FOURTH CHURCH PULPIT

That the World May Believe
October 1, 2000
John M. Buchanan

“Being engrafted into the church is no ordinary admissions process. Baptism is not a
chummy bonding with those with whom we would naturally gather in clubs... baptism
accomplishes what other initiations do not. It joins us in Christ to those with whom we
have few if any interests, background, characteristics, preferences or opinions in common.
It breaks down the barriers that divide, making people who can’t stand each other fellow
citizens of the same household of God because he died for us—and for all of them.”

Barbara Wheeler

“Here’s the rub. Our union and communion with God in Christ brings with it union and
communion with all the others who are themselves in Christ We are one with each other
because all of us are one with Christ.”

P. Mark Achtemeier
The Church and Its Unitp

FOURTH
PRESBY
TERIAN
CHURCH
A LIGHT 1N THE CITY

Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago
126 East Chestnut Street, Chicago, IL 60611-2094
(312) 787-4570

THAT THE WORLD MAY BELIEVE
October 1, 2000

JOHN M. BUCHANAN, PASTOR
FOURTH PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Ephesians 4:1-4 (NRSV)
John 17: 11, 20, 21¢NRSV)

“I, therefore, a prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling ... making
every effort to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.”
Ephesians 4: 1, 3 (NRSV)

Startle us, O God, with your truth. And open our hearts to your word, through Jesus Christ
our Lord. Amen.

In 1996 it was my privilege to visit the Reformed Church of Croatia on behalf of the
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). While there I became aware of a fine young Croatian
theologian, Miroslav Volf who now teaches at Yale. Volf is the author of a number of
books everybody is reading.

After a recent lecture on reconciliation and peace, he was asked a question: “Your
description of reconciliation was eloquent, but, Professor Volf, can you love a Cetnik?” He
recalls: “It was the winter of 1993. For months the notorious Serbian fighters called
“cetniks” had been sowing desolation in my native country, herding people into
concentration camps, raping women, burning down churches and destroying cities. I had
just argued that we ought to embrace our enemies as God has embraced us in Christ. Can
I embrace a “cetnik”—the ultimate other, so to speak, the evil other? It took me a while to
answer, although I immediately knew what I wanted to say—‘No, I cannot—but as a
follower of Christ I think I should be able to.”

The book which follows is a product of Volf’s Struggle with this elemental and very human
dilemma: the confrontation between a religion of reconciliation and the reality of racial,
ethnic and religious hatred and violence.

Among the more distressing realities of life at the beginning of a new millennium is the
persistence, and even the renewal of racial, ethnic and religious hatred—on every
continent, it seems. Just this week tragic violence broke out again on the Temple Mount in
Jerusalem—a spot held sacred by Jews and Muslims.

Los Angeles Times writer Robin Wright observes:

“Of all features of the post-Cold War world, the most

consistently troubling are turning out to be tribal hatreds that divide human kind by race,
faith and nationality . . .

containing the abuses committed in the name of ethnic or religious groups will be our
foremost challenge for years to come.” (See Volf, Exclusion and Embrace, p.15)

Decades ago—in the aftermath of the Second World War—with Europe and Japan in
ruins, and the human race staggering, almost stunned by its capacity for violence and
destruction—London, Dresden, Coventry, Berlin, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Auchwitz,
Buchenwald—the Protestant churches—with a strong presence in all those cities and
nations—the largest concentration of J apanese Christians, for instance, lived in Nagasaki
and perished on August 9, 1945—the churches got together and tried to find a way to speak
a prophetic and healing word: a word that would affirm the oneness of the human race, the
precious gift of every human life, and also a word which might translate religious beliefs
into the politics of peace. And the idea they came up with, which was actually tried after
the First World War, was not a political action movement but a day on which the world’s
Christian would acknowledge and celebrate their oneness at the Lord’s Table in the
sacrament of communion. It is, I have always thought, one of our better ideas—that on the
first Sunday of October—Christians all around the world join hands across barriers of
race and nationality. And then, in the name of their common Lord and common faith, so
something which the originators of this idea did not include but which, I believe, is
absolutely critical today—reach across the divide of religion to join hands with people of
other faith commitments,

It is one of my favorite Sundays and I call up memories of brothers and sisters of different
nationalities and races I have been privileged to know and with whom I Share the
communion of Jesus Christ.

Catholic theologian Hans Kiing observes: “The most fanatical, the cruelest political
struggles are those that have been colored, inspired and legitimized by religion ... There
will be no peace among the peoples of the world without peace among religions. There will
be no peace among world religions without peace among Christian churches.” (Christianity
and World Religions, p.442-443)

Sometimes it seems that on that score, we are regressing. A few weeks ago, to the chagrin
of Catholics and Protestants alike, the Vatican took a giant step backward into the 19"
century. After decades of interfaith conversations and ecumenical cooperation—after a
nearly miraculous softening of relationships and a remarkable degree of openness which
saw Catholics and Protestants worshipping together, serving together, Cardinal Joseph
Ratzinger, Prefect for the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, announced
to the world that there is only one true church and the Church of Rome is it, and this isn’t.
The Cardinal also warned Catholic Bishops against referring to us as “sister churches,”
and Catholic theologians about getting too chummy with religions other than Catholic
theology defined by Rome.

That giant step into the past will not, thanks be to God, change the new situation between
Catholics and Protestants—between this church and our brothers and sisters at Holy Name
Cathedral because, by God’s good grace, we have all made an amazing discovery in the
past 30 years—we are one in Christ. There is a unity given to us by what Jesus Christ did
for us that cannot be diminished by anyone, any church body, bureaucrat or official.

