A New Church Is Born

April 23, 2018 is the 50th Anniversary of the birth of The United Methodist Church. It's the church in which I was raised. It's the church in which my father first, and later my wife, answered God's call to ministry. Flipping through some of my dad's sermons, I found one he preached just weeks after the 1968 merger that produced the United Methodist Church. Here's some of what he had to say about that union:

"Amid pomp, drama and color, the United Methodist Church became a reality at 9:49 AM on Tuesday, April 23, 1968 as two bishops joined hands over a cluster of symbolic documents. Bishop Reuben H. Mueller of the former Evangelical United Brethren Church and Bishop Lloyd C. Wicke of the former Methodist Church joined their voices in saying, 'Lord of the Church, we are united in thee, in thy Church, and now in The United Methodist Church.' Then, 10,000 persons filling the Dallas Memorial Auditorium exclaimed in one booming benediction, 'Amen!'

And so it was done. A new church was born. In the twinkling of an eye, you and I as former Methodists and former Evangelical United Brethren became the inheritors of a church. Off and on since 1802 there had been union negotiations between Methodists, Evangelicals and United Brethren. And then in this brief ceremony, 166 years of talking find a consummation."

The United Methodist Church was a product of the "ecumenical movement," and my father was quick to note that "[t]he word 'ecumenical' means the whole inhabited world. It means that all together we are one in Christ. It leaves no one out. Hence our subject this morning of 'Union with Unity.' You may have all the union you want, but it's all an empty sham unless that union is filled and flows over with unity. Church union without unity may be compared to the hollowness of what we call a 'marriage of convenience.' In true union, in true marriage, the parties must love each other. Love. That's what we're talking about, isn't it? We're all United Methodists now; that is a fact. But do we love each other? ...

Throughout the years of negotiations for this union, leaders on both sides were careful to point out that a new church was being formed. The product of a union, they said, would be a renewed church, not Methodist, not EUB, but entirely new. This assurance was probably felt to be necessary for the little EUBs, who may have felt a loss of identity from being swallowed up by a church ten times its size. This assurance probably was resented by some Methodists, who felt a certain smug complacency with their size and success. But, you know, somehow I always felt that this promise our leaders made us of a new church was something they couldn't deliver. They knew that, I'm sure, and so they meant it to us as a kind of challenge and not a promise. You and I make a new church by realizing our unity in Christ here and now.

Unity is a hard thing to come by even in this age when we talk so much about it and run around madly tying up unions. Still we are divided. All Christians cannot sit at the Lord's Table together; local churches cannot see their way clear to enter into group ministries; individuals within a local church can bicker and fuss and criticize and divide and paralyze. Too much ego; no room for love. Too much investment in self; no room for the mutual subjection Paul said was so necessary for a true marriage union.

Now practically speaking, how do we who are now united in the United Methodist Church receive this gift of unity that Christ offers us? Our differences, born in ego, can dissolve in our devotion to a common task to which we give our strength. Not just any task, but THE task - the only task worth our life's devotion - service to the King of Kings. 

Our sole purpose for unity within the church is to perform our ministry, our mission, our work in the world. Only as we plunge into that work, that mission, do we realize our unity. The 'church' does not refer to an organization; it is an action word describing a fellowship of people who are doing things, actively demonstrating to the world the Lordship of Jesus Christ in their lives. 

We get union by sitting down and talking about consolidating committees and drafting rules of order. We get unity by rolling up our sleeves and sweating and working together in our common mission.

Amid pomp, drama and color, the United Methodist Church became reality at 9:49 AM on Tuesday, April 23, 1968. Did it? That's up to us." 

From: "Union With Unity"
Scripture: John 17:6-21
Preached May 19, 1968
at Adams Shore Community Church
Quincy, Massachusetts

Christ in Disguise

I don't remember that horrible day when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and killed in Memphis fifty years ago; I was only two years old when it happened. My father was 27, having graduated from seminary a year before to become the pastor of a small community church in Quincy, Massachusetts in the shadow of next-door Boston. King was murdered just three days before Palm Sunday. As other preachers no doubt did, my father sensed a contemporary version of Holy Week unfolding before him on the evening news. In his Palm Sunday sermon, my dad said this:  

"Palm Sunday is a tragic symbol of Jesus' brand of messiahship and our response to it. If there's anything that Palm Sunday points to, it is how fickle and insincere we really are. And to some extent it's a lack of understanding, too, I suppose. We don't understand what sort of messiah Jesus is, or if we do understand then we don't want him. Like the crowd at the Jerusalem gate, for a while Jesus appears to be fulfilling our fondest dreams. We want a warm, comfortable home, a good family to be proud of, a secure job, a friendly little church where we're all alike. Here comes a king who will secure it for us! 'Hosanna!'

'The king is coming! The king is coming!' Yes, the king is coming, but not as earthly kings with pomp and circumstance and every detail attended to. This king comes as the Christ, the suffering servant, riding on a borrowed donkey with a shabby crowd to greet him. The kingship of Christ is not seen in terms of a crown and a throne but rather in terms of a basin and towel as he washes his disciples' dirty feet. The kingdom of Christ is not seen in terms of a royal procession with him at the head but rather in terms of his teaching, 'whosoever would be first among you must be your servant.' 

Can't we see that he is riding a donkey? Can't we see that there is no splendor surrounding him at all? No, we can't see. Like the Jerusalem crowd we are blinded by our wishful thinking that finally a king has come to restore our Israel. It's only Palm Sunday now; we are cheering. Give Jesus the King just a week to force our hand, to make us demonstrate in a bloody way how we really feel about his brand of kingship, about his way to redemption.

You know, there is another very ironic sort of 'Palm Sunday happening' going on today and these last few days which clearly and cruelly points out what we've been saying here. Today we are shouting the praises of another king - The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.  We are piously yielding up our hosannas to this man who we say has been the champion of his people. Civil rights leaders, politicians, religious leaders, newsmen, even George Wallace -- are deploring the tragedy of his death and offering eulogies to this great man. In the mass of news that has been released so far, I have yet to hear a single negative comment about this great apostle of non-violence. We're all shouting 'Hosanna to King!'

But where were our hosannas while he was actually doing the non-violence, when he needed our support? Where were the politicians, the religious leaders, the newsmen and the George Wallaces when King was showing this nation that servant-hood meant leading a bus boycott or defending the cause of garbage men in Memphis? Where was this adoring crowd when King was saying that the way of the cross this summer would be a massive demonstration by the poor in Washington, D.C.? No. There were no hosannas then. There were only countless statements by public officials and editorials denouncing this self-styled messiah as un-American and un-Christian. All too frequently we heard someone yelling that terrible anathema, 'Communist!', and sounding curiously akin to another shout heard 2,000 years ago: 'Crucify him!' Yesterday, it was 'Crucify him!' Today he is dead, and it is 'Hosanna!'

The sequence of our emotions is reversed from that first 'Palm Sunday happening' to this one, but the dynamic is still the same. It is our sentimental cheering when the challenge of the Gospel is distant and our utter repulsion when the challenge of the Gospel is aimed point blank at our hearts. The happening has occurred. And similar happenings will, over and over again, whenever Christ in person, or Christ in the disguise of his many suffering servants, enters and challenges our way of living.

May God give us the grace to do more than shout 'Hosanna!' and waive a palm. May God give us the grace to be counted with Christ at his trial and death."

From: "The Happening"

Preached Palm Sunday, April 7, 1968

at Adams Shore Community Church 

Scripture: Luke 19:29-40