Reflection on the World Council of Churches 2022 Theme - written by Cheryl Brumbaugh-Cayford
Scripture: John 4:1-15
Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, “Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John” (although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized), he left Judea and started back to Galilee. But he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
Children’s time: Loving our differences
Today we’re going to talk about loving our differences. I’ve got a couple of questions for us to think about.
First, who here has sisters or brothers or step sisters or step brothers or cousins or other people in your family that you like to hang out with? Or who here has friends that you like to spend time with?
Second, are those people all the same as each other and are they the same as you?
So what are the differences that you like about them?
Here’s my own answer to that question: my brother Steve likes to do long distance bicycling and has done long distance walking trips. I don’t do long distance bicycling, and my longest walks are maybe just a couple of miles at most. But I love seeing my brother’s photos and videos of his long-distance bicycle and walking trips – they make me feel like I’m going along with him to all sorts of interesting places, and when I look at the photos and videos he sends from those trips, I feel like I’m also walking along or biking along through those beautiful landscapes. My brother Steve is really different from me in many ways, but I really appreciate how his differences can make my life better and more interesting.
So here’s a challenge for us this week: think about one person you like, who is different from you in some way, whose differences make your own life better and more interesting. And whenever you think of that person this week, say a “thank you” prayer to God for them. Please pray with me: Dear God, thank you for how all these different people are all your children. Thank you for each person. Amen.
Sermon/meditation:
“Christ’s love moves the world to reconciliation and unity.” That was the theme of the 11th Assembly of the World Council of Churches, WCC for short, held in the city of Karlsruhe, Germany, on Aug. 31 to Sept. 8. I attended as part of the Church of the Brethren delegation, in the role of observer and reporter.
The World Council of Churches holds an assembly every 8 or so years. At this assembly, there were close to 4,000 people in attendance, including delegations from the 352 member communions, plus a wide variety of observers and guests, and local hosts, and young adult “stewards” or volunteers who served as assistants, among others. This assembly is thought to have been the most diverse Christian gathering ever held.
There were critical conversations held, and crucial work done during the business sessions. I’d highlight as most crucial the statement on climate change, called “Living Planet: Seeking a Just and Sustainable Global Community,” which calls for the churches worldwide to take immediate action on the climate. This statement and the other public statements that were adopted are published on the World Council of Churches website, please do search them out.
Among the important conversations were discussions of inequities facing several groups of people in the churches and in society, and the need to include them in leadership. The groups receiving focused attention were indigenous people, people with disabilities, and youth and young adults. There also was concern for a new and just relationship between women and men. Pre-assembly meetings were held on each of these concerns.
Amid the crucial conversations and critical work, what really grabbed and held my attention was the diversity of this gathering. I experienced the assembly as a uniquely diverse, egalitarian, and respectful event, more welcoming of and celebrative of human differences and variety than I’ve experienced anywhere else.
The leadership was remarkable in this regard. The moderator, Agnes Abuom from Kenya in East Africa, set the tone of gentleness and affirmation and welcome for each person. Witnessing her in leadership, seated at the head table, I was surprised by my own visceral reaction of delight. In reality, when do we ever see an African woman at top levels of leadership in our world? It was an incredibly moving experience for me. There she was, flanked by a white American woman bishop and male leaders from Christian Orthodox bodies serving as her vice moderators - a remarkable statement of radical welcome in and of itself.
The assembly progressed through some eight days of morning and evening prayer services, plenary sessions, business sessions, workshops, Bible studies, small group meetings of various churches including the Historic Peace Churches – which I sat in on, plus meals eaten together onsite, and weekend excursions to see the work of the churches of the area. Through those eight days, the meaning of two of the words in the theme statement – “reconciliation” and “unity” - were enlarged and expanded for me. Reconciliation and unity became both more complex and more relatable, less cut and dried, less certain, and more to be desired.
In the Church of the Brethren I fear that, too often, reconciliation is thought of as a process in which people arrive at some kind of working relationship despite their differences. And unity is assumed to be a state in which different groups become the same.
