Nine miles south of where you now sit, on the
northwest quadrant of Monument Circle at the heart of
the City of Indianapolis, there is a bronze plaque that
reads, “On this site stood The Second Presbyterian
Church, organized 1838, Henry Ward Beecher, first
pastor.” Now, if you didn’t know where it was or that it
was there at all, you are not likely to find that bronze
plaque. And yet, that plaque says something about
you, gathered here on the same street in the same city
nearly two centuries later. In 1840, when this fledging
congregation and its 27-year-old pastor moved into its
first building, our city of 2,700 residents was less than
two decades old. A work in progress. And since the
earliest days, you (we) have been part of that progress.
Second Presbyterian Church is, as it ever has been, a
church for the city of Indianapolis.
Fast forward. In 1988, under the leadership of another
of Second’s former pastors, Mayor Bill Hudnut, the
city of 750,000 residents adopted as its official slogan:
“Crossroads of America.” The phrase reflected high—
and to many, unrealistic—ambition. It referred not only
to the junction of four interstate highways, but also
to the growth and spirit of optimism that marked the
moment. A crossroads. A convening. A meeting place.
A hub of activity.
Or, a crossroads: the point at which a crucial decision,
with far-reaching consequences, must be made. The
tricky truth about that kind of crossroads is that we
recognize it only in retrospect. Looking back, we can
mark the impact—for good or ill—of a choice made at a
critical moment. But it is difficult to see it in real time.
When the Apostle Paul wrote letters to congregations
across the Greco-Roman world, he knew that the
Christian movement was at a kind of crossroads.
The course set by these early churches would indeed
have far-reaching consequences. Now, Paul could not
have imagined the scale, that we would be reading his
mail these millennia later, but he did grasp the weight of
the moment. His letters convey a deep sense of urgency
and importance. He writes to churches at crossroads
both geographic and spiritual.
I am convinced that we too stand at a crossroads. One
of the gifts of this congregation that drew me to you six
years ago is our role at the intersection of discipleship
and citizenship. A church for the city. The crossroads
of personal faith and public discourse. In our very first
conversation, another legendary Second Church pastor,
Bill Enright, told me that Second’s superpower is the
capacity to convene. A crossroads. In our time, this
capacity is both consequential and deeply challenging.
The choice we make now will reverberate into an
unknown future. We are a people at the crossroads.
And so, I suggest it is a good time to turn to Paul’s
letters. For four Sundays, we’re contemplating
correspondence conveyed to a congregation at a crucial
crossroads, and I suspect we’ll see ourselves reflected
in these ancient words.
So, off to Corinth we go. Not many years before writing
the words we just heard, Paul arrived in the city with a
message and a passion for sharing it. There, he preached
the gospel, baptized a few families (he doesn’t seem to
recall exactly how many families), launched a community
of Christ followers among urbane Gentiles. It was a sign
for Paul of the power and movement of God that these
former pagans heard and believed the gospel, that they
were transformed and then united into the one body of
Christ, people from diverse backgrounds and perspectives
joined by one common creed: Jesus Christ is Lord.
But then Paul went away, and Apollos, an eloquent
Alexandrian orator, was called to be pastor of First
Church Corinth. Paul had not been gone long when
he heard from his dear friend Chloe, a leader of
the Corinthian church. Her report was, for Paul,
devastating. The church, still not fully formed, had
fallen into fractured factions. Instead of gathering
for worship and meals as one community, affinity
groups had formed. The Corinthians had devolved
into personality-driven discipleship. I belong to Paul; I
belong to Peter; I belong to Apollos.
Paul, frustrated and anxious for the church’s future,
drafts a letter. He moves quickly past the customary
pleasantries, and in verse ten of chapter one, he gets
straight to the point. “I appeal to you. I implore you. I ask
of you. I command you. For the sake of Jesus Christ, be
in agreement.” Paul’s words are so crystal clear because
he knows that division in the community of faith directly
undermines our central mission. Whether the city is
Corinth or Indianapolis, we cannot be a church for the
city when we are against each other.
