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A Sermon by Donel McClellan
A Sermon by Donel McClellan E Pluribus Unum Last week a member noted the lack of any
reference to Martin Luther King Jr. in the worship service. In response I
pointed out that the Martin Luther King holiday was secular and not a religious
observance. Still, this person missed some reference which connected our worship
to the world in which we live. Inauguration Day is not a liturgical celebration
either. And yet the events of this weekend are very much on our minds. Therefore
let us begin with a bit of inauguration history. President George W. Bush’s
inauguration speech, at 1594 words, was neither the longest nor the shortest in
American history. The shortest was that of George Washington. To begin his
second presidential term he spoke only 133 words. The longest inauguration speech of all the
presidents—8443 words—was given by President William Henry Harrison on a
cold and rainy day not unlike yesterday in Washington D.C. President Harrison
wore neither a coat or a hat as he spoke and, as I am sure you remember, he
contracted pneumonia and died 30 days later. His was the longest speech and the
shortest term of office of any president. It will not surprise most you that President
George W. Bush was not my first choice of a candidate in this last political
year. Actually, his opponent was not my first choice either, but that is another
story. This morning I must say that, in my estimation,
President Bush gave a fine inaugural address. It was the length of a moderate
sermon. And at times it sounded like a sermon. He said:1 We have a place, all of us, in a long story, a
story we continue, but whose end we will not see. It is the story of a new world
that became a friend and liberator of the old. The story of a slave-holding
society that became a servant of freedom. The story of a power that went into
the world to protect but not possess, to defend but not to conquer. It is the
American story, a story of flawed and fallible people, united across the
generations by grand and enduring ideals. Change the language a little bit and you have
the story of Israel or the story of the church. This is to be expected because
our civil metaphors are nearly all derived from our religious heritage. As the
president continued it began to sound as though his speech writer had been
reading the Apostle Paul: The grandest of these ideals is an unfolding
American promise: that everyone belongs, that everyone deserves a chance, that
no insignificant person was ever born. . . . America has never been united by
blood or birth or soil. We are bound by ideals that move us beyond our
backgrounds, lift us above our interests and teach us what it means to be
citizens. . . . We must live up to the calling we share. . . . When we see that
wounded traveler on the road to Jericho, we will not pass to the other side. It is my prayer that the new Republican
administration, and the nation’s congress might strive to live into the vision
of this address. President Bush was speaking to a country with
deep divisions and wide diversity. It is as though the Left and the Right sides
of American society live on different planets. Their world views are so
divergent that they can hardly speak to each other about matters of consequence.
Too many in our nation feel that they are invisible and despised by the society
in which they struggle to live. Too many others speak and act with such vehement
and arrogant moral certainty that one wonders if they have ever stooped to feel
the common soil of the real America. The president concluded with a wonderful
quotation from John Page written to Thomas Jefferson: "We know the race is not to the swift, nor
the battle to the strong. Do you not think an angel rides in the whirlwind and
directs this storm?" I love the image, and yet I know that there will
be fierce battles to discern the message of the angel who rides in the whirlwind
and directs this storm. President Bush did not use my sermon title in
his address, but he might have. It fits the message he delivered. According to
our resident staff Latin expert, Sexton Jerry Greenwalt, it is pronounced: E
Pluribus Unum—Out of Many, One. The phrase was well known to literate Americans
in 1776 when the Great Seal Committee selected it as a national motto. The
popular London periodical the Gentleman’s Magazine published from 1731
to 1922 used the words annually. Each year the twelve monthly issues were bound
together by a thirteenth to become a single volume. On the title page was
written E Pluribus Unum—From many, One. Curiously, the motto traveled from thirteen
magazines bound in a single volume to thirteen colonies bound together. From
Many, One: assurance that together we may aspire to greater accomplishment than
can be achieved independently. And that brings us to the Apostle Paul who faced
a whirlwind and a storm in the church at Corinth. The congregation was deeply
divided. Clearly they were having trouble getting along. And clearly, some
people were feeling left out while others assumed that they were God’s gift to
the church. Paul wasn’t aware, as we are, of the wondrous
complexity of the human body, but he did remember an old cliché that had been
used for years by orators. It was a comparison of the human body to the body
