Here, partly my August newsletter article, partly reflections coming from last Sunday's worship.
One Body, One Spirit
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. ~1
Corinthians 12:12
More than seventeen hundred bodies filed noisily into the Nicollet
Grand Ballroom at the Minneapolis Hyatt Regency. It was time for the opening
worship service of the Presbyterian Women Churchwide Gathering. There were four
of us from Union Presbyterian Church in Endicott, NY—Ruth, Carol, Sue, and me—and we were
simultaneously excited and exhausted, eager and maybe a little anxious.
It was June 18, which means the terrible news was still fresh. Just the
night before (the night of my last blog entry, in fact), a young man armed with a gun and his hate had gone to an historic
black Charleston, SC church (known to its members as “Mother” Emanuel Church)
and attended bible study (where, he admitted later, everyone was really very
nice to him). At the end of the bible study, he gunned down nine of the people
who had welcomed him, including the pastor.
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.
To my astonishment (though, why should I be astonished? Doesn’t God do
these things all the time?), the worship seemed as if it had been created in
response to this terrible hate crime. Though of course, the worship service had
been designed long before that night.
We were welcomed. We sang. We prayed, and we were indeed knit together
by the Holy Spirit, 1700-plus, becoming, experiencing the reality that we were
indeed one body. Before long, Peggy Darrett-Brewer, a local (Minneapolis)
Presbyterian Woman, was singing a gut-wrenching version of “We Are One in the
Spirit,” which brought us to tears and to our feet.
We are one in the Spirit, we are
one in the Lord.
We are one in the Spirit, we are
one in the Lord.
And we pray that our unity may
one day be restored.
And they’ll know we are
Christians by our love, by our love.
Yes, they’ll know we are
Christians by our love.
And then the Rev. Alika
Galloway, co-pastor of Kwanzaa Community Church in Minneapolis, delivered the
sermon. With humor, with passion, with the heart of a born storyteller, she
stirred every heart in the room with her entreaty that Presbyterian Women
should once again do what they have done before: to put their hands and feet to
Christ’s work, this time to break down barriers of privilege and racism.
 |
| Rev. Alika Galloway brings the Word |
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.
This isn’t just the work
of Presbyterian Women. It’s the work of the entire body of Christ. And, as
another speaker pointed out, our diversity is our strength, because we are all
called to our particular role in God’s work.
We will work with each other, we will work side by side.
We will work with each other, we will work side by side.
And we’ll guard each one’s dignity, and save each one’s pride.
And they’ll know we are
Christians by our love, by our love.
Yes, they’ll know we are
Christians by our love.
In the face of the enormous tragedy and challenge that faces us in this country, as we grapple with, not just last week's shooting or this week's death-in-custody, it would be easy to say, "What have I to give? The need is so enormous, and my gift is so small."
But we have to do what that boy did. We have to offer it anyway. We have to trust that God will take it, and bless it, and that, together with all the small offerings, it will be enough.
