Sermon Title: "The Tapestry of the Church"
Date: June 29, 2008
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson:  Galatians 3:23-29

Last Saturday, I attended the Annual Gathering of the Southern California Nevada Conference of the United Church of Christ.  We met at Glendale’s First Congregational Church—close to 300 ministers and lay delegates from churches stretching from Paso Robles to San Diego, the beaches of the Pacific over to Las Vegas.

As we drove home, I remarked to our delegate Kirsten Sumpter what a diverse group it always is.  Our Conference might be the most diverse among the 39 in our denomination, but it also reflects the diversity of the church I noted at our national General Synods in 2005 and 2007.  The United Church of Christ is still largely Caucasian, white, Euro-American, or whatever the politically correct term is currently.  This was reflected in Glendale.  Yet there are a number of Afro-American or black churches in our Conference.  There are a growing number of Latino Spanish-speaking congregations as our Southern California demographic changes.  We have the most Samoan UCC congregations, due to the Congregational missionary efforts in American Samoa.  There are a few churches with Japanese, Hungarian, Armenian and German heritages.  There are straights and gays, pastors as well as lay people.  Some are politically conservative, some are liberal, with differing views on most any topic.  People from all these churches and cultural backgrounds have accepted leadership positions in the Conference and its four Associations, and thus form the rich, multicolor, multi-strand tapestry that we experience in the UCC.

Somehow, it seems fitting that our Conference is so diverse, given the eclectic mix of Southern California, and our own City of Long Beach, considered perhaps the most culturally diverse city in the nation. 

And what of our own congregation?  Due mostly to the socio-economic background and stability of the surrounding neighborhoods from which we draw, a majority of our members are of Euro-American backgrounds. 

Yet beneath that, there is much diversity.  The data collected as our Associate Minister Search Committee compiles a profile of our congregation reveals that our congregation is generally spread into three age ranges of fairly equal sizes:  birth to 49, 50-64, and 65 and older.  We are very well-educated, with 22% having some college or vocational school; 40% holding a bachelor’s degree; and another 32% having both bachelor’s and graduate degrees.  69% are currently married, with or without children at home; and 31% are single, divorced or widowed.

Diversity does not stop there.  Some would define themselves quite familiar with the Bible or religious teachings; some would say they are somewhat familiar; and still others would confess they are not too familiar at all with the Bible or the history of how the Christian church came to be.  Some are politically right, some left, and others everywhere inbetween.  Two weeks ago, in the same week, I saw a McCain sticker on the back of one of our member’s cars, and a Obama sticker on another.  I didn’t see any Clinton stickers, but remember, my office doesn’t overlook the parking lot!  And one loyalist still has a “W” sticker on his car!

People in our congregation share differing views on equal marriage rights for all regardless of gender.  The degree to which homosexuals are accepted and welcomed into the life of congregations is a struggle most all American denominations are currently in the midst of, and our congregation is just a microcosm of that.

Speaking of microcosms, whenever I conduct an Inquirers Meeting for those exploring church membership, we go around the circle and, as we introduce ourselves, I invite them to tell their religious backgrounds.  There are some folks who come out of the Congregational or Evangelical and Reformed branches of the United Church of Christ.  Some are former Roman Catholics.  We’ve got your Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans from several branches, Baptists, a few with a Jewish parent, and some who have not had much church background at all.  But they’ve all brought their backgrounds, their heritage, their past religious knowledge here, to mix together into the tapestry of this church.

Such diversity of heritage, viewpoints, backgrounds has been a part of the Church since day one.  In the middle of the first century, the Apostle Paul writes to the church at Galatia in the midst of a controversy into how one comes into the church.  Jews were converting to Christianity—understood.  As Jews, the men had been circumcised, a ritual of that religion.  Now some Gentiles—non-Jews—from varied ethic groups wanted to join the church.  The Jewish converts said they first must be circumcised and become Jews.  Paul argues in opposition to this.  Baptism in Christ is what makes them one, as Christians.  “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female,” he writes, “for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.  And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.”  Thus, even though they were not Jewish to begin with, these new converts to the faith can claim the promises made to Abraham and his descendants by God.

“Paul’s passionate rejection of the kind of ethnic/religious ‘identity politics’ the Galatians were squabbling about should lead us to reflect carefully on the ground of our own identity.  To what extent is our sense of who we are grounded in the gospel of Christ, and to what extent is it determined by other factors?  Such questions may lead to uncomfortable conclusions.  In our time there are many movements, even within the church, that seek to define identity based on race, on national origin, on gender, or on sexual orientation.  Such movements are the contemporary analogues of the ‘circumcision party’ within the early church, against which Paul so passionately fought.  Against all such determinations of identity, Paul reminds us that we are one with Christ through baptism.”            (Richard B. Hayes, professor of New Testament, Duke University Divinity School)

There are issues over which members of our congregation have had differing views in recent years, ranging from remodeling the chancel to equal marriage rights, from General Synod resolutions to endless televised sermon excerpts from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.  And every one of you is entitled to those opinions, whether or not I or the person sitting in front of you in the pews agrees with you.  And we will likely have differing views on those and other issues in the future.

We come here to this church because of our belief in Christ.  We are one in Christ through our baptism, no matter our political leanings, our sexual orientation, our ethnic racial backgrounds.  Like everyone else across the broad spread of our denomination throughout this country—once called an “exasperating, heady mix”—we are all part of the tapestry of the church, a part of the patchwork quilt, all claiming Jesus Christ as Savior.