Today is World Communion Sunday. Its focus is to highlight our oneness with every individual Christian congregation around the world, all celebrating Holy Communion on this day.  It began in the Presbyterian Church in the 1930’s but is celebrated in most of the denominations today.  But here at Mt. Auburn it has always meant much more.  It is a day we celebrate one world, one human family, beyond our own particular faith, simply because life in Christ demands it. 

We have done that in a number of ways over the years, and last Sunday’s service here was itself a marvelous world communion witness.  I hope I can preach today as well as Bucky Ignatius did.  The whole service was deeply meaningful.   

But as we have gathered again, with the table set and knowing a place is set for all, let me focus more specifically this morning on what it may mean to believe in one human family and to act accordingly.

It ought to be obvious, given how fractured the world has become, how terror alerts will be a constant necessity, how raw are the disagreements among nations and cultures, and how, not as we would wish it would be, that our own country is seen by many, more than ever in our life time, as a threat to peace and world stability, that the recognition that we are one human family is not only merely a far fetched ideal but an urgent pragmatic necessity.

And let me say that the task to keep the world from unraveling is a religious task.   The  very  root  of  the  word religion is to rebind, to gather together, to create a bonding.  But we are failing at that. 

We all remember Casey, the preacher who gave up on preaching, in Steinbeck’s,  The Grapes of Wrath.   He was a stranger to the Joad family but was invited to their breakfast table.   Grandma insisted that someone say a  prayer first and finally, but apologetically, Casey complied.  He rambled on a bit and then said,

“I ain’t sayin’ I’m like Jesus, but I got tired like Him, an’ I got mixed up like Him, an’ I went into the wilderness like Him, without no campin’ stuff…

“Hallelujah,” says Granma, and she rocked a little, back and forth, trying to catch hold of an ecstasy.

“An’ I got to thinkin’,” Casey went on, “on’y it wasn’t thinking, it  was deeper down than thinkin’.  I got thinkin’ how we was holy when we was one thing, an’ mankin’ was holy when it was one thing.  An’ it on’y got unholy when one mis’able little fella got the bit in his teeth an’ run off his own way, kickin’ an’ draggin’ an’ fightin’.  Fella like that bust the holiness.  But when they’re all workin’ together, not one fella for another fella, but one fella kind of harnessed to the whole shebang – that’ right, that’s holy.”

Casey is right. That’s holiness. 

Yes, we need to rise up and realize that the whole shebang that we must seek to serve is that we are indeed one human family.

That was the world view of Jesus or why else would he say we must love our neighbor as our selves?  The goal of becoming a self is not through unilateralism, one person, or group, or nation, kickin’ and’ draggin’ and fightin’ and going off on their own.  Such a lone ranger attitude is a false  and reckless political strategy and will not fulfill our hymn that the earth be fair and all its people one.

The passage I read of Paul going to Athens has become more personal since twenty-six of us from this church climbed the Areopagus where Paul had his discussions with the philosophers of that day.  I could go on at some length about Paul’s encounter there, but notice just one thing.  Paul sees many statues to various gods but what really disturbs him is one statue to an unknown god.

Of course, Paul had no place in his world view for many gods or any unknown God, and so he goes on to explain that God is one.  Monotheism, the belief that God is one, developed out of his own Jewish tradition, and it was now central to Paul’s now Christian faith.  It would become a strict doctrine as well in Islam when that faith arose some six hundred years later. Mahomet  stressed the oneness of God both to help unify the warring tribes of the Arabian peninsula but also because he saw some confusion with Christianity’s stress on the Trinity which seemed to him to proclaim three Gods. 

But Paul, facing the crowd gathered around him, declares to them something I think is absolutely right, no matter where it originated from or who was saying it. 

Look, Athenians, Paul says,

“the God who made the world and everything in it gives to all persons life and breath and everything, for from one blood God made everyone to live on the face of the earth so that they might feel after God and find God.”

And he goes on to tell them that

“God is not far from each one of us, for in God we live and move and have our being, even as some of your poets have said, for we are indeed all God’s offspring.”

And yet, only at our best through the centuries have we believed that.  Instead, we have been involved in busting up the holiness of this essential truth that we are of one blood by qualifying it as to who is and who is not loved by God, or who is and who is not made in God’s image.

Later, Paul would also and rightly speak of Jesus’ radical inclusiveness when he wrote that in Christ

“there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female.” 

And Paul would also say when you examine anyone’s faith, or their hopes, or their love, that love alone is the greatest, greater than faith or hope.  And what he says is indeed all good stuff – truly good stuff.    Even so, Paul would additionally argue that only in Christ is a person saved – can a person be right with God.

