" and "heretics," with the heretics being given the option of exile of death."
These are three of the influences that have reminded me once again that we are called to be the diverse body of Christ on earth - and that God is so much bigger and greater than any human could ever understand.
I am pretty sure that no one person has all the answers to who God is and how we should respond to that. The only person that could would have been Jesus - and he tried to teach us through his life, his teachings, his death and his resurrection. Since different groups disagree on what he was saying I would guess we haven't received the message completely correctly either. Yet in spite of our incomplete comprehension and following of Jesus and his message, we often condemn each other for understanding and following differently. Though we are all sinners, we often condemn those who sin differently. We set out to follow, yet often get distracted by judging those who see a different path. We try to set our rules about who is "in" and who is "out" of God's kingdom - but how do we know? Why can't we gather together more often to celebrate what God has done, to learn from each other's perspective and tolerate our differences? When we focus on learning and worship we can come closer to answering Jesus' prayer that we "may experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you [God] sent me [Jesus] and that you love them as much as you love me."(John 17:20-23, NLT). God is so much bigger and greater than you or me, who is to say that we can't both, differences and all, fall under God's loving umbrella of grace?
We are called to be the body of Christ in all its glorious diversity. A Pancreas doesn't look like a foot (as far as I know) but is important for the function of the body. The eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and fingertips are very different from each other, yet together help us distinguish the world around us. We are not a monochromatic duvet cover determined by a single set of right and wrong beliefs but a beautiful, colourful patchwork quilt made with different textures and memories all built in - perhaps even held together by slightly uneven stitches at times but able, together, to provide the service for which it was planned and created. So, too, should we work together, worship together, even when we don't all agree. Let us focus on God, not our differences. Let us Christians focus on Christ who worshipped with the Jews and the gentiles, the "clean" and the "unclean." Let us not work too hard to define exactly who we, as a group, are and what we believe through statements and creeds but let us live out who each of us is called to be so that, together, we can by God's Grace be God's hands & feet, or patchwork quilt, here on earth.
Happy Easter!
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