politic. Every citizen is part of the body of the state, it argued. And the
implication was that the individual was important only in relationship to the
political whole. Paul honed and shaped the image a good deal in
order to address deep problems in the Corinthian church and he came up with a
wonderful analogy. We, the members of the church, he said, are joined together
into a body which is Christ’s body. It is a unique relationship, different
from being members of a family, or political party, or service club, or
fraternal group, or bridge club. The difference is in the nature of the body to
which we all belong. Paul was absolutely certain that the great God
of Creation and Law was somehow embodied, infleshed, in Jesus. That meant, in
part, that when people looked at Jesus they saw as much of God as was available
to human perception. In a similar way, Paul believed that Jesus was
incorporated into the church, infleshed in the community which Paul named the
Body of Christ. The problem for Paul was that the church didn’t
always behave like the Body of Christ. That’s an even greater problem for us
who are privy to two thousand years of history in which the church has often
betrayed its basic identity. Paul’s solution was to remind the folks in the
Corinthian Church of their identity and their responsibility to cooperate as one
blessed body. "Now you are the body
of Christ and individually members of it." We are all parts of the Body of Christ known as
the First Congregational United Church of Christ of Bellingham, Washington. All
of us—members and friends, faithful and casual participants, babies and
children, youth, young and old—all of us are interwoven in a deeply complex
and mysteriously profound relationship. We are responsible to represent Christ
to our community and world. Fortunately, we aren’t the only ones given
that responsibility. There is also St. John’s Lutheran up the street, Trinity
Lutheran across the street and Assumption Roman Catholic church down the street.
All of the churches in Bellingham share the responsibility to represent Christ
in the community. But each of us is given our own particular task. And
wondrously, each of us is given the right body parts—that is members—to
accomplish our calling. No one within our widest church community is
unimportant. No gift of the Spirit is insignificant. A few decades ago the First Church of the
Brethren in Sarasota, Florida gathered for a ground-breaking service. Instead of
the silver spade routine with one dignitary turning over the first sod, the
church brought in an old horse drawn plough like those used by their ancestors
used to till the farm. First they hitched the minister to the plough.
Of course, he couldn’t budge it. Not an inch. Then they hitched up the rest of
the church staff, the secretary, organist, choir director, sexton, youth worker.
They couldn’t move the plough either. So they tied a long rope to the plough
and added the church board. Still the plough wouldn’t move. "Alright," somebody yelled.
"Everybody grab hold and pull." And so the whole congregation, women,
men, youth and children —everybody—pulled on the rope. And that plough
sliced through the ground to start the new church.2 To be the body of Christ we need everybody to do
their own unique and important part. Nobody is unimportant. And, on the other
hand, nobody is more important in the life of the body because of the
contribution they make. Someone once said to me, "Donel, how I wish I could
speak like you." My response, which was not facetious, was, "And I
wish I could bake a pie like you." We depend upon pie bakers, dish washers,
flower arrangers cookie bakers, church school teachers, financial managers,
gardeners, money counters, ushers, singers, moderators, prayer chain members,
and so many other essential gifts which comprise the whole. As the apostle put it: But God has so arranged the body, giving the
greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension
within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If
one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all
rejoice together with it. Following worship we will gather for our
congregation’s annual meeting. Our annual report is an overview of the nuts
and bolts of operating a church congregation. What it lacks is some testimony to
our faithfulness as the Body of Christ. I am not sure that report can be put into words.
It involves numinous moments such as: the long and supportive conversations of
friends following worship, a prayer between a Stephen Minister and a care
receiver, a simple hug given and received, a sacrificial check written with
tears and great hope, a phone conversation, a long wait in the hospital, the
skilled labor of replacing windows, working on the agenda for an important board
meeting, listening to the postlude, hearty laughter punctuating a meeting, a
hand made card, a touch on the hand from the one receiving communion, the flame
of the Candle of Life. I know that you recognize when the Spirit has
visited us, that angel still riding in the whirlwind and directing this storm. And you know that in some weighty and mystical
sense, you are the body of Christ and
individually members of it. Amen. Notes: 1. All Inaugural Speech quotations from the New
York Times web page January 20, 2001 2. From Aha!, January 21, 2001, original
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