Devotion - Monday, October 30

At yesterday's Reformation Brunch, I was asked the question which I am always delighted to answer.  

"When do you think the Church will be united?"

The person asking the question had heard a story on NPR about the Reformation, a story which correctly noted that the issues which concerned the Church (and the Reformers) in 1517 where no longer issues.  "How do we become one Church?"

We are one Church.  

There may be differing styles of worship and there may be various re-orderings of the talking points, but every time we come to the altar and receive the one bread and one body Christ is doing what we sometimes seem incapable of doing.  Christ is uniting us.  

As is often the case, the decades old series of appointed lessons aligned with yesterday's question and my response.  This morning I was directed to I Corinthians 10:14-11:1.  Paul writes: "Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body."

The Reformation was not a revolt.  It was not a revolution.  It was a Reformation.  The Spirit blew among us and called us to reform, and the urging of the Spirit moved us into action.  But the Spirit of God is never a dividing spirit.  In that same section of I Corinthians, Paul repeats and axiom - "'All things are lawful,' but not all things are helpful."  We are to seek reform, but always and only with a heart which seeds to "build up" the sister/brother and the one communion which we share.