But why does the concept of one God necessitate exclusion?  How can we say to others that God is not in you if you don’t believe in God the way I do?  How can Christianity, with Jesus in it, castigate the intrinsic worth of any person as outside the grace of God?

We know Jesus didn’t reject his own religious heritage.  He was a Jew.  Yes, he was critical of it, as he would be of any religion when its witness became exclusive and hypocritical and unloving. But he would also, as he so often demonstrated, see value in whatever religious truth that was just, and loving and inclusive. 

Why else would he say of the temple in Jerusalem,

“that God’s house shall be a house of prayer for all the nations?” 

Yes, we are appalled with religions that would stone the sinner, it’s even in our Bible, but Jesus said, let those without sin cast the first stone.  And, there are none. 

Yes, all the great religions thankfully contain the Golden Rule, as you can see displayed in the bulletin.  [Please see final page of this sermon.]  We are to treat our neighbor, the other, as we would ourselves.  But Jesus also knew that too often by neighbor we mean only those of our kind. That’s why he taught the story of the good Samaritan, this outsider who knew only that a neighbor was any human being. Jesus universalized and redefined the term neighbor as anyone in need, anyone at all. 

Yes, there are religions that place purity as their highest virtue but for Jesus it was compassion.  That’s why he touched lepers, and other outcasts, and invited all to his table, and why he taught that we are to embrace those least considered in society:  those in the human family who are hungry, feed them; who are strangers, welcome them; who are naked, clothe them; who are sick, heal them; who are in prison, visit them and aid in their liberation..

Jesus never put an asterisk after the word neighbor.  “All who come to me,” he said, “I will not cast out.”

Jesus was an all-in-the-family man.  Remember, his active ministry began with a family wedding feast, with much wine, and it ended as he gave instructions for the care of his mother as he hung on the cross.  But he also radicalized the definition of the family beyond kinship.  Who is my brother, sister, mother? All in his family, he taught, were those who served the love of God. 

As to salvation, Jesus understood it as ethical behavior seen in the fruits of a person’s labors, not in the correctness of their doctrine. 

On the path of salvation, he taught, one discovers the joy of one’s own self worth and the intrinsic worth of all others.  He never taught more than the love of God applied equally and indiscriminately to all.  Nor was he interested in others so they would become his sheep, only that they realize they too were children of God – an equal part of God’s family.

Yes, God judges the religious life by the amount of love shared in it.

We Presbyterians are, as are other religious groups, still struggling with who is to be included in God’s family. That will be the number one agenda at this year’s General Assembly of our church. But remember, Jesus wasn’t a Presbyterian!   But we do acknowledge him head of the Presbyterian Church, and it is just because he is the head that we continue to struggle beyond our selves.  That is why… 

No longer will we worship a patriarchal God.

No longer will we worship a heterosexual God.

No longer will we worship a God made in our own image.

And as we continue to struggle, we know it is impossible to love Jesus without loving those he loved.

World Communion Sunday reminds us there are a host of religious bodies in the world, and we ought to find in each of them what we can to move the world forward as one human family.  We need not give up on our own particularity, but we need to broaden it.  We  need  to study and dialogue with others, not damn them. Yes, we will recognize our differences, but as friends.

I see no way forward for the world unless the great world religions, differing in many ways, are understood as valid human responses to that ultimate reality we in this church call God.

We are all familiar with the Hebrew prophet Micah’s vision of the peaceable kingdom where all the nations with their own religious views come together to Jerusalem and decide to:

“beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning  hooks;     nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more; but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees and no one shall make them afraid.”

That was the mission given to Israel.  If they are to be a people of God, they must be a light to the world.  The key is in the last verse as the groups disperse.

“For all the peoples walk, each in the name of its god but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever.”

It is a vision of giving room for all peoples, to be safe under their “own vines and under their own fig trees.”  It is not a vision of conversion under one religious banner – only the need to come together in their common humanity for justice and mercy, tempered by a great deal of humility.  It was not a crusade,  a call to war under one’s religious banner.

I said in the beginning I think that the religious task is to keep the world from unraveling.  I think that was Jesus’ task for he loved the world.  There are religions, of course, that have believers in them, including our own, that  clearly proclaim bigotry, hate, and do untold damage to the human fabric and, when they act that way, they do give religion a bad name.  But there are secular groups that do that too; among them in our time were communists and fascists and other absolute tyrants.  In a recent survey of the 188 suicide terrorist attacks of the last twenty years, 75 have come from groups who are anti-religion.    Nevertheless,  no religious body should claim their way alone uniquely contains God or salvation, even though some may suggest such.

