Saturday: Christians Are the Most United Body
WEEK 41
SATURDAY
CHRISTIANS ARE THE MOST UNITED BODY
Mark 9:38-41
We are looking at the possibility of mastering our differences in a higher unity around Christ. In him we are one. Anybody who belongs to Christ automatically belongs to everybody who belongs to Christ. It is inherent. We do not have to seek unity; we only have to express the unity we now have. Christians are the most united people on earth and the most divided—united in Christ and divided in the expression of Christ.
We are making progress in getting together. We have outgrown some manifestations of a few generations ago. In the mountains, a hymnbook was found in which was this hymn:
I’d rather be a Baptist and wear a smiling face
Than be a dirty Methodist and fall away from grace.
I’d rather be a Methodist and talk about free grace,
Than be a hard-shelled Calvinist and damn near half the race.
They set that to music and sang it!
In front of a church is a big billboard with this inscription on it: “This is the only church authorized by God to represent Jesus Christ in the world.” We laugh at these manifestations of impossible arrogance parading as the Christian faith. But the fact that we can and do laugh at them measures the distance we have come. There was a time when people took these arrogances seriously. Now they are an appendix on the body of Christ. Another sign on a church expresses where we are going: “Out of the world of many into the world of one.”
The following conversation gives the growing climate of our church life. A United Brethren member said smilingly to a group, “Well, hereafter in heaven we are all going to be United Brethren”; and a Quaker, or Friend, said quietly, “Well, if we are to be United Brethren hereafter, why not be Friends now?” We may not be members of the Society of Friends, but we can be friends now and are becoming more and more so. The Spirit of God is brooding over the chaos of our divisions and is bringing out of it a cosmos of a united church.
O Christ, your prayer that they may be one is being answered, and your Spirit is breaking down the things that divide us, for we are seeing the things that unite us. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I shall be a principle and a power for unity in every situation I am in today.