Together, Citizens of the
Household of God

Sermon preached by James W. Crawford

at the General Synod of the United Church of Christ

Oakland, California

June 29, 1995

Ephesians 2:19-20

Friends, you hold in your hands tonight the promised result of a series of visionary and principled stands rooted in the Gospel of love and justice, grace and peace, and taken for over two decades as well as, including this one, eleven gatherings of General Synod. It reflects the high vocation ofinterpreting, singing, praying, proclaiming, mediating and acting the fullness of the Gospel.

Tonight, just a few reflective words. And before we begin, please, a couple of things: First, I urge you to read during this Synod the prefatory remarks included in the New Century Hymnal. They offer the vision. They tell the story. They describe what is at stake in what you have wrought over these years.

Second, hymnal committees get tons of mail. It comes from choir directors, music committees, pastors, musicologists, hymnologists, academicians, poets, those with perfect pitch, those with tin ears, those who play the vast Skinner pipe organs and those who make music on the Chickering uprights where middle C goes thud and you cannot tighten the strings because the sounding board will crack. What do these letters say? Well, they are loaded with criteria for a hymnal that will sell well.

The academicians say avoid the doggerel, include the chorales, skip "the old time religion." The music committees say treasure the doggerel, cut the chorales, give us the "old time religion." The pastors, of course, express their usual supreme confidence in the hymnological competence of the People of God. One intrepid clergy-type writes, "Keep those melodies simple. Remember, not all people are great singers." (As if anyone needed reminding!)

A brilliant hymnologist recommended our committee vote on every hymn, ranking each on a scale of five to one. A five? Kill to keep it in. A one? Kill to keep it out! But that correspondent from up Vermont way insisted on the simplest of quality control, and who would deny its sophistication: "Make 'em hummable," she wrote.

And just once more, we needed an anchor on this project, someone to hold us in check, to keep us grounded in our high purpose. You may suspect this, but selecting 617 hymns from a pool of 10,000, combined with the mandates of General Synod and its scores of constituencies to make human and God talk inclusive, salted by the fierce threats of gentle Christians turned frenzied tiger in pursuit of their litmus test "oldie but goodie," peppered by theologues lobbying for every text to conform to the Nicene Creed -- this does not make for necessarily smooth sailing. And I do not think I betray any confidences when I tell you that such matters lead to heated disputes, contentions, quarrels, friction, politicking, vituperation, tears, pleas, diatribes, extended treatises, shouting matches, poisoned pens, rudeness, posturing, inflexibility, intransigence, obduracy, perversity, stubbornness, wrong-headedness and just plain stupidity, convincing anyone who gives a darn that completed hymnals verify the truth of two primary Christian doctrines: the doctrine of original sin, and the dauntless Providence of God.

And amid this sometimes ungodly storm I honor the aforementioned anchor, Ansley Coe Throckmorton. "Chief," we call her. "Chief," of the Division of Education and Publication of the Board for Homeland Ministries. Ansley Coe Throckmorton, over these years, represented the mandates of General Synod brilliantly, persistently, with eminent fairness, perspicacity and wisdom. She cajoled, persuaded, bribed, wheedled, ran interference, juggled budgets, provided protection. She absorbed "cheap shots." She "played hard," as they say, "in pain." She has been a "point person," a sagacious and imaginative general on a harsh battlefield, keeping her cool in public; steadfastly, carefully, clearly -- courteously defending the commitments made by General Synod over the last generation, meticulously moving machinery to make it possible for the hymnal staff, the advisory committee, the editorial panel, the Homeland Ministries Board, and, ultimately, this General Synod to finish and celebrate this enterprise. She has been steel in a velvet glove -- and over the years she and I engaged in only one inflamed argument. It dealt with the inclusion of a particular text in the hymnbook. The title of that cursed hymn: "Drop Kick Me, Jesus, Through the Goal Posts of Life." I wanted it. She didn't. It's out.

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I

Now, friends, tonight we celebrate a great project of this marvelous denomination of ours. Tonight we take together another step illustrating how Christians of the Reformed, the Free, the Evangelical and yes, the Catholic traditions among us will in the future express our faith and worship God. And hardly another text than the one from Ephesians we read a few moments ago would fit this occasion. We do not really know who composed it. Perhaps Paul, but probably not. In any case, its point is this: All of us who were once strangers to God and to each other now, in Christ, discover ourselves no longer strangers, but "together, citizens with the saints and members of the household of God." All of us, divided from one another by whatever boundaries -- all of us now find ourselves called as a common body into a new future, knowing, embracing and serving one another as a beloved community and as signs in this world of what God wants for all of human life.

