Uncommon Ground
October 20, 2024 - 1 Corinthians 12: 12-26
On Friday night there was a memorial service in this very space. The only members of this congregation present were Peg on the sound board and myself in the pulpit. But what happened here so epitomized our congregation at its best that I wanted to be sure to tell you about it.
Julia Caise attended Highland Avenue infrequently a significant number of years ago. Better known to several of you longer time members would have been her father, Dale Kleinschmidt, who was a local United Methodist pastor and had close ties to local Church of the Brethren colleagues due primarily to their closely shared theological and social justice stances. Julia lived very nearby our church building with her husband Ron and two daughters, Rachael and Alexis. With Dale’s encouragement she made a connection here that though it never grew broad or deep, she still remembered fondly years later when I met her at a Downtown Elgin market this summer.
We connected through mutual friends, and I recognized her name from our church records. She was delighted to know we now had a woman pastor and expressed appreciation for all this church still does in the community. She texted her daughter Rachael that night about meeting me. I had met Rachael weeks earlier. They shared a kind word about me. Rachael asked what church I was from again. And the last thing Julia ever texted Rachael before her unexpected death was “Church of the Brethren.” Rachael took this as a sign that her mom wanted her service here.
Maybe you’ve heard me attribute stories like this to what I call the “Elgin Magic,” the way the thickly woven network of relationships in this town sometimes makes this 115,000 person city feel more like a mythical Mayberry. And I do believe there is something special about this geographical location–this region that we’re in. There is midwestern magic to it–an ethos of connection that has a particular flavor. But it’s also something that can happen anywhere with anyone, if we remember and cultivate our connection to each other.
The scripture we read today speaks of this connection. “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.” The Apostle Paul seems to have had communities of Jesus followers in mind. He wanted to underline the connection church members have to each other, despite their differences. But my opinion is that the same ethos applies to how we treat all of our neighbors. We are all members of a certain kind of body – the body of a community, a city, a state, a nation, a world.
Julia and her husband Ron seem to have been pretty good at remembering that. At her memorial service, my friend, their former neighbor, recalled how the day they moved in next door to the Caises, Ron rushed out and started moving furniture into the newcomers’ house before even introducing himself. Others recalled how Julia brought people together with over 30 annual Halloween parties and countless other get-togethers and ongoing rituals for friends to make and maintain connections. Her oldest brother named Julia’s strong political opinions and then made a full-throated endorsement for her presidential candidate of choice – something I have never before seen at a funeral or memorial service. But later, other friends and relatives felt welcome to –in good humor– out themselves as being from the opposite political party from Julia and celebrated the way that though she tried hard to win them over to her point of view, she never cast them out either.
I could give you stories of how bigger players on the world stage were historically friends across differences – like the way Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia once cultivated a genuine friendship despite their consistently opposing viewpoints and decisions. But most of us don’t play on the world stage. And the truth is the relational skills employed by Supreme Court Justices are not so different from those employed by a local hairdresser and a carpenter in our own neighborhood. They can both learn how to be fully, genuinely, vulnerably themselves and still talk to someone who is not very much like them whatsoever with dignity and respect.
It’s a skill that Paul called Jesus followers to cultivate. He thought the Corinthians could do this, and I hope we can, too, though it seems all too uncommon these days. “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’, nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect;” writes Paul. He wasn’t talking about Democrats and Republicans. They didn’t exist yet. But he was talking about having respect for those of different skill sets, backgrounds, and economic resources. He was talking about respecting how our different perspectives can add to our shared understanding and how nobody is really better than anybody else.
We are all welcome at God’s table – all welcome in the body of Christ. This though, is how the table is set. Come as you are. But when you get to the table, the rule is respect each other. It’s great if you can find places where you agree with folks you don’t have much in common with – if you can find common ground and work together. But that’s not even what Paul is saying. No, Paul is talking about that uncommon ground, the place where we disagree but we don’t dehumanize each other. We actually do our best to protect each other and care for each other. We stand up for each other when someone tries to take away another’s rights and safety because we know what Paul says is right: “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.”
That’s what Jesus taught and if you ask me, it’s how the world works. Our well-being is wrapped up in each other’s, and we are all better off when we remember and practice that truth. The movement that is the Church of the Brethren started at the turn of the 18th century in Schwarzenau, Germany. The folks who started this strain of Christianity had lived through a thirty-year long war where Christians killed other Christians over differences in belief. They saw lives, property, and communities destroyed by valuing dogma over human lives and relationships. Those who first baptized each other in the Eder River read in the Bible a clear call to a different way of living, where folks were not told what to believe but rather learned to live in respectful relationship with each other.
We have the opportunity to carry on that heritage today. In this climate of polarization, loneliness, and isolation, we have the opportunity to bring people together instead of tear each other apart. We have the opportunity to protect instead of threatening each other. We have the opportunity to practice the kind of uncommon respect Paul called Jesus followers to in today’s scripture.
Friday night’s memorial service will stand out as unique in my memory probably for as long as I live not only because it included a political endorsement or because this sanctuary was packed to the gills by Julia’s family and friends but also because it ended with Abba’s famous song, Dancing Queen and an invitation to follow the family in dancing out the aisles just as Julia so often did with her daughters at home. And so many people did! This whole sanctuary was full of dancing, laughing, of still aching people. It was church as best I know it. It was a vision of what one of those gathered Friday called “the big party in the sky” that God is always throwing. It was a witness to the unbreakable love that knits us all together and continues even after death.
It’s not that I think dancing or even partying through life is necessary. It’s that I think we are called to value and celebrate these lives we have been given and in so doing, value and celebrate the lives of all those around us, too. No matter our point of view, this season and every season may we strive to find that uncommon ground of love, respect, and dignity for all.
May it be so. Amen.
