Unity: It’s More Than Just Being Nice

Sermon

You would think I would have seen the film Das Boot sooner, given that my son always maintained that the 1981 film is one of the best ever made. What struck me as I watched it in July was how well it unpacked today’s text from Ephesians 4. Das Boot covers, in a mere 5 hours, the voyage of a German submarine and its crew during World War II. You didn’t miss something; Ephesians is not about maritime warfare. Rather, as I got to know the particularity of each submariner, I saw a parallel to the Pauline writer’s concern for unity in diversity. Each sailor knows his role and can immediately lay his hands on the tools necessary in a crisis, each knows that all their lives depend on everyone else, not just doing their job, but bringing their intellect and energy, their best game and weaknesses, to meeting their goal of victory and home.

Have you ever seen the submarine at OMSI? Then you can imagine what life might be like for 50 men crammed into that tiny space, along with all the provisions and armaments they need for months of life under water. The storyline plays along each man’s distinctiveness. The chief whose wife is dying back home, the young letter-writer with a pregnant fiancée, the Nazi true believer finally seeing the human cost, the ghostly engineer trying to regain the captain’s respect, the captain who carries strategic responsibility. The viewer sees the singleness of purpose of that whole crew. Unity, yes, but not uniformity. Each man is particular.

The Church has a long history of confusing conformity with unity, of confusing correctness with maturity. But the Pauline writer calls for a unity that is different from that. The crew of that submarine brought their best seamanship skills to life onboard, but they also had to get along. Fifty men living cheek-by-jowl is not idyllic. With such intense living conditions, there isn’t room to practice what my family calls Minnesota Nice—where everyone “gets along” because no one actually expresses an opinion. Opinions are hinted at through subterfuge and passive-aggression. Not so the submarine crew, whose tensions and rivalry can be intense, but who, in order to survive, have to learn to reconcile—to restore right relationship.

Reconciliation requires both forgiveness and trust. Forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation, since it can be one-way, with only one person forgiving. Reconciliation requires mutuality. And that takes trust. This is where I appreciate The Message’s paraphrase (what we read this morning), with its emphasis on the effects of reconciliation. Pauline exhorts his readers in “pouring yourselves out for each other in acts of love, alert at noticing differences and quick at mending fences.” I think this paraphrase is closer to Pauline’s ecclesiology, namely that unity is not uniformity. It notices and embraces the differences, all of them God-given, valuing them especially as they serve the common goal. It takes a healthy dose of mutual love and respect to hold it together. In the Church, diversity is probably not the life-and-death imperative it is for a submarine crew. It’s more like not expecting Lentz or Irvington or Sellwood or the Pearl to be the definitive expression of Portland. They are all, in their quirky diversity, essential to putting the “weird” in “keep Portland weird.” And each distinctive neighborhood pays taxes to keep all of the bridges functional (even if there isn’t one in their neighborhood) and taxes for children in school (even if all the kids are grown) and emergency services for everyone all over town—because these are the basis of our mutual civic life.

Maybe we ought to ask (at this late point in the sermon) who Pauline is writing to. Is it to people inside the church or people outside? We’ve heard so much reconciliation talk in recent years. We reconcile House and Senate versions of legislation, differences with marital partners, we work for racial reconciliation. Scholars agree that when Pauline writes of reconciliation, he is NOT appealing to the Roman Empire to enfranchise a wider range of its populace with fuller rights of citizenship. Nor is he advocating restitution be made to conquered peoples whose land was stolen in the conquest of the known world by Rome. Those are 21^st century reconciliation issues. The theological basis of Pauline’s reconciliation is a new humanity in Christ, one that moves past old distinctions between peoples, one that embraces all socio-political classes, all genders, varied ethnicities, and religious expressions. It’s the theological basis for addressing 21^st century reconciliation issues.

We live in a “spiritual but not religious” time and place, one that has put us in close proximity with people of many beliefs and practices. Some of us have come to grips with this reality by embracing Franciscan priest Richard Rohr’s idea: “If it’s true anywhere, it’s true everywhere.” The question in today’s text (for me) is how to read with integrity the assertion that we are called to unity of purpose in all our individual particularities. ALL are called to “travel on the same road and in the same direction,” Pauline says before adding a fragment of baptismal liturgy, concluding that “we are permeated with Oneness.” Given his conviction that the work of Christ is to create a new humanity, is there integrity in saying this is about universal reconciliation? Is Pauline urging reconciliation with all humanity and not just between members of our congregations? How differently would we live if we believed the Oneness Pauline asserts applies to all humanity? Whether they look like us or not, whether we agree with them or live in the same neighborhood, vaxxers with non-vaxxers, red with blue, BIPOC with White.

When Pauline speaks of the need of reconciliation, it’s not about sin but about our being incomplete. As if we are still evolving, still God’s work-in-progress. So that as we do the community-building, “noticing differences and mending fences,” as we live into “unity in diversity,” we are doing reconciliation. Living into what is, according to Pauline, our call.

Recently, someone sent me an article about mindfulness meditation, the premise of which is that American independence is such a deeply ingrained pattern that mindfulness practice makes us more self-centered. In Asian cultures, where many of the practices emerged, the result of mindfulness is good-of-the-whole attitudes and actions. I’m simplifying this, I know, but the cited experiment measured a simple act of generosity, performed after subjects read a mindfulness meditation. Subjects whose mediation used the pronoun I were measurably more self-centered than those whose meditation substituted the pronoun we. I mention this as a practice which engenders trust and builds community—the simple act of watching our pronouns, means not standing “over/against” but “with” others. That’s reconciliation.

In this week’s issue of the Westminster Chimes, Associate Pastor Chris Dela Cruz reports to the congregation about our progress in advocacy and social justice organizing. He speaks of the insurmountable challenges our city faces. “Even as people of faith who believe in a God of justice,” he writes, “it feels like systemic change is out of reach.” Then he outlines actions taken by this congregation, impacts made, and invites people to join with him where and how they can. This is what Pauline writes in the 1^st century. We’re called by God, both Chris and Pauline say, and there’s nothing in our call that says success will be our outcome. Our call is simply to keep showing up, keep noticing our differences, keep mending fences, keep reconciling. That we never accomplish what we’re called to is not the point. This addresses my earlier question about to whom this letter is written—insiders or outsiders? Whether “the world” extends from the 1^st century all the way to 21^st, whether this is about a troubled ancient congregation, the message is the same. We state our position in the witness of this Communion table. Barely a mouthful of bread, a swallow of juice—it’s not enough to live on. And yet, we keep at it, because we believe that celebrating it both unites us and embraces our differences. This meal testifies to the notion that our work of reconciliation isn’t about accomplishing it, it’s about continuing to work at it, about continuing to notice differences and mend fences. To the glory of God.