Picking Up Where They Left Off

Acts 4:32-35; John 20:19-31

A Sermon Preached by Donald Mackenzie

April 23, 2006

University Congregational United Church of Christ

Seattle, Washington

“Now the whole group of those who believed, were of one heart and soul…” Acts 4:32a

This Sunday marks my last Sunday with you until August 20^th so I want to take this opportunity to thank you deeply for this wonderful opportunity to be renewed! I’m taking some vacation before and after my sabbatical and will also be helping to lead an interfaith workshop on Orcas Island with Rabbi Ted Falcon and Jamal Rahman. The sabbatical itself will be a combination of rest and work on a book that Ted and Jamal and I are writing on the topic of “What Really Matters?” It’s about the potential for prophetic cooperation among the three monotheistic faiths on topics of vital interest to the future of our world. I say ‘vital interest,’ because we are standing on the edge of a very real threat of nuclear war with Iran, on the edge of true environmental destruction, to say nothing of the rampant poverty, disease and total marginalization of the majority of the world’s population. In some ways, it is hard to imagine a worse state of affairs.

Today’s readings provide an opportunity to reflect with you for a few moments on the important themes they bring, themes that are part of the concerns of my sabbatical. The reading from Acts, a book that intends to give a picture of the struggles and successes among these early Christian people, shows us just how radically different that early Christian community was from the culture around it. These people held material things in common, granted equality to women and were committed to nonviolence, something that prohibited their participation in the Roman Army. So politics was an issue from the very beginning. From Acts we get a picture of countercultural living and a strong engagement with politics.

From John, we get a question about faith and doubt inside what it means to be a person. Some of the disciples appear to have believed by faith, but Thomas must have physical proof. We have to confess, I think, that we are much like Thomas here. But think back to the Acts passage. It says they believed in common, they were of one heart and soul. That’s what it takes, doesn’t it? They helped each other believe, and we try to do the same thing. We have this church to help us believe and to help us create a life that is the consequence of belief: worship, fellowship, education and service. For the early Christian church, service meant action in the form of the sharing of material goods, of granting full equality to women and to nonviolence. Is this the church of today? No. While we aspire to this, most churches are frankly not like this. What happened?

Certainly the legalization of Christianity in the year 317 by the Emperor Constantine was a turning point. It meant that Christians lost their edge. It may have been too, that the energy it took to sustain a countercultural community was simply too much. Doubtless it was complicated. We do know that the aims of the community were high and fully in keeping with the gospel. Again, how could the world have strayed so far from the substance of Jesus’ message?

That’s where we are hoping to make a contribution. Our book assumes a world-wide numbness, mostly the consequence of having either too much or too little—and of course for the vast majority of the world’s population it’s too little. We hope to add our voices to a growing call for a spiritual awakening that would overcome such a numbness and recognize and address the pain of others. Of course the world’s pain is so great that to be fully present to it would surely be crushing. But the prophetic tradition that runs through all three monotheistic faiths is about having compassion, about the anguish of the pain of others and about the awakening that is needed to address that pain, address without being crushed. That prophetic tradition includes Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Jesus and Mohammed. More recently it has included people such as Harriet Tubman, Eleanor Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and Desmond Tutu and many, many others. Each of these voices falls within the monotheistic prophetic tradition.

As a part of this book, each of us has agreed to write a chapter called “One Verse That Changed My Life.” Without giving everything away, let me quickly show you the thread that connects these three chapters. Ted Falcon is using what in Judaism is called the Sch’ma: it first appears in the Book of Deuteronomy in chapter six following the listing of the Ten Commandments. This is the chapter about the greatest of the commandments, but this passage precedes it: Listen O Israel, God is One. It is the essential call to monotheism, but it is also a way into understanding the inseparable nature of God and human community. We are all a part of the One. So Ted’s chapter is about the Oneness of God.

My verse appears in Luke, Chapter 10: “And seeking to justify himself, he said, ‘And who is my neighbor?” The verse is actually a transition from the testing of Jesus where one says to him, “What is the greatest commandment in the law?” Jesus answers with the great commandment, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind and all your soul. And a second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself.” Then comes my verse—and who is my neighbor? In response to that question, Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan. At the end of the story he says, “And which of these three was neighbor to the man who was robbed?” The one who has asked says, “The one who showed him mercy.” It is mercy, or compassion that is the glue of the oneness that is God but that also connects God and humanity. (confusing previous sentence) But here’s where I think it really gets interesting. Jamal’s verse begins, “In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful…” This verse introduces all but one of the chapters of the Qur’an. The identification with mercy and compassion is the first thing we hear about God, about Allah—the Arabic word for God. So the thread is compassion and it is by the authority of compassion that service is carried out in the name of God.

We have something today that the early Church did not have. We have the beginnings of cooperation between Christians and Jews and we have Islam—something that did not exist in the time of Jesus. And while most of the non-Muslim world associates violence with Islam (just as most of the non-Christian world associates violence with Christianity) the truth about Islam begins and ends in compassion and in mercy.

On March 15, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson addressing a joint session of Congress in the wake of the troubles in Selma, Alabama, troubles undertaken to secure the right to vote for African-Americans, said, “Rarely in any time, does an issue lay bare the secret heart of America itself. Rarely are we met with a challenge, not to our growth or abundance, or our welfare or our security, but rather to the values and purpose and meaning of our beloved nation.” Today, forty-one years later, the challenge is to our world, to the meaning of the preciousness of human community on this planet, a planet in danger from nuclear war and environmental destruction. The secret heart of the world wishes to live in peace and in justice, providing full human and civil rights for all peoples and solving problems nonviolently.

And so we look for that new world, one defined by compassion and not by the jealousy and hatred that has defined so much of human history. We are looking to pick up where the early church left off. May it be that someday, through interfaith cooperation, the world will recover the substance of its secret heart, and by cooperation, develop the compassion needed to save this world. Amen.