Prayer for Christian Unity; An Ecumenical Celebration
January 23, 2007
“The Quality of Mercy”
The Rev. Rachel K. Taber-Hamilton
This year’s week of Prayer for Christian Unity begins with two themes, two invitations
extended to Christian Churches and all people: 1) to pray and strive together for Christian
Unity and, 2) to join together in responding to human suffering. As the Body of Christ, the
Church is called to be one. A part of our common mission to which all apostles are called is
to bring healing to those who suffer from any kind of illness, grief, trouble or misery. As
Jesus responded with compassion to all those who called out to him, so too are we called as
Christians to respond with mercy and compassion to all those who cry out in our home, our
community, our nation and our world for the satisfaction of hunger, for the just
administration of medicine, and the Godly work of peace and justice.
This week we are invited to consider that there is an essential connection between seeking
unity among Christians and initiatives to respond to human need and suffering. We are
asked to see with the eyes of faith that the same Spirit is at work in all efforts to make visible
the renewal of human society, in the recognition of the dignity of every human being. World
concerns are too strong, too immense, to be rectified by a divided Church. And no creed, no
covenant, no instruments of unity can bring us all together. Our only hope of reunion is a
mutually humble submission to the mercy and love of God.
Always the word Jesus speaks to the people is the word of mercy. Only through an
examination of mercy can we begin to get a sense of the transcendent nature of God’s love
that is the hope for our unity.
But there’s a profound struggle going on right now in Christianity. It is, in part, a struggle for
Christian identity in the present, and the relationship of Christianity to its history and
tradition. Perhaps on the level of a deep human desire for communal harmony, there
remains the belief or hope that there is only one way to be Christian…if only we could come
to discover and all agree on what that is, our disagreements could be overcome and
harmony could be restored.
But the more historical study one does into the Genesis of Christian tradition and thought,
the more one discovers that there has never been just one way of understanding who Jesus
was, that there has never been a homogenous community of Christian thought or a single
unified theology on which all early church founders agreed.
There is one man, one God, at the center of an ideological ripple effect through time and
across geography; but even those who lived with him and heard him teach understood and
interpreted what he said through the filter of their own experiences and cultures. In short,
there were as many Christ figures as there were pairs of eyes fixed upon Jesus.
And throughout the journey of the passing generations, many diverse theologies – at times
irreconcilable to one another – have emerged in the historical development of Christian
communities. Today, we Christians find ourselves to be the heirs of multiple traditions and
beliefs about Christ that in differing combinations, with differing emphases, place distinct
and separate Christian churches on nearly every street corner of the typical American
neighborhood.
And when we Americans are at our best, we recognize and are proud of the diversity of
spires that have grown up in the midst of us. We value independence of belief, freedom of
thought, and our individual (and God given) right to come to our own conclusions. And we
are envied for the abundance of faith expressions that dwell side by side in our country; that
a plethora of Christian faith traditions coexist along with synagogues, mosques, shrines,
groves and temples is a reality that many countries and nations can not fathom or imagine.
And yet there is something about the creativity of the human spirit that shies away from
homogeneity or sameness. And there is something about the Divine Spirit that dwells within
each of us and invites each of us on our own unique journey to the unifying principle of God
– a journey informed by culture, ethnicity, life experiences, our self understanding and our
relationships with others.
For the Hebrews, the chosen people of God were recognized by several traits attributed as
God’s blessing or favor. Consequently, the chosen were recognized by being wealthy, by
being disease and poverty free, by achieving high social status, by being male and married,
by living in the right place, by being well and properly dressed, by being permitted in the
temple sanctuary, and by being very, very clean or spiritually pure in the face of multiple
cultural taboos.
Within such an environment, Jesus teaches that those who hunger, those who are poor,
those who are exiled from community and social rights, those who do not seek to be exalted
or rewarded, those who are persecuted and reviled, those who are pure at heart even if
socially taboo – these are the chosen people of God; these are the blessed. And we know
that these teachings were a hard sell in the time of the apostles, and they still are.
Perhaps we have too easily set aside in our Christian education classes the significant role
of controversy and diversity of thought necessary to achieve the broadest understanding of
our Christian heritage as well as its most foundational values. Such that, for every claim
made that “this is how it has always been” there are no less than a thousand variations with
equally as authentic roots or even more so. If one raises up the infallibility of Scripture,
another can raise up the hundreds of gospels that were not included in the Canon by the
those making the editorial decisions in the second and third centuries. If one raises up the
wrath of God’s judgment, another can raise up the infinite and unconditional mercy of God.
And if one raises up the letter of the Law, another can raise up its Spirit.
Within a culture that practiced both human and animal sacrifice to God, Micah rebukes the
people: “God has told you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”
In all the diversity of Christian tradition, I’m not sure that any single passage is so frequently
quoted and so well beloved as this passage from Micah. The possible exception might be
the passage: love God with all your heart and mind and soul and your neighbor as yourself.
In the most fundamental vision of Christ’s teachings, no one is sacrificed to God or to the
variant beliefs of human kind. No one is sacrificed.