Even in the Presbyterian Church, some have been pushing to make it clear that only in Christ can salvation be found.  Certainly we gathered here do find for us that God’s unbounded love is supremely found in the life and ministry of Jesus, and we  are here to give of our selves to his ministry.  But we also know Jesus didn’t limit God to himself.

And, thankfully, this humble wisdom is officially acknowledged in the Presbyterian Church despite those in it who believe Jesus is the only way to God.   Just two years ago the General Assembly, even though it again proclaimed Jesus as the way and the truth and the life, also said by this

“we neither restrict the grace of God to those who profess explicit faith in Christ, nor assume that all people are saved regardless of faith.  Grace, love, and communion belong to God, and are not ours to determine.” 

And Amen to that!

But I also take heart that the leadership of almost all of the religious groups in the world, and all the main groups in United States, except the Southern Baptist, did oppose our preemptive war in Iraq.  It was unprecedented.  

Of course, there is evil in this world, but we are not called to divide people into good and evil but to overcome evil with good.  Nor can we claim who is not for us is against us, especially when we go it alone.  Jesus did say who is not against us is for us.  But he was just being grateful.  He did not mean we should follow policies that result in more of the world being against us.

Of course, it is rather shocking when any religion acts contrary to its ideals. But all religious groups are not the same within themselves.  Fundamentalists and fanatics are found in all of them. And such persons, wrapped up in the absolute superiority of their beliefs, continue to flame hatred and especially encourage the young to even kill or be killed for their holy cause.  That has been most troublesome for any of us to understand, for these acts don’t even come close to anything the great religions call holy.

Yes, there are those who may try to cloak their extreme violence or their inhumane treatment of others, with a religious veneer. But what is really necessary, besides greater protection against these attacks, is to understand and deal with the root causes of the injustice felt behind these attacks, or there will be no human family. 

Yes, the alternative to religion will always remain a better religion, and a healthier religion will have tolerance in it. Tolerance may not be the final answer, but it is the first step.

But even though the world is our parish, we need be reminded that we are a family here.  As T.S. Eliot wrote, “Home is where one starts from.”  If love does not abide here at Mt. Auburn, how will we be the agency of love that we claim? 

Since it has been over a year that I have been in this pulpit, let me conclude with a few thoughts, a sort of “keep on, Mt. Auburn,”  brightening the corner where you are, and to sing even more forcibly “this little light of mine, I am gonna let it shine.”

You are indeed a family called Mt. Auburn Presbyterian Church.  And the Presbyterian part is important, not to be scoffed at.  We may quarrel over some matters within our denomination, and we have, but let it be a lover’s quarrel.  We need it, and in the comparable way the United States needs the United Nations, and the Presbyterian Church needs a church such as Mt. Auburn. 

I may speak more of this later today at our forum, but how thankful I am for Mt. Auburn itself.   So I applaud the Session, the Deacons, and this congregation for holding fast through a most complex and difficult time. This church’s ministry needs you and everyone’s support more than ever, not less.   

There is a new organization in town which seeks to bring gays and straights together into one common body.  It fact, it is called,   “One Human Family”.  At its inaugural meeting, Don Beck, a gay architect, introduced it with some of these words, after which I joined. 

“One Human Family is not about chest beating, it is about embracing.  It is…about compassion and reasoned direction.  It is not about division but about success through unity.  It is about individual dignity and personal achievement.  One Human Family will not tolerate diversity; we will celebrate it and Cincinnati is a great place to raise a family.” 

Surely, “One Human Family” sounds a lot like Mt. Auburn Church, doesn’t it?  Truly, in this congregation, unity and diversity are indeed celebrated.  Such an intention is made clear in your bulletin announcement.  Repeating the same words every week for the past twelve years are these: 

“This is Christ’s church and together we are seeking to love the world as he did…to be as embracing as Jesus was.” 

Who would want to change that good news?

And because you, and I will say we from this point on…because we are convinced by the unbounded love of God for all revealed so clearly in the life and ministry of Jesus, we do have a Christian flag in our sanctuary.  We know that we may not serve under it as fully as we should, but we are convinced of our journey under it regardless of the bumps in the pavement ahead.  The flag is a little hard to see up in there in the balcony because we are not the best flag wavers.

But we also have up there an American flag,  but we know our genuine love for our country cannot stop at our shores.  As Pablo Casals said,

“To love one’s country is a splendid thing, but why should love stop at the border.” 

And that is why there is also a United Nations flag there beside it, because we know the limits of nationalism, and we our chagrined by any attitude in our government that says we don’t need the rest of the world and can go it alone.     