And there is no reason for self-righteousness among Protestants. In each of our
denominations—Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopal, Southern Baptist, there are
increasingly strident and influential voices who, simply changing the nouns, sound a lot like
Cardinal Ratzizer.

So let’s go back—not to the divisiveness and hostility and violence of our past—but all the
way back to that very night when Jesus gathered his friends around a table and washed
their feet and gave them the bread and the cup.

It was the last night of his earthly life. They were in an upper room, preparing to celebrate
Passover. It would be their last supper. Later that evening he would be betrayed by one of
them, arrested by Temple guards, put on trial and the next day the Roman governor would
sentence him to death and the soldiers would crucify him. And one of the last things he
said was about their love for one another and their unity in his love.

“Love one another—as I have loved you. By this the world will know that you are my
disciples—if you have love for one another.”

And then he prayed for them that they may all be one... that the world may believe.

Two decades later, his disciple, Paul, would pick up the strain. “I beg you,” he wrote to
Christians who were already starting to argue and fight and exclude and excommunicate
one another, “I beg you, make every effort to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of
peace.”

Princeton’s Beverly Gaventa says “We’re not talking about feel good unity—the more we
get together and share our stories, the better we’ll feel-unity.” In fact, I’ve been part of
enough of those well-intentioned efforts to have discovered that when you really get to
know some people you discover that you like them even less.

We’re not talking about feel-good unity. We’re talking about a unity purchased at a price
and then given to us by Jesus Christ. I love the way Auburn Seminary President Barbara
Wheeler puts it.

“The peace of Christ is not a sentimental blanket in which we hide and smother our
differences. It is a genuine reconciliation.” We are joined in Christ, Wheeler says,
with those with whom we have little in common. The love of God in Jesus Christ
“breaks down the barriers that divide, making people who can’t stand each other

fellow citizens and members of the same household of God—because Christ died for
us and for all of them.” (The Church and Its Unity, p.13-15)

Sometimes that precious reconciliation, that new reality does break through in mysterious
ways.

Bob and Dalia Baker are members of this congregation who pulled up stakes a year and a
half ago and went to Albania as Presbyterian mission workers in the midst of the Kosovo
crisis. Albania, during the Cold War, was a more closed society and more hostile to the
West and to Christianity than any other European communist nation. When the regime
fell there were almost no visible churches, although the majority of Albanians were—and
are—nominal Muslims With the eruption of war in neighboring Kosovo and the flood of
refugees, Christian mission workers arrived to help, Bob, a lawyer, Dalia, a teacher, among
them.

Let me read a portion of Bob’s August e-mail.

“J am not sure what most people expect in retirement. Early Monday morning I got a call
from one of the Baptist missionaries from a city about 100 miles east of Tirana. She said
that one of the Evangelical missionaries had been driving Sunday afternoon and had a
traffic accident in which a nine year old girl had been killed. The missionary was being
held by the police in jail. My blood ran cold knowing of the Albanian tradition, perhaps
obligation, of vendetta and that the missionary in jail was ethnic Chinese from Singapore.

I hated to think what would happen to a 50 year old female Singaporean missionary held in
an Albanian jail. I decided that I needed to go to Korea the next day.

While Korca is only about 100 miles from Tirana, it is a four hour drive. We traveled
knowing that there might be a hearing in the case before we could get there. We arrived
outside the court and learned that the family had come to court and had not pressed
charges. The court hearing had been held, and the missionary had been freed. However,
she was still being processed by the police when we arrived. About 30 minutes later, the
missionary left the police building to be greeted with tears of joy by her four fellow
missionaries working in Korca and the people from her village church.

Now we had the difficult duty to visit the family. What do you say to a family on behalf of
the mission community, one member of which drove the car that killed their daughter? I
know that I was not elegant or insightful, but I did the best I could. Incredibly, the girl
attended the children’s group of a local Evangelical church in their village and her brother
was a Christian. I can’t begin to calculate how remote the possibility is of an Evangelical
Christian missionary killing an Evangelical Christian child in a traffic accident, but it had
happened. The family lived on the fourth floor of a typically run down communist period
apartment house. The people were poor. In the apartment were the girl’s father and
mother 2 grandmothers and a collection of aunts, uncles and cousins. After Dalia and I
had said all that we could think to say to the grieving family, the father spoke to us and
said two things. He did not blame the missionary for his daughter’s death (the girl had run

right into the road into the path of the missionary’s car) and he wanted us to know that the
missionary had nothing to fear from his family. There was an inward sigh of relief...
there would be no vendetta.

We got into the car for the long drive back to Tirana. I could only think of the missionary
and the family. For the family, I can’t imagine the pain of Josing a child in this way I also
was overwhelmed with their act of forgiveness. I wonder how many Western well-to-do
Christians would have forgiven the driver within two days of the death of their beautiful
daughter.

So an incredible two day period closed. I have sat in the apartment of a family speaking on
behalf of the Evangelical missionaries of Albania expressing our sorrow for the death of a

little gir] killed by a missionary. Is this what retirement is supposed to be? Yet, I am glad
that God has called me to be here at this time.”

As I read Bob’s letter, I thought—this is what the Gospel is about: Bob and Dalia’s
presence—they are parents too—their Christ-like presence with a grieving mother and
father, affirming the unity of the human race, of all nationalities and races and religions,
standing along side parents mourning the death of their child. That act of grace and
forgiveness on the part of an Albanian peasant—extended to a Christian—is a fragile sign
of the oneness of the human race.

That reconciliation—that hope—that mystery—is the promise that is given when we break
bread and share the cup and remember the one who prayed “that they may all be one that

the world may believe.”

Amen.