As the assembly progressed, it became clear that I needed to be open to new definitions of these words. Reconciliation may be more real as it welcomes differences and divisions and disagreements. I saw people’s differences being respected and valued and called forward in discussions. The whole point of what was called “ecumenical conversation” was to speak with others who worship and follow Christ differently, in order to gain more understanding and respect for those differences.
That’s what I saw moderator Agnes Abuom doing from the head table – not always perfectly, of course, because she did make some mistakes – but with real intention and grace. As people came to the microphones to speak during the business sessions, which included extremely difficult and contentious topics, like the situation in Israel and Palestine, she spoke affirmingly and respectfully even to those who were antagonistic or angry.
The WCC uses a consensus model of decisionmaking, in which delegates hold up orange cards to show warmth toward, or agreement with a statement or proposal, or blue cards to show coolness or disagreement. The moderator repeatedly and actively called those who held up blue cards to come to the microphone to speak, or as she put it, to “make an intervention.” Even as the wording of statements was worked over by the delegate body, it was clear that the leadership would take into account both the things that made it into those statements and the disagreements as guidance for moving forward. The decisions taken during that week and a half were in a way signposts and indicators, and not ends in themselves. It was said several times that without different points of view, and even disagreement, good decisions cannot be made.
One of the most impressive instances of work at reconciliation was the inclusion of a delegation from the Russian Orthodox Church – which is a longterm member communion of the WCC – and a delegation from the churches in the Ukraine including the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – which is now applying for membership. At the meetings of the peace churches, people wondered if there were behind-the-scenes conversations going on between the Russian and the Ukrainian delegations. I found out from a WCC staff member that yes, those conversations were going on away from the public eye. The assembly was an opportunity for Russians and Ukrainians to speak together out of sight of their respective governments and politicians. I don’t think we’ll ever know more about those conversations. But here are the simple successes: the Russian Orthodox Church actually sent a delegation; that delegation was not thrown out of the assembly – which some people had been calling for; a Ukrainian delegation also attended; Ukrainian church leaders were given opportunities to speak and tell their stories. These are successes. Can we call it reconciliation? Probably not...but that’s a question worth thinking about: how far down the path toward the goal is considered reconciliation, do we have to arrive at the conclusion? Or is it a pilgrimage, which is one of the favorite words at the WCC these days. If we participate side by side in the body of Christ, each received with respect, each expressing and living out differences.
In our usual understanding of how things work, reconciliation moves toward unity. But what does unity mean, if reconciliation requires respect for and the expression of difference? Does unity subsume our differences? Or do our differences continue to be part of who we are when unity is attained in the body of Christ?
One of the Bible stories used in the assembly prayer services was the story that Chris read for us this morning, the story of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well. I began to wonder if my understanding of that story has been too simplistic. I’d always thought that it was a choice Jesus made - because of God’s love for all people – to stop in Samaria on his way through, and there happening to meet the woman at the well. But what if it wasn’t a choice but a necessity? In order to fulfill Jesus’ role as reconciler between God and humanity, was seeking out differences required? Did Jesus have to hang out with people whose differences made his own life better and more interesting? Because that’s what reconciliation means?
The Archbishop of Canterbury was one of the world leaders at the assembly. In his remarks to the last plenary, he noted that this is a time of unparalleled world crisis, with climate change as the top threat among many, including renewed threat of nuclear war, the migrant crisis, and more. Great dangers face us, he said, but “we find in this time of crisis the grace of God and the grace of each other.... We are to be a people of harmony across the differences.” He added two layers to what ecumenism means, ecumenism being the word for Christians relating across their divisions: “We live amidst the ecumenism of suffering,” and “God has brought us together in the ecumenism of service.... The luxurious expense of well-practiced Christian division is no longer affordable.”
Perhaps, in the end, Christian unity is simply the harmony of serving God together across our differences, sharing in suffering as we recognize our differences, and, I would add, joyfully celebrating our differences.
The joyful spirit of the WCC Assembly is what I’d like to leave you with this morning – as Josh plays the video of the closing song allow yourself to feel the joy! The song is by an Argentinian composer, written on the theme of the assembly, “Christ’s love moves the world to reconciliation and unity.”
