Stephen
Terry, Director
The
Unified Body of Christ
Commentary
for the August 12, 2023, Sabbath School Lesson
"How
good and pleasant it is
when God's people live together in unity!
It is like precious oil poured on the head,
running down on the beard,
running
down on Aaron's beard,
down on the collar of his robe.
It is
as if the dew of Hermon
were falling on Mount Zion.
For
there the Lord bestows his blessing,
even life forevermore."
Psalm
133, NIV
Unity is a concept poorly
understood in the modern church. It is often mistakenly seen as uniformity.
Even our lesson this week uses the word "unified" instead of the word "united."
The former brings with it the idea of lock-step, militaristic
uniformity. The latter conveys the idea that although we are diverse in cultures,
ethnicities, gender, etc., we can still manifest unity by uniting those varied
qualities through a common purpose. But this can only be accomplished by
recognizing diversity as an advantage rather than an obstacle. This is hard to
do if the expectation is uniformity. Uniformity does all it can to bury those
differences behind a façade of forced equality. Such uniformity is often
enforced for the purpose of control of the many by the few. As in the book, "Animal
Farm," all are equal, but some are more equal than others and reap extra
benefits as the "more equal" elite.
It is facile to blame dictatorships
for such abuses of power. It is what so much of humanity has become. Whether
countries, corporations, or religions, all manifest similar failings. Anyone
who has ever experienced micromanaging in the workplace understands that this
exists in the secular world. It is not a pleasant experience for those being so
managed. It also stifles innovation that can bring new processes and products
to market. The same is true within the church. Uniformity demands obedience to
a common standard, and along with uniformity comes its sister, coercion. "If
milder means fail of making him do what they think ought to be done, they will
resort to compulsion. Just as far as lies in their power they will force men to
comply with their ideas of what is right."[i]
This is antithetical to God's actions in the world. God has put great effort
into bringing over eight billion individuals into our modern world. In return,
we work very hard to turn them into eight billion clones of what we believe
Jesus to be. We lose sight of them being eight billion unique answers to prayer
from God, who loves each one in their uniqueness, a uniqueness he created.
We sometimes bemoan God's failed
answers to prayers we have earnestly offered regarding suffering endured by
individuals. God keeps creating answers, but we refuse to accept them because
of their uniqueness and demand that they conform to an arbitrary standard, a
standard that has already failed to produce the answers needed for generations.
But God has not given up. His love compels him to continue to send answers,
even if we reject them for their nonconformity. Here in the United States,
almost two centuries have passed since the Civil War, and some still refuse to
see God's attempts to answer prayers through those from other races. If instead
of enforcing an arbitrary uniformity on others, we helped them to become all
they could possibly be, we could begin to see God's image in our fellow human
beings despite those differences. Light would penetrate darkness and hope would
become an epidemic, spreading to every corner of the globe.
When we fail at unity, it is not
because we failed to be uniform. It is because we fail to love. In our failure
to love, we fail in our relationship with God. Love is the only relationship
possible with God, for he is love.[ii]
Therefore, every child born is a word of love from God. When I look at the face
of a newborn child I see love, trust, and hope. I see a gift of grace beyond anything
we could possibly have earned. But the world is a hard place and will work
diligently to erase all of those from the child's character. Unfortunately,
with condemnation and criticism, even those who claim to love God work to make
that child as jaded as they are. As the child grows and love dies, another
answer to prayer disappears into the void. That spirit, so degraded, can still
be resurrected. Jesus' resurrection from the grave was earnest to enable that
possibility. In a world that strips away our hope, he brought hope. In a world
that destroys the potential of so many, he revealed that each of us is more
loved and has more potential than the world will ever admit.
In the drudgery of day-to-day
toil to make a living, we can be tempted to forget that we were born citizens
of a better kingdom. It is a truth we should never let die from our hearts. It
is attacked by the world, by those who tell us no such kingdom exists. It is
attacked by the church that says it exists, but unless we succumb to uniform
obedience to the church, we will never see it. Martin Luther broke such bonds
in the early 16th century when he asserted that no one stands
between the person and God save Jesus Christ. He alone determines our salvation
through grace. The church of his day wished to condemn him for such foolishness.
But what the church considered foolishness was the power of God's love.[iii]
Despite the glorious hope of the
Reformation, much of Christianity today has fallen back into the attempt to compel
uniformity through the enforcement of dogma. Many years ago, at an Adventist
conference in the Pacific Northwest, I was visiting with a ministerial
secretary who was lamenting the lack of funding to hire ordained pastors to
lead congregations in the conference. I asked if the funding was short why not
consider filling those positions with self-supporting lay ministers in the interim?
He responded that if they aren't paying the ministers, they have no means to compel
them and cannot control them. It seemed that he felt that anyone who was not on
the payroll was automatically assumed to be too radical to be endorsed by the
church. However, the history of the denomination has shown that ordained
ministers have proven to be the greatest challenge to denominational uniformity.
Examples abound, but one of the most well-known is that of Desmond Ford, who
stood before the Council of Glacier View as Luther stood before the Diet of
Worms. Both challenged the authority of the church in matters of individual belief,
and both were declared heretics for their efforts.
It is a divine mystery how when
God speaks another life into the world, some of those lives, despite every
effort to extinguish their purpose, still manage to form a loving relationship
with God, building that relationship into a bastion of love and hope despite
the cynicism of the church and the secular world. But like the experience of
Jesus, it is rare that the clergy will ever recognize such an individual as a
citizen of God's kingdom. With their creeds and belief statements, they simply
cannot see beyond the walls of dogma they have erected. Jesus saw those walls
for what they were, filters to keep others from finding God without the
intervention of the synagogues and their rabbis, who ultimately answered to the
priests and the temple. They do not understand the power of love that
transcends all the legalism with grace that builds loving characters that
legalism has sought to stifle.
I am thankful for each life God
has spoken into existence. It tells me he has not given up on us. There is
still hope. I am amazed at the diversity that exists in the mind of God and
what that means for any future heavenly places we may visit. While uniformity
does not produce harmony but instead a monotonal charade of what existence should
be, diversity makes possible the beautiful harmony of many contributing to the
song of heaven that we sing in our hearts now and will one day be sung in God's
presence as a song of thanksgiving and love. To understand the difference, if
you are a musician, simply play the note that begins the song "Amazing Grace" repeatedly
with the same tone, same meter, same value. That is uniformity. Now play the
song again as written. The monotony has been replaced by beautiful harmony that
speaks to our hearts. This is the difference between the kingdoms of this world
and the kingdom of heaven.
God has created humanity to be
diverse with different physical attributes, different hormonal levels,
different intellects, different languages, and we are all, despite the
differences, wonderful children of God. The older I get (over seven decades
now), the more I see how temporary everything is. When I am gone, much of it
will simply be so much clutter that someone else will have to deal with. As Paul
the Apostle wrote to the believers in Corinth, only three things endure - faith,
hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love.[iv]