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An Irenic Spirit
By Riviera UCC | April 26, 2009
An Irenic Spirit
a sermon based on John 17:18-23
given at Palm Bay, FL April 26, 2009
by Rev. Scott Elliott
In seminary all of us UCCers had to take a course called “Polity” where we learned details about the United Church of Christ’s structure, history, formation and governance.
Most of us put off polity until the last year, and by the time we took it we had graduation and internships and job interviews and other classes on our minds. So I was actually pleasantly surprised at how interesting polity turned out to be.
Amongst the projects we did in Polity were a couple of papers on topics the professor assigned to us. She made the assignments very scientifically by carefully placing the topic in a hat and having us pull them out one at a time.
One of the topics I drew was to explain how something called an “irenic spirit” played a role in our denomination, the United Church of Christ.
I had never heard of an irenic spirit before the assignment and I assume no one else had either. So on the day I was to make an oral presentation of the paper I brought a huge glass bottle filled with a light brown liquid and placed in on the table. The bottle had a label with huge letters that read “Irenic Spirits” and XXX to suggest it was a moonshine, and then some nonsense about being made on a still of one the seminary’s presidents. I explained to the class that I found the bottle as I researched in the archives, and I read the label to the class and then gave the paper.
I share this with you, so you know that you are not the only church body that has had to put up with my, um, sense of humor.
I also mention it because on this final sermon relating to the capital campaign, I want to distill something. Now don’t get excited it’s not moonshine (the bottle I brought to class only had iced tea in it). I am not a moonshiner, I want to distill how an irenic spirit has influenced the United Church of Christ and how an irenic spirit plays a very big part in this church and our visions for the future.
You have probably figured out by now that an irenic spirit has nothing whatsoever to do with alcohol.
And you are right (I was just trying to wake up the class). The word “irenic” means: “tending to promote peace or reconciliation: peaceful or conciliatory” (Random). An irenic spirit, then, has to do with the character and tendency to promote peace and reconciliation.
In 1957 the United Church of Christ was formed by the union of the Congregational, Christian, Reformed and Evangelical denominations. Prior to this formation each of these denominations on their own had long had characteristics and tendencies of promoting peace and reconciliation in their respective histories, a characteristic and tendency which continues to this day.
The Congregational denomination, which this church started out in a hundred-and-twenty years ago, traces its roots to the Pilgrims of Plymouth and the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay who very early on made peace and reconciled with one another to form a united church and colony in Massachusetts.
Our founders sought to “knit together” a peaceful community where “the welfare of individual and society [were to] be vitally linked” (Johnson, 7).
Cotton Mather, a minister in early colonial Massachusetts, preached “unity in diversity” a form of irenic spirit that caught on in an even more expansive form in the centuries to follow.
In the mid-1800s a theologian named Horace Bushnell influenced Congregationalism to include liberal notions of unification through a unity of spirit and broad views of faith. This encouragement of diversity became a unifying principle that served to reconcile divergent views and maintain peace which developed into a polity of commitment to diversity as a means of discovering religious truth. (Sound like Riviera today?)
In 1865 the Burial Hill Declaration embodied this irenic spirit declaring the church was “ bound to keep ‘the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace’” (Ibid., 14).
This spirit carried over into twentieth century with more and more acceptance of diversity.
The 1934 Council for Social Action led to an agreement to “to work toward ‘a warless, just and brotherly world” (Ibid.) and eventually the Congregationalists joined with the Christian church and later the Evangelical and Reformed traditions to form the UCC through this irenic spirit.
It wasn’t just Congregationalists. An irenic spirit flowed in the early Christian denomination as well; even before coming together as a denomination they trace their origins to a peaceful unification of pioneer splinter groups from the Methodist, Baptists and Presbyterians, breakaway groups that kept close connections and on an off made efforts to unite from 1819 until the early 1920s. Their common glue before uniting “was love of freedom, passion and unity” (Johnson, 32).
It was their enthusiasm for Christian unity – an irenic spirit– that caused them to hold together a commonality and eventually unite as one in 1922 as the Christian Church, a body which accepted all followers of Christ regardless of race, background or intellectual belief (sound like Riviera UCC today?). It was a natural fit for them to join as one with the Congregationalists and then into the United Church of Christ.
The Reformed denomination has its roots in the Heidelberg Catechism whose genius has been said to “lay in [its] irenic spirit . . .”which cultivated love beyond the disputes of the churches (Gunnemann,126).
Beginning in the 1720s The Reformed tradition was infused with an irenic spirit urging a quest for unity and peace in America among German churches. Lutheran and Reformed churches throughout the 1800s tended to share church space in “union churches” (Maxfield, 185). (Sound like Riviera UCC today?)
In 1933 the Reformed church united with the Germanic rooted Evangelical church in an irenic spirit and zeal for cooperative Christianity, and eventually, of course, united with the Congregational and Christian traditions in the UCC.
The Evangelical church was also not only rooted in Germany but the irenic spirit and piety stemming from the Heidelberg Catechism. Indeed the Evangelical Church was born out of Frederick Wilhelm’s 1820 union of the Lutheran and Reformed churches in Prussia.
A flavor of this sense of peace and unity appears in the Evangelical Eden Theological Seminary’s motto where I went to seminary. The motto is “In essentials unity, in non-essentials freedom, in all things charity”(Gunnemann, 25).
The idea of bringing peace and unity into the world can also be seen in the Evangelical tradition of living out a life immersed in the world and ministries like its Deaconess Hospitals. Again the desire for unity led to the union in 1934 with the Reformed church.
As you can hear the idea of Christians being a part of one church, one peaceful unity of humankind is deeply embedded in the history of the four traditions of the U.C.C., and this plays out in 1957 with the formation of our denomination, the United Church of Christ.
