A Heritage of Reconciliation
First Congregational Church – Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
25th Sunday after Pentecost/Christ the King & Pilgrim/Puritan Heritage Sunday
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[text: Colossians 1:11-20]

            “In him all hold together.”

            When Paul says this of Christ he is nodding to ancient philosophical concepts concerning the unity of the cosmos. As we look at the week just past, the continuing political rancor following the recent election, the ongoing violence in Iraq and the violence that erupted on an NBA basketball floor and a college football field – places where fair play and sportsmanship were supposed to rule, or even closer to home, it is certainly difficult to think that there is any kind of unity in the cosmos. Yet, there is that declaration, and Christians for centuries have held on to that concept as one of the foundation stones of our faith and our approach to life. That God, through the Christ, has brought restoration, reconciliation, and unity back to that which God made.

            This month we have been celebrating our heritage as Congregationalists. As we come toward the close of our celebration I want us to think about what this heritage, this gift from ages past now delivered into our hands, means for us and for the time in which we live. It is not enough to merely make a nod to our heritage as though it were some sort of quaint relic from by-gone days. Because our way of being church is far from a museum piece, but a living and growing way, just as our Christian faith is. It may be anchored in the past, but it lives in the present and looks to the future. And that is a heritage to celebrate and to use – which is our goal, I believe, here at First Congregational Church.

            Our heritage is, first and foremost, a heritage of reconciliation. It rests first of all on what Paul tells the Colossians that God has reconciled everything on heaven and on earth in the wonder of self-giving love expressed in Jesus Christ. I think it very important to understand that while this letter uses some pretty exclusivist language that’s not the point. Rather, as the Congregational theologian of the last century, P. T. Forsyth pointed out in his book The Cruciality of the Cross, what God does through the Christ is to bring us to a confrontation between good and evil. He says that God “brings it to a head” in the cross. At that moment we are to make the great ethical decision, as Jesus did, to do that which is right and good for the right reasons. To make a decision to live in a manner that is unselfish and self-giving so that others may benefit. This isn’t an exclusivist, but an inclusivist viewpoint.

            In the cross, that place of reconciliation, we are asked to make a decision about how we will live, how we will make choices, how we will think, and how we will act. In ages past we Christians thought that we had to take an approach that said we had the only answer and everyone else was on the way to hell – often in a hand basket. Harry Emerson Fosdick, the premier preacher of the last century described that exclusivist position wittily and well: “We are God’s chosen few, all others will be damned. There is no room in heaven for you, we can’t have heaven crammed!” Yet, I believe that God wants heaven to be crammed. Now it is up to us to think well outside that rather confining box and understand that the heritage passed to us is one in which God has shown forth love for that which God has created – a love that does not wish to destroy, but to encompass, to upbuild and to renew.

            What God does in the Christ is bring to fruition what was begun in the experience of Israel. God seeks the restoration of human nature and with it the restoration of humanity to union with God. Part of that act of restoration is to set aside, break down, the false separation between the spiritual and the material. The idea that one is ‘real’ and the other isn’t, regardless of viewpoint, takes away from what God has done in the act of creation and again through the redemptive acts of Christ – beginning with the incarnation, the enfleshment of God in the Christ.

            God blesses humanity with the ability to be, at once, material and spiritual beings. It has been said, again and again, that we are “embodied spirits,” and so we are. Human beings have an ability to not only be self-aware, but to also see the bigger picture and to realize that there is more to us, and to the world in which we live, than what we can immediately see. I think that’s why so many of the Puritans were also scientists – natural philosophers they were called then. They saw God at work in the world and they knew that you could read God’s presence in the book of nature almost as well as you could in the books of Scripture.

Perry Miller and Thomas Johnson point this out in The Puritans where they refer to Judge Samuel Sewall: “He had been a boy at Newbury, had played on the beach at Plum Island, and although his determination had been set on another world and his efforts devoted to rendering mystical visions into dull prose, he himself proves that all the time the beauty of the land, the loveliness of the objects, had not been entirely lost upon him. He had felt the hectoring wind on Plum Island, heard the sea-gull, smelt the marshes. The Puritans were not blind or insensitive. They saw and loved the perch and pickerel, the dove and the white oak and the rows of Indian corn; but even from a world as beautiful and lovely as this they yet hoped to be translated, ‘to be made partakers of the Inheritance of the Saints in Light,’” [Miller & Johnson, vol. 1, p. 290].

What we hear in that description is what our friend Julian of Norwich said in her Showings, “Nature is all good and fair in itself, and grace was sent out to save nature and destroy sin, and bring fair nature back again to the blessed place from which it came, which is God, with more nobility and honour by the powerful operation of grace.”  But, as Robert Llewelyn points out, her most remarkable passage on the relationship between the spiritual and material is this one: “For he does not despise what he has made, nor does he disdain to serve us in the simplest natural functions of our body, for love of the soul which he created in his likeness. For as the body is clad in the cloth, and the flesh in the skin, and the bones in the flesh, and the heart in the trunk, so are we, soul and body, clad and enclosed in the goodness of God.” I remember when I read that passage for the first time – it thrilled me. It thrills me still. God restores nature and humanity to what we are supposed to be – one with the One who made us.

