Beating the "Yeah, buts...": A brief word on unity

Ephesians 4:1-16

There is one body, one Spirit, one calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all… yeah, but…

            Isn’t that always the response: Yeah, but…

            Maybe you’ve seen that meme of Jesus preaching the Sermon on the Mount, saying “Love one another as I have loved you” and the people saying, “Yeah, but…” What if… what if people aren’t worthy… what if they make poor choices… and Jesus says, “Did I stutter? I’ll start over and let me know where I lose you.” Love one another.

            In Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus, this book we have called Ephesians, every chapter it seems is on unity. Be unified. Don’t divide. Don’t break apart. There is only one Spirit, one God, one baptism, etc, etc, so you need not be divided by anything.

            “Yeah, but…” the people say.

            Yeah, but what if they are Republicans and I’m a Democrat?

            Yeah, but what if they believe in infant baptism and I believe you have to choose to be baptized?

            Yeah, but what if we believe differently about homosexuality?

            Yeah, but what if we believe differently about women serving in leadership in the church?

            Yeah, but what if we have different practices around communion?

            Yeah, but what if we come from different ethnicities and have different cultural practices in our church?

            Yeah, but what if…

            I could go on and on, maybe I should. Yeah, but what if other people would want us to change who we are. Yeah, but what if they won’t get along with us.

            The great thing about Paul is that he has no time at all for the “yeah, buts.” He just tells the people that there is one God, one Spirit, one Lord, one baptism. That’s it.

            Paul may also have had the luxury of being impractically idealistic, of living in a time and place where outside forces (like the Roman government) meant Christians would have to work together, but that’s hardly a reason not to listen to what he has to say. In fact, given Jesus’ inclination to look down at the lowly and lift up the oppressed it may be more reason to listen to Paul. If unity was needed in Ephesus how much more is unity needed for us who don’t need to worry about being dragged off to jail or crucified for our faith?

            Unity in diversity. That’s our challenge. How do we, who all have our “yeah buts,” come together as one Christian people?

            I noticed this at our ecumenical fair worship planning meeting when we talked about music, because it becomes immediately evident how our very small differences lead to some big assumptions. We started to talk—covenant pastors, ELCA pastors, an Assemblies of God pastor, and a Presbyterian pastor—about music, trying in vain to think of music that everybody knows. It’s hard enough to come up with Christian songs or hymns that 40 people at Red River might all know; now try to come up with, say, five Christian worship songs or hymns that everybody in the community knows. Besides Christmas hymns, I can think of one—Amazing Grace—or maybe two—How Great Thou Art—and I’m not so sure about that one because I don’t think I even sang that growing up. The exception to this rule is Christmas music, which is part of why we ended up singing Joy to the World at the fair service. There is very little that we all have in common, but that’s not actually the problem—it’s OK to have different flavors. We don’t need to be the same, but we do need to be united in serving one God.

            This is tough work, because I know I disagree with people on certain issues. I disagree with people in different churches; I disagree sometimes with people within these churches. You certainly do, too. Probably you disagree on many things even within your family, which is why it’s necessary to have football on Thanksgiving, to keep you all from tearing your families apart talking politics and religion. Anyway, if we agreed on everything we would probably be some kind of cult, so this is how it must be, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. The trick is to remember and lift up what it is that unifies us in our disagreements. Then, as the church, the most important thing we can do is to throw aside the culture of winning and losing. We will make decisions based on where we are led, but if we become a church of winners and losers then we’ve already lost.

            So, let’s practice unity together. Let’s try to have our identity in Christ mean more than the other identities we claim. Let’s make the cross on our foreheads, as we remember our baptisms, mean more than our personal beliefs. Let’s keep working together.