The United Church of Canada was officially 100 years old on June 10th. A newbie, for sure, when it comes to faith communities, but still, these days, it’s pretty significant. Especially for a denomination of the church that’s only in Canada. The United Church partners with other churches around the world on mission and service work, and has a particularly close relationship with the United Church of Christ in the US and the Anglican Church of Canada, but it’s not part of a world-wide denomination.
I mean, other than how we’re all one, right?
Yes, we are. No matter how many traditions, institutions, religions or no religions at all, I still believe that we are all connected. And not just to each other as human beings, but with all living things in creation. Yes, I know that’s big. Too big, perhaps, to comprehend completely. That’s why we create structures to understand it better. I’m going to call that religion, church, God and Jesus and the Spirit, and use language that suits that because that’s my way to better understanding. That’s my way to God. It may or may not be yours.
Others may use different language, traditions, structures, they may call it something other than God, maybe even say there is no God, but I believe there’s still something that connects us and that power is spirit, it’s love, it’s God. This is my way to try and understand how we can all be so different, creation can be so diverse, and yet there is “life.” Each of us is trying to find our way to understanding that, I think, and we each travel our own way. But we come to the same God, however you know God. That’s how we are one. Unique and individual as we are, but we are connected by this spirit of life.
But acknowledging that connection isn’t enough. I’ve often said that, for me, the main point of Jesus is that he shows us how the divine spirit that is in him is in all of us, in all living things. It always has been. But we’ve become disconnected from it. We are all created both of spirit and the earth. Jesus, like figures in other traditions and other religions, shows us that connection is there and how we can reconnect with it.
But the thing is, acknowledging that we are connected, that there is a sense of “we are one,” as the gospel of John quotes Jesus saying repeatedly, and living that out are two different things. “That all may be one” is on the crest of the United Church of Canada and has been part of the church’s ethos from the beginning, but it has to mean more than we are connected, it has to mean that we live it.
The crest got an update in 2012 when the colours of the indigenous medicine wheel and the phrase “all my relations” in Mohawk were added. I find that phrase to be a great reminder that we are not just related, but in relationship. That’s what Jesus - and others in other traditions - shows us: a life lived in relationship with God, alive in all things by the Spirit. To live well is to know that connectedness, to embrace it, engage it and live into it. That requires we open our hearts to others, be vulnerable, find empathy, be curious and compassionate. Those aren’t weaknesses. They’re the power in relationships that are, themselves, life-giving.