Thus, we are to understand that all the good things of life are gifts of God. We are to enjoy all these things, just as Samuel Sewall learned to enjoy the wonder of the New England landscape. We should delight in the world in which we live and delight in one another, because in each case we are delighting in the One who made the world and us who inhabit it. As we come closer to Thanksgiving it is good for us to think in this way, to give some time to realizing that all that we have and are is a gift – a gift for which our gratitude should be real and constant. Even our desire to give thanks is, itself, a gift, as is our desire for peace, for unity among all peoples that speaks out even in the midst of conflict.

Jesus showed us the way of unity, of peace, and of reconciliation by what he taught, how he lived, and how he died. I read somewhere this week that the question on those bracelets we have seen on so many, you know the ones I mean. They have the letters WWJD – what would Jesus do? And I suppose I shouldn’t say anything, since the man who first asked the question, Rev. Charles Shelton in the book In His Steps, was a Congregational minister. Still, I agree with what I read, the letters should be WWJHUD – what would Jesus have us do? We’re never going to be Jesus, though we can be joined in union with him through the Spirit. What he did is what he did; now the question is what would he have us do? And I think the answer is that he would have us love God with all that we have and are, and love our neighbors as ourselves – which means that we practice radical forgiveness and radical welcome.

Part of our heritage of reconciliation has been the active working for unity among believers. Yes, there is a separatist side to us, without question. Nevertheless, over the years those of us who have followed the Congregational Way have understood that to live as Jesus would have us live implies reaching out to others. One of the reasons our Way has never imposed creeds as ‘tests’ for membership in our churches or demanded that we all think or believe the same way is precisely because of our desire for this unity in spirit. As Jeremiah Burroughs said, “Articles or rules for doctrine or practice in matters of religion to be imposed upon men, should be as few as may be; there is very great danger in the unnecessary multiplying of them. This in all ages has caused division and exceeding disturbances in the churches of Christ.”

What is important is that we learn to live the kind of restorative, reconciling love that Jesus taught and lived before us. It is that kind of love that has driven Christians over the centuries to know true, not false, unity. As the Puritan theologian John Owen put it, “I do verily believe that when God shall accomplish it (unity), it will be the effect of love, and not the cause of love. It will proceed from love, before it brings forth love.”  In other words, right practice will do a great deal more than right belief any day. Or to give you the theological terms – orthopraxy always precedes orthodoxy.

I have been asked about the theological position of First Church. My response is pretty much always the same. I tell the inquirer that we encompass a broad range of theological positions. We’ve got everyone from folks who hold to the literal truth of the Bible to those who are holding on to Christianity by a thread. When asked how I deal with such diversity I answer, “We embrace them, we hold them to ourselves and we love them. We love them, because that is what God does.” Love is at the root of right practice.

One can go deep into the history of Congregationalism and see the willingness that has been there, and that from early on, to reach out and work with other Christians for the greater good. Nowhere was this better expressed than in the ‘Burial Hill Declaration’ of 1865, which marked the first national meeting of Congregationalists. Standing on the graves of the Pilgrims they declared, “We rejoice that, through the influence of our free system of apostolic order, we can hold fellowship with all who acknowledge Christ, and act efficiently in the work of restoring unity to the divided church, and of bringing back harmony and peace among all ‘who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity.’ Thus recognizing the unity of the church of Christ in all the world, and knowing that we are but one branch of Christ’s people, while adhering to our peculiar faith and order, we extend to all believers the hand of Christian fellowship upon the basis of those great fundamental truths in which all Christians should agree. With them we confess our faith in God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, the only living and true God, and in Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word, who is exalted to be our redeemer and King; and in the Holy Ghost who is present in the church to regenerate and sanctify the soul.” [The Church: Local and Universal, p. 12-13].

Let me add something as I draw to a close. Namely, that one of the principles on which we Congregationalists approach unity with other believers is that unity doesn’t equal uniformity. We don’t all have to think the same way. I remember being so excited the first time I read these words from an article by J. S. Griffith, one written in 1939. He said, “The glory of our Congregationalism is that we refuse to make the Church of our Lord a theological sect. Our position, which has grown gradually clear through the centuries, has been that the basis of fellowship is common experience of Christ and not identity of thought about Him. . . . That exclusion of fellow-Christians would be schism. . . .This is the trust that has come down to us, and a stewardship for which in our day we have responsibility: the stewardship of the Church Universal, to save the Church from becoming a sect.” It was true in 1939, it is even more so in 2004.

We continue in that great tradition, that heritage of reconciliation through our involvement in various tasks involving other Christian and, yes, even non-Christian groups. We reach out because God has first reached toward us in Christ and holds us together, just as God holds all things together through love. We open our doors, our hearts, and our worship to all who come, regardless of where they are in their faith journey. We reach out to them where they are, because that is how God reaches to them, and to us. It is in our loving, caring service to others, that we will begin to experience and know true unity and experience the truth that “in him all hold together.”

So, now we know, I hope, how all hold together in Him. I hope too that we go from here celebrating our heritage of reconciliation and ask ourselves the question this week, “What would Jesus have us do?” I think we’ll find that the answer is, he would have us love and forgive and thus be channels of reconciliation for a broken world.