Diversity in unity: We are one body

I have just come from a stirring ecumenical service at Westminster Presbyteryian Church in the heart of Minneapolis. It was a service that not only celebrated our diversity as believers and human beings, but reminded us that even with our diversity we live in the unity of the community of God.

We were first welcomed by former Vice President Walter Mondale, a Westminster member. We heard music sung in Spanish, Korean and African. We heard various parts of worship led by ministers from a wide variety of denominations and nationalities, black and white, Protestant and Catholic, Pakistani and Iraqi, Rwandan and Korean.

The Rev. Peg Chamberlin, a minister in the Moravian Church, executive director of the Minnesota Council of Churches and the current president of the National Council of Churches, focused on this message of unity in diversity during her sermon. She reminded us that, as Ephesians says, "There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all."



She told, what for me was, a telling story about a gathering she had been invited to that was exploring the possibilities of life on Mars. Most of the participants were scientists, but they kept referring to the "ecumenical" nature of life, that without diversity there is no life.

Stop and think about that for a moment. How deep and wide the diversity of life that makes up our own bodies. How deep and wide the diversity of life that makes up and makes this planet. We are all part of it, individuals yes, but called to live in community as one.

She of course touched on the social, political and theological perspectives that often divided us. And then noted this commentary by Mark Twain, who once remarked that some of us have enough faith to hate, and some of us enough faith to love.

We are one body, one community. One baptism, one faith, one Lord.

That is an important reminder to all of us who are commissioners to this General Assembly, who are about to come together today in plenary to begin to decide issues great and small facing our denomination, that no matter our age, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual identity or theological perspective, we are one body.

That is an important reminder to all of us as we live our daily lives, that no matter what each of us thinks and believes as individuals, we are blood members of the same family, the human family, God's community on this Earth.