Finding the Unity in Community
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Pastor Bob Henry
April 3, 2022
1 Corinthians 12:25-27 (New Revised Standard Version)
25 …that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. 26 If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.
27 Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.
Today, I am concluding our sermon series, “To Be Thriving and Progressive Quakers in 2022.” Just a reminder that next week, we will welcome author and pastor Phil Gulley to our pulpit and I will be filling the pulpit at Fairfield Friends.
To begin the final sermon of this series, I want to do a little review of where we have been over the last seven weeks.
· In my first sermon we looked at turning our focus off the future or the eternal and making a difference in creating a shift which I labeled “Moving from Heaven to Earth.”
· In the second sermon I looked at the need for us to embrace questioning, queries, and even our own doubts to help us grow spiritually and move forward.
· In the third sermon I encouraged us to look outside of ourselves and to help the poor and oppressed within and without our community while learning to be members one to another.
· In my four sermon I suggested instead of getting into trenches about our beliefs, maybe what we need right now is to be a people of faith who are willing to behave and act first out of God’s Love for the World.
· And last week, I encouraged us to take the three-fold approach to Compassion – to have the courage to see, to feel, and to act courageously by taking responsibility for those who suffer.
To conclude this series, I think there is one more aspect to being Thriving and Progressive Quakers in 2022 that I would like to emphasize and that has to do with, what I will call, finding the unity in community.
I enjoy reading the blog of Quaker Wendy Swallow of Reno Friends Meeting. She opened up one of her recent blog posts on “Seeking Unity” with this thought-provoking query. She said,
Unity, the idea that we should seek consensus in our collective decisions, is a central testimony…of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). In this fractious time, however, it often seems the goal of unity has been nearly forgotten. Everyone seems to have differing views and fears and concerns, many of them deeply held. The anxieties of our age have taken a toll on our ability to talk with each other. In such a climate, unity feels nearly impossible to achieve. If so, does unity still matter?
Does unity still matter? Now that is a query to ponder.
All we need do is turn on the news, go to a school board meeting, engage on social media, even sit in front of our T.V. and simply try and watch the Oscars, and unity will be questioned.
And clearly among Quakers unity has taken a hit as more Quaker Yearly Meetings have split or fractured over the last 20 years than at any time in Quaker history.
So, Wendy’s query is, I think, appropriate. Does unity still matter?
I have to agree with Wendy when she responds to her query, “Does unity matter?” with, “I believe it does; in fact, I would argue that unity could be the antidote to our societal divisions.”
If we are wanting to be thriving and progressive Quakers in 2022 and again make a difference in our world, then we are going to have to address what unity means and its function in our faith community.
Sadly, when I turned to our Western Yearly Meeting Faith and Practice and did a search for unity all that came up was a section titled “Lack of Unity” spelling out our early schisms in Quakerism. So, this morning I will turn to the Pacific Yearly Meeting’s Faith and Practice where they explain unity among Friends in this way:
“Friends believe that it is possible for the human spirit to be in direct communion with the Divine. Seeking God’s will together, we believe (the) way will open and unity will emerge. Working together to discern and serve God’s will both nourishes and benefits from unity. This unity grows from trust in one another and readiness to speak out, confident that together, Friends will find the truth.”
Our founder George Fox made a bold statement that we cannot take lightly in 2022. He said, “Let your lives speak.” And I think what he meant was what I have tried to explain in a couple of the sermons in this series about how our beliefs and convictions can only be communicated through our willingness to act.
Folks, it is what you and I do that matters, not what we say or profess.
If you take a look again at our Testimonies (or S.P.I.C.E.S.) – Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality, Stewardship – I think it is easy to see how our testimonies rest on the fundamental value that actions matter most.
To act simply, to act with peace, to act with integrity, to act within community, to act with equality, and to act in good stewardship to our neighbor and all of creation, is so critical to making a difference in our world.
Just like I said last week, it is easier to have the courage to see or the courage to feel, but it is harder having the courage to act upon what we see and feel. This is why Quaker unity is so important to helping support our action.
Just as the statement from Pacific Yearly Meeting read, “This unity grows from trust in one another and readiness to speak out, confident that together, Friends will find the truth.”
Whether it is during waiting worship in Meeting for Worship, or during unprogrammed silent worship, or even during a small group or book study seeking unity together through thoughtful listening and discerning of God’s will is paramount.
And this might come as a surprise – I believe seeking unity is most valuable when we disagree or have differing or even diverse perspectives. This is very different than many Christian and religious groups who simply want conformity or what I call “Cookie Cutter” followers.
Our differences are what give us strength and help us find new ways to act upon our testimonies and values.
Just think about it - If everyone did see, look, and act upon the same things and in the same ways – we would make very little impact on our world.
Quaker Os Cresson explained this in his Friends Journal article on Quaker Unity when he said,
“For Friends, unity is not usually unanimity, which is agreement without dissent. Unity is more often agreement that acknowledges dissent, staying together despite differences, and moving forward with guidance from our common values.”
Folks, unity can be a challenge, as Quakers can hold a plethora of different beliefs and differing ideas of how we should act. But since, we believe that each person has that of God within them and is on their own spiritual path, it is more important that we are seekers of the truth than that we all arrive at an agreed-upon destination of belief or action.
And this is where I cannot agree more with Cresson. He believes that this is what we as Quakers can offer the world in this time of disunity and tension. He says,
“The embrace of religious diversity in our midst can be our gift to the world…. Let us be patterns of living together and loving each other, differences, and all. Let us openly and joyfully celebrate our peculiar combination of Quaker diversity and Quaker unity.”
When you and I seek to listen and come together at First Friends with an open heart, truly honoring what others bring to the discussion, and respecting each other and acknowledging those who think or believe differently than we do, we are modeling for our neighbors, family, and friends a better way.
Unity then is not conformity which many Christians today seek. But instead we find unity emerging within community when we are open to and able to allow it to develop.
Or as Quaker Parker Palmer put it so well,
“Friends are most in the Spirit when they stand at the crossing point of the inward and outward life. And that is the intersection at which we find community. Community is a place where the connections felt in the heart make themselves known in bonds between people, and where tuggings and pullings of those bonds keep opening up our hearts.”
I don’t expect everyone to agree with me, actually I know there are some who disagree with this very sermon series, but my hope is that as members of this special community called “First Friends,” we will seek first to listen and come together with open hearts. That we will truly honor what our fellow friends, guests, and weighty Friends bring to the conversation.
To find unity within community means respecting one another as equal. If we model this in our daily lives, in our worship lives, in our families, in our work places, and in our schools, I have faith it will make a difference and begin to change the dialogue in these places.
This morning I want to close with a poem by Derrick Jones titled,
The Common Unity of Community
Alone we suffer
Together we can endure
Stronger when we are tethered
That I can ensure
Connected together like birds of a feather
We can weather the weather whether we face hell or heaven
We can resonate and instigate a state of inspiration
We can rest and equilibrate, share a respiration
Forming a superorganism, we transform
No longer lost in this chaotic storm
We take shelter in love, sharing security
Surging electricity sparked by common unity
Purging our anxiety, embark on a new odyssey
I’ll help you up and you’ll help me see
See how great this life can be
Now as we enter a time of waiting worship, I ask you to ponder the following queries:
· Does unity still matter to me?
· How might I build trust with my neighbors and fellow Friends that I disagree with?
· Where do I need to seek to listen better, have an open heart, and truly honor what others bring to the table?