And how does our author depict the ground of our reconciliation? How does this imaginative liturgical seer present the event uniquely binding us together? Well, in the Cross of Christ our author doubtless sees many things but one of them is Divine Grace transcending -- dissolving boundaries we use to separate ourselves from one another. Our author sees the Cross of Christ turning our world fragmented by oh, so many divisive major and minor human claims -- our author sees the Cross of Christ turning this kind of world upside down and inside out. Through the Cross of Christ our author proclaims a decisive, world-changing, life-altering cosmos-transfiguring event. Our author believes grace and love mediated by the Cross and vindicated by the resurrection of Jesus Christ make irrelevant the labels we give human distinctions slamming one another into boxes. Our author takes the warring cultural, ethnic, religious poles of his multicultural world -- Jew and Gentile,180 degrees apart -- and affirms the Cross of Christ as the peace pact "breaking down the dividing wall of hostility between them." Out of these polarities, affirms our author, the Cross does more than simply bring two mutually contemptuous factions to opposite sides of a table; the Cross does more than make for a conclave of diverse and tolerant people. The Cross condemns our tendency to define ourselves by language, culture or creed, to distinguish ourselves by blood or soul, tribe or clan, race or nation as what our author's mentor, the Apostle Paul, calls in a letter to the Corinthians, "the human point of view." No more, says our author. That's all over! By God's action through the Cross, we are a new race; a new people; a new nation; a new humanity. And thus to us the author says our true identity derives now from our being granted a fresh beginning as

-a new creation transcending the niches proscribed by demographers and market analysts;
-a new creation transcending slots determined by paycheck, zip code or differing ability;
-a new creation transcending the strait jackets shelving us by race, sexual orientation, religious denomination, or culture. As Laurence Hull Stookey writes in your New Century Hymnal,
In Christ is neither Jew nor Greek,
and neither slave nor free;
For men and women live in God
And all are kin to me.
(NCH #394, stanza 3)

"In Christ," you see, "strangers no longer. Together, citizens with the saints and members of the household of God!"

II

Can a hymnal serve as a instrument reflecting this new household of God? Can the New Century Hymnal bear the freight of this profound theo-ethical reality? Well, perhaps, at best, in a feeble and veiled way. Human limitation and self-deception preclude our works from meeting our presumptions. But by God's grace and providence our fondest hope is that in some way, more so than ever before, this hymnal for the new century reflects a "new global creation," what Martin Luther King, Jr., called a "world house."

A world house! We know that is true. Look around this room. As if to refute the polemical tract raised by Patrick Buchanan as a banner for his election to the Presidency in 1996, our presence in this auditorium under the banner of Jesus Christ cries, "No alien nation here!" We know we live in a world house even as we suffer, weep and rail over the butchering of the social contract in this country -- and in face of the United Nations' fiftieth anniversary celebration taking place this very week across the Bay -- the unraveling of the human community across the world.

I came across a reflection some time ago, illustrating, whether we realize it or not, whether we like it or not, our residing in a world house. This illustration, familiar surely to some of you, takes a so-called "American woman" at random. It does not describe anyone in particular in this room. It might describe a day in the life of someone here. In any case, its point about our global interdependence, our living in a world house, is clear.

This UCC woman -- not all of them, not all of you, but this one -- begins her day when the clock radio made in Japan begins to play music composed in Mexico. She goes into the bathroom, washes her face with soap invented by the ancient Gauls as her husband steps out of his pajamas -- a garment originating in the East Indies -- and begins to shave -- a masochistic rite first developed by the ancient priests of Sumer and made a little less unpleasant by the use of a razor made of steel, an iron-carbon alloy discovered in Turkestan. She dons a wardrobe designed originally in ancient Egypt and adjusts a throat scarf, the vestigial remnant of a shoulder shawl worn by a 17th century Croat.

Then down for breakfast of a cup of coffee from beans grown in Colombia, a banana from Guatemala, sugar from India in a pewter container made partly of Bolivian tin. She unfolds a napkin made from Zairian cotton and picks up cutlery compounded of Zambian chrome, Canadian nickel and Peruvian vanadium.