Paul urges the Corinthians to be united, but I want to
be clear. The unity Paul describes is not synonymous
with uniformity. From the outset, faithful Christian
communities have had no interest in drumming out
difference or insisting on lockstep like-mindedness.
And so, we decry the demonization of those deemed
“other” that disregards the divine image in all of us
and threatens the lives of neighbors. We celebrate
the beautiful breadth of the family of faith. In fact, we
aim to be the kind of place where people can argue
intensely about sports rivalries, political convictions,
even Biblical interpretation, and then enter this sacred
space and sit beside the very person with whom you
disagree and sing the hymns and pray the prayers and
pass the peace of Jesus Christ.
He is our peace. And our unity.
In the gospel of John, Jesus prays for his disciples.
He prays for protection. He prays for sanctification.
But above all, he prays for unity. Jesus prays that his
followers will be one, a prayer so central that he repeats
it four times in these few verses. That they may all
be one. You cannot read the prayer of Jesus and not
conclude that the unity of the church mattered to him.
I find it both instructive and challenging that Jesus did
not pray for us to be right, or happy, or prosperous, or
perfect. He prayed for unity.
Friends, we are most faithful and most fulfilled when
we are one. The church is not—must not be—a special
interest group, a political party, an exclusive club for
those who fit in or a weekly meeting of the likeminded.
Now, I don’t want to be naïve about this. At a crossroads
moment, it is hard work—hard work—to silence the siren
song of self-righteous superiority. It is tempting to join
the Corinthians. I belong to Christ. I belong to Christ,
but I’m not so sure about you. You see, the call to unity
demands humility.
One more thing. I read again this week about the
epidemic of loneliness that is so widespread among
us. Our carved-up tribalism inevitably exacerbates
this isolation. One statistic stood out: a Gallup survey
of weekly attendance at religious services. That
number—weekly attendance—fell to 21% of the U.S.
population last year. Richard Weissbourd, Director of
the Making Caring Common Project at Harvard, had
some interesting thoughts on the topic in March at the
Kennedy School of Government. Weissbourd said, “I’m
not suggesting that we should become more religious,
but I [do] want to suggest…that religious communities
are a place where adults engage kids, stand for moral
values, welcome big moral questions, [a place] where
there is a fusion of a moral life and a spiritual life…the
sense that you have obligations to your ancestors and
your descendants, where there is a structure for dealing
with grief and loss.” Later in the lecture, Weissbourd
continued, sounding a bit like a preacher, “I feel urgently
that we have to figure out how to reproduce those
aspects of religion in secular life.”
Well, with all due respect to the professor, I’d like
to suggest that there is something unique in the
formation of faith communities that will be difficult to
reproduce in secular life. We pursue the values and
virtues he celebrates not for their practicality but
because God created us for community. Our sense
that we have obligations to our ancestors and our
descendants, our insistence on engaging big moral
questions, come from our conviction that God calls us
to care for one another. And so, our unity is rooted in
something deeper than expedience.
Paul preached unity with roots beyond allegiance to
shared identity, partisan perspective, or human leader.
We belong to each other because we belong to God.
And so, perhaps the question is as simple as this: what
kind of community are we called to be? Which values
and convictions will guide us at this crossroads?
Of course, I acknowledge that the answers are
more complex than the questions. Our courage and
our commitment will be tested. In my experience,
staying together is more difficult than breaking apart.
Maintaining unity requires the hard work of compassion,
even love, for people whose positions disappoint,
sadden, even anger you. I think Jesus prayed so
fervently for the oneness of the church because he
knew how difficult it would be for us, how often we
succumb to forces of division.
But I ask you this. Has the strength of the Christian
witness, or the depth of your own faith, been increased
by movements that aim for perceived purity by exclusion
and subtraction? I for one am not moved by any
definition of community that excludes those unlike me.
More importantly, I do not believe the life of Jesus Christ
sanctions that model.
No, we are called to a unity born not of sameness but of
oneness. A community that values being together more
than being rigidly righteous. A crossroads. A meeting
place. A hub of activity. A crossroads. The point at which
a crucial decision must be made.
The city we serve needs our witness. The world is
watching. Jesus prayed that his followers would be one.
Our unity is the best proof that we got the point. Amen.