One Heart, One Love, One Body

These days of economic uncertainty, poverty, the healthcare of millions continually at risk, housing insecurity, and more and more people becoming homeless amidst a national government corrupt the person of faith is presented with the catastrophic, even a calamity.  Each day I speak with people who work one, two or even three jobs, who have difficulty making ends meet.  Life for many of the people I encounter is frustrating, even precarious  yet they are hopeful.  For many their hope rests in community, in friends, coworkers, and family.  Sincere and authentic relationships, that is, a Christ centered relationship, are of critical importance as each of us lives through a shift in moral obligation from the sacredness of humanity to the sacredness of profit margins, globalization and gentrification.

Everywhere humanity is confronted with this question of moral obligation as the disinherited, those who suffer stigma, oppression, the working class, the immigrant, and the least of these, are cast aside for the sake of those who can afford the cost of this new type of moral obligation.  These are urgent times, times, at least for me, when Bob Marley’s song, “One love” becomes a rallying cry of sorts, as the disinherited encounter determined forces of injustice.  In light of these determined forces of injustice, complacency, naivete, self-deception, and a tendency to be lukewarm, must be surrendered to the freedom, liberation, salvation and sacredness of our humanity. Of course this cannot be done alone, and anyone who says that they can do it alone, “Only I can fix it” resists the calling of God to the beloved community and to a solidarity expressed in the communion instituted and received in Christ.

The scriptures today, Ecclesiastes 4:9-12, Colossians 3:12-15 and 1 Corinthians 12:12-13, remind us that the calling to advance a different imagination of the world, one which appreciates the sacredness of humanity and creation, requires that those seeking to advance a different more just imagination must work in solidarity with each other. Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 reminds us that its far better to work in community, to give life to those relationships. Colossians 3:12-15 reminds us that As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. 13 Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord[a] has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body.

1 Corinthians 12:12-13 reminds us 12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

And what makes solidarity solid and the beloved community real.  LOVE.  4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.

Reflecting here on the Church at Corinth, [Pause] the Apostle Paul had a covenantal relationship with the Church at Corinth. It was one of solidarity. While the Church at Philippi gets the affection of Paul, they get their props for their unwavering support of him, I would suggest that the Church at Corinth, even with its human dynamics, diversity, challenges, problems and issues, was just as committed to Paul as the Church at Philippi.  The two very different churches provide Paul’s proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ lived out in solidarity with emerging diverse, dynamic communities of faith. Each was in covenant with Paul and his mission from Jesus Christ no matter the situation.  Like Paul and the churches of Corinth and Philippi, the unifying theme of our faith today is Jesus Christ. It is our faith in God through Jesus Christ which yields a solidarity, received in the communion, in Christ, in covenant with our sister and brother. 

James Baldwin, an American novelist and Social Critic who lived from 1924-1987 said “If we know, then we must fight for your life as though it were our own-which it is-and render impassable with our bodies the corridors to the gas chamber. For if they come for you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.” The words of Baldwin would seem to be a response to a poem by Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) a prominent Lutheran pastor who emerged as an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler who spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps who is remembered for his postwar words, “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

The words of Baldwin and Niemöller caution us today, people of faith, not to cast aside or fail in the urgent call of solidarity.  Their words are a reminder that we cannot get so lost or caught up in my own struggles and joys that we cast off or reject God’s love as lived out in the Beloved Community.  The risks posed to a humanity no longer considered sacred by power monied regimes rooted in hatred of the other and their rhetoric and their strategies and practices division makes solidarity one of the only viable means of resistance.

I find history to be a great teacher, unless we choose to ignore, reject,  disregard or contour according to a particular ideology, of understanding or at least seeking to understand the forces which have as their primary mission the denigration of  a sacred humanity.  This would seem to be the primary discourse in America from its founding. The incessant need to disregard not just humanity itself through various schemes and strategies but the very sacredness of that humanity. Attending a gathering of homeless people and those in solidarity I was reminded once again of this history which spans the existence of America and how this narrative must be challenged and transformed. 

I suppose this particular American story is why my mother and father taught me and my sister that we must never walk alone, by ourselves, but walk together in relationship and community.  And this community has to be strong.  This I learned seemingly from the day I came out of my mother’s womb.  Even today she still asks about my community and who or what I am in relationship with.  What I gather from parent’s wisdom is that survival can be and often is resistance. In concert with my parents teaching I that the communion is Jesus’s resistance to the unjust, unchecked regimes of power. It is a reminder that God is in solidarity with each of us here today as we live in community with our sisters and brothers.