In 1942 as the they were working toward unity the magazine Christian Century noted how heartening it was that the Congregational Christian Church and Evangelical and Reformed Church had “a taste of union and want more” (Heritage, 541). And when the four traditions came together in 1957 they made sure to include “United” in the new name: the United Church of Christ.
The irenic spirit of unification and peace did more than influence the naming of the denomination, that spirit lives on today in much of what the United Church of Christ stands for.
The UCC logo is up on the screen is a symbol that reflects this irenic spirit. “The symbol of the United Church of Christ comprises a crown, cross and orb enclosed within a double oval bearing the name of the denomination and the prayer of Jesus, “That they may all be one” (John 17:21). (quote is from UCC.org)
(Just so you know, since we have the symbol up there. The cross in the oval is “based on an ancient Christian symbol called the “Cross of Victory” or the “Cross Triumphant.” The crown symbolizes the sovereignty of Christ. The cross recalls the suffering of Christ . . . for the salvation of humanity. The orb, divided into three parts, reminds us of Jesus’ command to be his “witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8; quote is form UCC.org.). )
And as the UCC website notes “The verse from Scripture [on the logo] reflects our historic commitment to the restoration of unity among the separated churches of Jesus Christ.”
Hear how that is an irenic spirit?
Examples of the continuing irenic spirit in our denomination include a commitment to developing peace and justice churches, a broad notion of ecumenism, and a drive to unite others in ecumenical conversations, covenants and journeys. This spirit can especially be seen UCC’s continuing conversations with other denominations to “forge ‘new relationships in all things . . .” (Heritage, 549).
Our history is, then, steeped in irenic spirit. I felt it is right that the last sermon relating to a capital campaign called Reflections and Visions ought to include a nod to this irenic spirit.
Last week we reflected on what our church has done and is doing and how we have reflected the image of God by being the hands and feet of love and compassion in our community; how thinking openly, believing passionately and serving boldly is what we do because it is what Jesus did and calls us too.
That was the reflections, so what are the visions? Certainly “Thinking openly, believing passionately and serving boldly” is our vision statement, but it in turn leads us right back to a vision of a future filled with an irenic spirit. Not unlike our denomination’s traditions going back to the 1620s.
Irenic, remember, means: tending to promote peace and reconciliation: it means peaceful and conciliatory. And we envision acting with an irenic spirit for another 120 years. By that, I mean the character we aim for is the same as God’s a tendency to promote peace or reconciliation. We are trying to do that now and will be trying to do that tomorrow. Bringing God’s reign to earth now, even if just in our corner of the world is where we bring it in.
For example we are offering education programs, tending to those in need and trying to better ourselves and being mindful and worshipful and thankful to God. We are even trying to bring more of an interfaith character to these hallowed grounds.
We share church with two other communities, a synagogue and a church, and we are seriously looking into turning our campus into a place where we can share open space and the woods, together in ecumenical community; not even necessarily as the same religion, but still united as one people under one God by whatever name we call God. It’s a beautiful thing that we are even looking into this – and looking into this with gusto, with an irenic spirit.
God has given us so much, it is right that we want to use it for God’s good to share it with other peoples of God to bring others together as one.
If you think about it, God has given us an abundant overflowing universe.
Everything we are and have and will become are gifts from God. As humans for sure, but also as church. Land, building, chairs, decorations, hymns, music, worship leaders, friends, members, neighbors, visitors, everything in this space and around this place are gifts, they are a part of God’s living presence and power amongst us.
I mention all of this because our capital campaign has been in great part about being aware of the overflowing abundance God showers on us.
We have so much to be grateful for at Riviera UCC. God’s love fills this place. A part of God’s spirit that fills us includes this irenic spirit I have been talking about, it calls us to push for peace and unity – and we do that here. We answer that call.
God has given us so much, not only a good bit of land and a fine building but a people full God’s grace and love.
As stewards of God’s church we are caretakers of all the bounty God provides.
Giving to the capital campaign is a part of all of this. We give because God gives.
We give because what God gives is so great.
But we also give to provide the means for God’s work to be done in the world.
Somehow the more we give increases not only what comes out of the church to others, but also what we get out of the church.
Our vision for the future is to continue to be Christ’s presence in the world.
Among the things our vision offers is a continuation of the irenic spirit, that age old tendency of UCC churches –and Christ– to promote peace and reconciliation.
We have been in the past, are now, and hope to continue to be, a church that aims to be peaceful– one that helps bring about Jesus’ prayer in our reading (and on the UCC logo) “that they may all be one.”
In short, we envision acting with an irenic spirit for another 120 years.
Can I get an AMEN?
SOURCES CONSULTED:
-Gunnemann, Louis, The Shaping of the United Church of Christ, Cleveland: United Church Press (1999).
-Noll, Mark, The Old Religion in a New World, Grand Rapids: William Eerdmans Publishing Company (2002).
-Maxfield, Charles, A Pilgrim People, Ithaca: Maxfield Books (2005).
- Laaser, Robert, Our Beloved Eden, St Louis: Eden Seminary (1993).
-Zuck, Lowell, A History of the Evangelical and Reformed Church, New York: Pilgrim Press (1990).
-The Living Theological Heritage of the UCC, Vol VII, Cleveland: United Church Press (1995).
-Random House Unabridged Dictionary (2nd Edition), New York: Random House (2001)(“irenic”).
-Theology and Identity, ed.s Daniel Johnson & Charles Hambrick-Stowe, Cleveland: United Church Press (1990).
-The Trinity Covenant RCUS web site at http://trinityrcus.com.
- United Church of Christ Capital Campaign Manual
COPYRIGHT Scott Elliott © 2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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