December 19, 2007

• We're moving through the days leading up to Christmas,
  the season many Christians around the world know as Advent — the four
  weeks before Christmas when we prepare for the great feast day
  celebrating the Incarnation of the Lord Jesus. The day the Creator
  became a helpless newborn baby, for us.
  “But the baby in her womb
  He was the maker of the moon
  He was the Author of the faith
  That could make the mountains move.”  (from Andrew Peterson’s song, “Labor of Love.”)
  Some
  of us are moving together through the church services of the liturgical
  season of Advent. And, depending on what church we go to, some of us
  don't even know what Advent is.
  We worship differently. Even among
  Christians, we celebrate Christmas differently — or not at all —
  according to what kind of church we belong to, or to our family or
  national customs.
  Just here at the Daily Times, a variety of
  denominations are represented. One colleague told me of having lunch
  with about a dozen others from the office, and they went around the
  table giving their church affiliation. Every single one of them
  belonged to a different kind of church.
  It's the same in my own
  extended family. On my dad's mother's side, everybody was a Roman
  Catholic. My mother was a lifelong United Methodist, her family
  Methodists for 150 years or more. One of my first cousins on that side
  is a Presbyterian minister. Mama's little sister is an Independent
  Presbyterian, and her older sister was an Independent Methodist.
  My
  husband was raised in the Disciples of Christ. His daddy grew up in the
  Church of Christ, his mother in the Baptist Church, and his sister is a
  Catholic convert.
  One of my sons just joined the First Presbyterian
  Church here in Harrison. On his daddy's side of the family are
  Methodists, Church of Christ, Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Baptists.
  Among
  my circle of Christian friends are Methodists, Roman Catholics, many
  different flavors of Baptists, Episcopalians, Mennonites,
  Presbyterians, Assembly of God, Pentecostals, non-denominational
  Protestants and a member of the Church of God Seventh Day. And then
  there are those who tell me they don't believe in any type of organized
  religion, but consider themselves just Christians.
  You get the
  idea. According to figures from Gordon-Conwell Seminary in 2006, there
  are approximately 38,000 Christian denominations in the world today.
  While
  there is some degree of harmony between those of us who belong to
  different branches of Christianity, sadly, there is also much
  misunderstanding and conflict. It hurts my heart that among those of us
  who call ourselves by the Name of Jesus, there is so much division and
  misunderstanding and mistrust and rivalry and competition for members
  and money and influence. That there is so little unity.
  I'm just as
  guilty of it as anyone. I confess that I have to struggle sometimes to
  not have hard feelings against people who belong to churches who teach
  their members that we Roman Catholics aren't "real" Christians, or that
  we're all bound for Hell. I confess, there was a time in my own life,
  in my fervent 20s, when I didn't think my Catholic relatives were
  "saved," and tried to convert them to my own immature version of
  evangelical Protestantism.
  What I long for, and what I believe the
  God we worship longs for, is a spirit of love and fellowship and unity
  between Christians. If we believe what the Bible says, we're all
  brothers and sisters, because we share the same Father, because we
  share the Saviour.
  We might differ on doctrine. You might believe in
  immersion, while your neighbor's church sprinkles babies. One church
  teaches "No doctrine but Christ," while my own has volumes of complex
  doctrine that takes years and years of study to master. One church has
  communion four times a year, and believes that communion is just a
  symbolic re-enactment of the Last Supper. Mine offers Communion (or
  what we call the "Eucharist,") daily, for those who want to receive
  that gift, and teaches that the bread and wine are transformed into the
  actual living Body and Blood of Christ, offered as spiritual food for
  His people, to give us strength for our journey. (See John 10.)
  Some of our differences are minor. Some, like the Communion issue, are fundamental.
  But
  here's the point. If we call ourselves by His Name, if we have His Holy
  Spirit in our hearts, if Jesus is our Lord and our Saviour, then we
  truly are members of the same family. A fragmented, dysfunctional,
  quarreling family, true, but a family. And families love and support
  each other.
  I love a story I first read when I was teaching 11th
  grade American history years ago, from a sermon preached by one of the
  early American Protestant ministers during the Great Awakening. It goes
  something like this:
  A man died and went to the outskirts of Heaven,
  standing down the hill from the Pearly Gates. He hollered up to St.
  Peter, guarding the gates to Paradise, "Peter! Who's in there? Any
  Methodists inside those gates?"
  St. Peter’s answer came back, surprisingly, "No Methodists!"
  "Any Baptists?"
  "No Baptists?"
  "Any Catholics?"
  "No Catholics!"
  "Any Presbyterians?"
  "No Presbyterians!"
  "Well then, who IS in Heaven?"
  "Only sinners, saved by the Blood of the Lamb!"
  This
  Christmas, I challenge myself, and our readers, to pray for, and try to
  practice more unity within our Christian family as we turn our hearts
  and our minds toward Bethlehem, where Maker of the Moon was born to a
  virginal girl in a dirty, dark barn.
  "To an open house in the evening,
  Home shall men come,
  To an older place than Eden
  And a taller town than Rome.
  To the end of the way of the wandering star,
  To the things that cannot be and that are.
  To the place where God was homeless
  And all men are at home."
  (G. K. Chesterton, from "The House of Christmas")

  By Celia DeWoody
  Published Dec. 19. 2007
  Copyright Harrison Daily Times, Inc. 2007
  Harrison, Ark.

  
  

  
  (Drawing by my son Alex when he was in high school.)

  • 10:45 pm
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