But we also have a fourth flag there, a Rainbow flag, because we know that the last human rights agenda is the failure to include homosexuals in the one human family, and Christ will not let us off from that goal.

God’s house shall be a house of prayer for all.

Others may not understand fully the joy we have found here in our rich diversity, or the depths of the gospel we have truly experience here, all because of this church’s inclusive   policy.   Of  course,   others   may   wonder  what peculiar kind of Christians and Presbyterians are members here. Because of all the notoriety that the press has focused on our ministry, that may be understandable. 

As to that, pardon a personal anecdote.  It occurred after I spoke at a forum at College Hill Presbyterian Church who we surely have differed with on some matters.  But, as Earl Apel has often and graciously reminded us, College Hill is a part of our family as we are part of their family, too. 

But the next day after the forum, The Enquirer reported the event and described me as a practicing homosexual – of course, disregarding Betty and our eleven grandchildren!  I thought it a complement.  Marvelously during the joys and concerns part of our service the following Sunday, one of our members got up and read the newspaper account and then added,

“Pastor, some of us would like you to know that we are willing to help you in that practice.” 

The Enquirer’s editor called and rightly and kindly apologized.  I only asked that he give me the opportunity to write a guest column about why we believe same-sex marriages are not only just but helpful.  And they did. 

But none of you, I believe, are embarrassed with being associated with any one in this place, and that is why you are here and will stay, because we are one human family, open to all who are made in God’s image, without qualification.

Yes, what a diverse and inclusive place this is!  How important it is that we make room for the many caring and socially responsible groups who have their offices here, or the countless groups we open our doors to that can’t find a place elsewhere so they may find a welcoming place in this city to make their witness known.   

And nothing, friends, is as diverse as our music!  Who knows what we will be asked to sing here or what in the world the choir will sing next?  I have never heard of such rich, varied and well done choral singing in any church I know.  Here the whole world’s variety of faith’s expressions is set to music and is shared and celebrated in this beautiful space.  Because of our music, we hardly need sermons.    

And, finally and most importantly – for even as the choir confesses,

“it is God who has given us graces, from whom comes the music in our voices”

 – here at the center of our sacred space is a table with a place set for all.  And Jesus is the host of this table.  And we know, if we are to perpetuate his meal, we must do it with the same gracious table manners Jesus had, the one who dined with all, the insiders and the outsiders.  Even Judas was not turned away.  Nor will be any one.  

Yes, you do make a place for everyone.  You do!  

As our dearest friend Camilla put it, who I am sure is thrilled to be here this morning,

“We are female and male; we are variously gifted in mind and personality; we are fat and thin; we have big noses or small ears; gray hair, no-hair, yellow hair; we have tan skin, pink skin, brown skin, pale skin; we are children and adults; homosexuals, heterosexuals and persons in between.  We are God’s good creation…and we all our equipped to dialogue with the Holy Spirit…and capable of more light and much love.”

That’s a good place for me to end, praying before God for more  light  and  much  love.   I  can  only  thank    you   for affirming that I, and anyone else, is welcomed here as a fully embraced part of the One Human Family.  Amen.

Camilla Warrick, elder and dear friend, died
from breast cancer in 2002.

Dr. Harold Gordon Porter
Pastor Emeritus

Mount Auburn Presbyterian Church
Cincinnati, Ohio

October 5, 2003

World Communion Sunday

THE GOLDEN RULE OR LAW

The Golden Rule or Law is embedded in all of the major religious bodies.  While it does not comprehensibly describe all that must be taken into account regarding interpersonal relations, it dramatically points out the need to confront our radical self-centeredness which negates the rights and needs of others. 

Judaism:  What is harmful to your self, do not to others.  That is the whole of the Torah; the remainder is but commentary.

Christianity:  All things, whatsoever you would that others should do to you, do you even so to them:  for this is the law and the prophets.

Buddhism:  Hurt not others with that which pains your self.

Islam:  No one of you is a believer until you love for everyone what you love for yourself.

Confucianism:  Is there any one maxim which ought to be acted upon throughout one’s whole life?  Surely, do not unto others what you would not they should do unto you.

Hinduism:  This the sum of duty:  do naught to others which if done to you would cause you pain.

Jainism:  We should regard all creatures as we regard our own self, and should therefore refrain from inflicting upon others, such injury as would appear undesirable to us if inflicted upon ourselves.

Sikhism:  As you deem it for yourself, so deem it for others.  Then you shall become a partner in heaven.

Taoism:  Regard your neighbor’s gain as your own gain:  and regard your neighbor’s loss as your own loss.

Zoroastrianism:  That nature only is good when it shall not do unto another whatever is not good for its own self.