Through Christ, we are asked to live with compassion in all the small and great moments of
our lives, speaking with courage from the commonality of the faith we hold most deeply, in
the face of whatever is not just and not kind and not humble. For we do not live the gift of
our lives for ourselves only but for those who are hungry, those who are poor, those who
are exiled, those who are oppressed, those who are persecuted and those who are reviled.
We are not one in the body of Christ because we make conditional theological statements
about the nature of grace that say so. Rather, we are one in the body of Christ by God’s
grace because God says so; from this awareness (when we live from this awareness) we
love one another. No amount of Law makes God or faith more real; only when we treat one
another within the same Spirit of Mercy that God has for us are we living as a community of
faith.
The love of God is the greatest unifying principle we can witness in our daily living, witness
in our mercy toward each other -- understanding that we are not in the position of the judge
but in the position of the penitent. Judgment is not what Jesus models for us but mercy; a
generous gift that is ours for the asking and ours for the giving in return.
Without mercy the healing qualities of a united community can never be known, a message
that Paul sets plainly before us. With the skills of a trial lawyer, Paul carefully sets faith at
least on the level with law and even higher, because living by the laws of God is not the
Christian requisite for atonement and salvation. Paul is clear; there is nothing a human can
ever do to deserve God’s grace. And there is nothing a human can ever do to that would
cause God to withdrawal divine love.
Far into the sixteen chapters of Paul’s letter to the Christian community in Rome, the nature
of God’s generosity and grace is summed up in Paul’s reference to God’s words to Moses, “’I
will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have
compassion.’ And so it depends,” Paul continues, “not on human will or exertion, but on God
who shows mercy.”
The idea of mercy as a divine attribute of God that can be enacted through human action as
love of others (as presented by Paul) is also summarized in the speech given by Portia,
serving as legal council, in a Venetian court of law. At the time Shakespeare wrote The
Merchant of Venice, Christian discrimination against Jews was openly practiced and was
even legally sanctioned.
In an attempt to persuade the plaintiff to look beyond the letter of the law to the spirit of
mercy that informs all law, Portia argues:
The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.
Justice as it is understood and moderated by human institutions through social or religious
law is not the quality of justice Jesus invites people to seek. Only through an understanding
of justice as infinite mercy, incarnated through compassionate human action, is God’s power
to heal all division and fulfill want within human society.
In spite of Jesus’ teachings about the radical grace of God, we can still find ourselves in
need of a common reminder that God does not ask for our approval. God did not ask for our
approval when he created a quantum reality in which the same electron can be in two places
at once. God does not ask for our approval when the sun sets in magnificent colors and star
spun gossamer of the Milky Way rises with equal beauty over all people on earth as we
sleep. God did not ask for our collective approval when in creating the platypus, the
crocodile or the mosquito.
But the greatest sticking point for many people is that God does not ask for our approval of
who God loves. It is a terrible irony that the generosity of God’s heart can be one of the
greatest challenges to all human religion. God will never ask our approval about who God
can love. God does not ask our approval to love liberals and conservatives, to love
Republicans and Democrats, to love tree huggers and soldiers, to love Iraqis and
Americans. God does not ask our approval to love prisoners and guards, to love
heterosexuals and homosexuals, to love Jews and Muslims and Christians and Buddhists
and Neo-Pagans. God does not ask for our approval to love all that God has created. God
does not ask for our approval.
God does ask us to live in light of the gift of grace, given to us through faith as the law of
love and the quality of mercy that is Christ. God does ask us to overcome the divisional
effect of human judgment, even the judgments inherent in our theological worldviews that
keep us from standing side by side as we face together the incredible suffering in our world
and the challenges we are facing today that affect all of God’s creation.
From the beginning of the space program, astronauts of all nations have provided some of
the most eloquent testimonials of our planet's wholeness and our species' unity. From up
there, they tell us again and again, it looks like one world. Michael Collins, who flew on
Gemini and Apollo, said, "I really believe that if the political leaders of the world could see
their planet from a distance of... 100,000 miles, their outlook would be fundamentally
changed. That all-important border would be invisible, that noisy argument suddenly
silenced. The tiny globe would continue to turn, serenely ignoring its subdivisions,
presenting a unified facade that would cry out for unified treatment."
And we, dear Beloved, together worship a God of unity whose voice calls out to us in every
generation that we should minister to God, who resides even within the least of us such that
the smallest act of compassion is done to Christ. Our obligation as Christians is to begin
with our own suspension of judgment and subsequent practice of mercy toward one another
within the broad spectrum of Christianity.
We must heal as community, overcoming the human boundaries we have set in order to
create the unified people of God’s vision. Only then can we address the injustices and
needs of our world as authentic and effective instruments of healing and unity. And in this
process, let us sacrifice no one. Let us rather be the living proof of God’s radical grace,
accepting the fact of our differences and loving one another transcendently, in the way God
loves us. Let us show the world how it is done. Let us be the Good News for all people, in
ways that they may actually believe it to be true.
Amen.