Then, of course, off to work with a briefcase made of leather from a Nepalese mountain sheep, in a car manufactured in Sweden, fuelled by gasoline pumped in Kuwait. She carries an umbrella invented in China, pauses to purchase a Wall Street Journal, whose editorial page appears to be written by an 18th century Scotsman named Adam Smith, using coins which first made their appearance in ancient Lydia. Then she scans the day's news -- which will be set in Arabic characters on a Chinese invention, paper, by means of a German process. She will cringe at the antics of those dreadful foreigners and thank a Hebrew God in an Indo-European language that she is 100% -- a decimal system invented by the Greeks -- American, a word of course, derived from the name of an Italian explorer sailing under a Portuguese commission.

Dr. King is right. It is a world house. And the author to the Ephesians sees us that way. Our hymnal for a new century confirms this world house by including new hymnody from many nations and peoples between its covers -- from Mexico, Pakistan, Japan, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Nicaragua, South Africa, China, Ghana and many more -- all of this affirmed in a new text by Miriam Therese Winter, a woman we honor tonight as one of our editorial panelists, and surely as one of the truly gifted liturgical poets of our generation.

We welcome one world family and struggle with each choice
That opens us to unity and gives our vision voice.
O for a world preparing for God's glorious reign of peace,
Where time and tears will be no more, and all but love will cease.

(NCH #575, stanza 3)

"In Christ," proclaims Ephesians, "no longer strangers. . . Together," across the world, "joint citizens with the saints and members of the household of God."

III

And finally, what for our church? Our hope for this hymnal carries with it a prayer that this worshipbook may knit us wherever we find ourselves into truly a covenental communion, united and uniting, blossoming in hope and discipleship as the "first fruits" in this world of God's dominion of grace and peace.

Heaven knows we in the U.C.C. seek the unity promised by the Ephesian vision. Heaven knows we need it. Heaven knows we struggle desperately with our own strangeness to one another, our frequent readiness to strike out and build our own separate households.

I retain a shrewd little item in my desk illustrating our time-honored U.C.C. game of hide and seek for identity. Like a lot of everything else in life, the search is both our glory and our shame. Many of you will recognize this observation. If you have not heard it, it is time you did. It goes something like this:

During a recent ecumenical gathering someone rushed into the sanctuary shouting, "The building is on fire!" Here is what happened:

Methodists gathered in the corner and prayed for the fire to go out.
The Baptists called for water.
The Quakers silently praised God for the blessing fire brings.
The Lutherans pasted a notice on the door declaring the 95 evils of fire.
The Fundamentalists proclaimed the fire the well-deserved vengeance of God on the liberals.
The Christian Scientists agreed among themselves there was no fire.
The Presbyterians selected a chairperson to appoint a committee to look into the matter and report appropriately.
The Episcopalians grabbed their incense, formed a procession and smartly marched out.
The U.C.C. cried, "Everyone for himself!"

As much as anything, we pray this hymnal for the new century heals our ecclesial divisions. We seek to include the hymnody of all our traditions -- from the cool blues of Thomas A. Dorsey and the elegant cadences of Duke Ellington to the sublime prayer of Queen Liliuokalani; the reverence of the Dakota to the praise of the Latina; the verse of Isaac Watts to the staves of Fanny Crosby. We beg that each of us claims each other's hymnody as our own. And yes, we pray that the due recasting of metaphor and image, noun and pronoun will serve as an invitation to come home to those who have for so long felt exiled, oppressed or diminished, and that such changes will open fresh perceptions of our God as well as new understandings of our rich and variegated humanity as children of God.

Roger Powell, in a wonderful hymn text sums up our high calling as a uniting Church of Christ:

Holy is your name forever! Heal divisions that remain;
Bless the church's new endeavors; make our witness, once again.
One in Christ and in Christ's Gospel, make us one we now implore.
Glory, glory, yours the glory, then and now and evermore.

(NCH #397, stanza 3)

And so we close: This evening, as we gather for worship in these last years of the 20th century, we make a claim on a new generation and for the 21st century. What is this claim on and from God's future? It is the introduction -- no, more than that -- it is the glorious birth among us tonight of a vehicle mediating through poetry and song, text and music the grace, peace and power of our sovereign and savior Jesus Christ. It will serve, God willing, as a lens refracting like a diamond's facet the radiance of the unfathomable yet intimate God revealed in Jesus Christ. It will bear, please god, courage dispelling fear, and yes, hope against hope as it unfolds a Realm inspiring the loyalty and desire, the muscle and the fortitude to follow Jesus Christ. Oh, friends, I pray the New Century Hymnal enables us, in faith, to live, "in Christ, no longer strangers." Yea, I pray it sets a place at table for everyone so all may confess, celebrate and serve, "together, citizens with the saints and members of the household of God."