Unity: The Bond of Revival
Stephen Terry
Commentary for the August 17, 2013
Sabbath School Lesson
“Just as a body, though one, has many
parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were
all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles,
slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body
is not made up of one part but of many.”
“Now if the foot should
say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for
that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not
an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being
part of the body. If the whole body were
an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear,
where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the
body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.” 1 Corinthians 12:12-18,
NIV
Sometimes
within the body of Christ, it is not very comfortable to be different. Those
who challenge the prevailing opinion can be placed on a hot seat of informal ostracism
and derision. They may also ultimately face a more formal censorship, a disfellowshipping,
and in the case of clergy, even defrocking. While none of these is as violent
as the crucifixion that Jesus suffered for not conforming to expectations, they
are nonetheless emblematic of what can happen when one goes against the grain.
At times, the ongoing search for truth becomes secondary to the preservation of
an institution and the power structures enshrined in its organizational chart.
We all tend
to believe that those who think like us are the really intelligent people and
those who don’t are either flawed or suspect. But this way of thinking can lead
us down the path of conflict and polarization. While it may be true that having
everyone going in the same direction makes administration easier, when the
direction of travel becomes questionable, even a lemming would be wise to
challenge the consensus. When they do, if we do not have the ability to listen
to that voice and sacrifice uniformity to a higher purpose, we may find
ourselves not on the path to heaven, but a much broader way instead.[i]
The Bible
has many stories about outliers who do not join with mainstream religious practice.
Instead they call out with word or example to abandon those practices and return
to an individual relationship with God, where each is alone accountable
directly to God.[ii]
Embarking on
a nomadic lifestyle, Abraham left his home country in Mesopotamia and traveled into
Palestine. He believed that his relationship with God called him away from the
religious practices of his family and neighbors.[iii]
Generations later, the family he left behind was unwilling to recognize the
authority of his calling and continued in the religious practices that Abraham
had abandoned.[iv]
Had Abraham simply bowed to family pressure and accepted the prevailing
religious understanding, we would possibly have had something other than the
faith we hold dear, today.
Another
example is Elijah who challenged the prevailing religious institution of his
day. Standing alone before hundreds who denied the legitimacy of his
perspective, he demonstrated a bold-faced tenacity that only faltered in the
face of a death decree from the royal household.[v]
Significantly, God pointed out to Elijah that despite appearances, he did not
stand alone in his perspective. Perhaps we should also remember that when we
rightly dissent from dominant practice.
While I have
written so far regarding the individual who stands in dissent, the Bible also
provides insight regarding those who witness such dissent. Prominent in the New
Testament is Paul. As Saul of Tarsus, he witnessed the outliers challenging the
understanding of the leaders of the Jewish faith. Having witnessed the murder
by these leaders of the Christian deacon, Stephen,[vi]
he then actively pursued other Christians, possibly that they might share
Stephen’s fate.[vii]
While Paul’s
persecution of the Christians was no doubt devastating to the infant church, perhaps
the witness presented by the lives of these dissenters was creating a
progressively more uncomfortable cognitive dissonance for him. Whether this was
the case or not, everything appears to have come to a head while Paul was
traveling to Damascus to further persecute the church. While on that journey,
he turned from persecuting the believers to becoming one with them.
The Bible tells
us that it is God’s goodness or kindness that leads us to change direction with
our lives.[viii]
In this instance, Paul claimed that God was directly involved in his
repentance, and once he became identified with these dissenting Christian Jews,
the church was never the same. By personal effort as well as written epistles,
Paul transformed it according to his perspective regarding orthodox belief. His
written missives continue to profoundly influence the church, today. In fact,
Pauline theology has gone from being that of an outlier to being the dominant paradigm
for Christian institutions.
Does this
mean that the time of the outlier has passed? Can we now safely assume that
religious dissent is no longer appropriate? If so, maybe we should ask, “What
made the difference? Have our institutions become exact models of the heavenly
example? Has our theology become perfect? Have we managed to finally free our
faith from personal bias and discrimination? Have we passed the point where
religious institutions could be co-opted by those wishing only power and
control?”
If we are
honest with ourselves we must admit that those religious institutions are run
by men and women, and that they remain susceptible to the same human failings
as in the past. This may not mean that those individuals are evil, only weak.
Like Peter, we take our eyes off Christ, and we begin to sink.[ix]
This is not a serious problem if there is someone there to save us as Jesus did
for Peter. Maybe in the hands of a dissenter can be found the rescue God has
provided.
The hands of
a Dissenter were once spread upon a cross to save as many as would be saved. The
hands of another dissenter, Martin Luther, nailed ninety-five theses to the
door of a church when his beloved church needed rescuing. The hands of still another
dissenter, William Miller, opened a Bible and discovered that a church which in
many places had lost belief in a second coming of Jesus needed rescuing.
Are there
outlying dissenters, today? Perhaps they are speaking and writing of gender
equality, a social gospel that cares for the poor and needy, a need to eschew
violence as a means to an end, and a need to remove the politics of power and
control from the church.
Like Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.,[x]
every outlier, every dissenter has a dream for what might be and works to bring
that dream to fruition. Paul followed that dream and spread Christianity across
the Roman Empire. While he paid the same price for daring to dream that Dr,
King paid, both dreams live on in followers’ hearts. Some might even say that
both dreams are the same.
Perhaps this
is the true unity. Maybe we should not seek a unity of behavior or thought so
much as the unity that comes from a common dream, a dream that we share with every
follower of Jesus to see His grace realized in the world. Institutions of
power, buildings, and religious ritual are extraneous to this. Dreams don’t
reside in such things. Dreams abide in the human heart as aspirations to
something better than what now exists. As such, dreams are often threatening to
the status quo as those who are heavily invested in what is may desire to
maintain everything as it is so that such an investment does not become
compromised. Whether intentional or not, when this happens, dissenters are often
persecuted.
Jezebel was
heavily invested in power and control, both personally and through her husband,
King Ahab. When Elijah threatened her investment on Mount Carmel, she responded
with a death sentence to rid herself of his dissent. But the Bible is not the
only place we can find such things, we have similar examples from secular
history as well.
In 1970,
during the height of the Vietnam War, many were protesting against the
involvement of the United States in Vietnam. A political regime heavily
invested in the prosecution of that war felt their investment was threatened by
the ongoing dissent. On May fourth of that year, National Guard troops fired
almost a hundred rounds of ammunition at unarmed students who were protesting
the war on the campus of Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. Four students
were killed and nine others were wounded before the firing stopped.[xi]
What came to
be known as “The Kent State Massacre,” reminds us of the price that may
sometimes be paid when confronting powerful institutions and individuals. It
was a price that was paid two thousand years ago on Golgotha. It is a price
that continues to challenge us today when we dissent from the idea that unity
is more important than righteousness.
