8 December 2004

Some more pickings from "A Passion for the Possible" by William Sloan Coffin.



I believe the religious community has the saving vision. It is the ancient prophetic vision of human unity, now become an urgent, pragmatic necessity. According to this vision, we all belong one to another, every one of us five and a half billion people on this planet. That's the way God made us; from a Christian point of view, Christ died to keep us that way, which means that our sin is only and always that we put asunder what God has joined together. Human unity is not something we are called on to create, only to recognize and make manifest. Territorial discrimination has always been as evil as racial, as Pablo Casals recognized he asked: "To love one's country is a splendid thing, but why should love stop at the border?"



In these comments I was first caught off guard by Coffin's use of the phrase "put asunder what God has joined together." It sounds so much like what is often used in the rite of marriage. But here, it has to do with how we "put asunder" the realm of relationships we are given as human beings. God joins together human beings...even across borders, seas, great masses of land and issues of the day. And yet, we seem to find ways to divide and try to conquer. In the name of country and in the name of religion and in the name of economic or social preferences, we disassemble the wonderful gift of God's creation in which we are called into relationships that are meant to bring us together not tear us apart. In a time when fear continues to press all the right buttons that enables us to stay at war and create new ways to fight between us, we are still being called to be a people that live contrary to the prevailing winds of division in the name of self-preservation. What would happen if we would pursue the things that seek to preserve the well being of all people? I know, you may say I'm a dreamer.



Connection: When tempted to "put asunder" the relationships into which God continually calls us, we would do well to give a trusted friend a call to talk us back into relationships where love and unity prevail.



Healer of every ill and broken life, how often we turn from the way of love that seeks to reunite us and how often your Holy Spirit continues to call us back home to grow into our relationships with others and to nurture uniting relationships in others. Thanks be to God. Amen.