Small Start, Global Movement

Small Start, Global Movement

It was autumn of 1933 in a beautiful stone Presbyterian church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  The leaves were starting to turn to their vibrant reds, yellows, and oranges on the oaks, birches, and maples that surrounded the church.  But for the people of the Shadyside Presbyterian church, the changing leaves were probably one of the last things on their minds.  The world had been plunged into what historians would later call the Great Depression and by 1933, the world economy had completely bottomed out.  Banks were failing, people had lost or were losing all of their money, and there seemed to be little hope to be found anywhere.  Fears were rising once more as people closely watched Germany as Hitler and the Nazi party rose to power that January.  Fascism was the word on many lips and its threat was felt very strongly as countries like Italy and Germany began to gain more power and influence; the drums of war were beginning to beat once more, far off in the distance.  All in all, the mood at this church could probably have been entirely summed up in one word: anxiety.  People were afraid and worried - about the economy, about political movements, and especially about the future.

It’s sometime after the year 586, BC.  The poet sits, looking out over Jerusalem - he looks a bit like Jeremiah, but the resemblance may just be a coincidence.  He blinks tears from his eyes as he looks around at the destruction all around him; the broken walls, the splintered gates, the burned stench of a razed city - his home, a broken wreck.  He turns his eye to the shattered remains of the temple - Solomon’s crowning glory now in ruins.  The columns at the entryway toppled and stripped of all their ornamentation, the altars broken and destroyed, the smoky smell of incense and animal offerings now changed to the smell of carnage, war, and murder.  The holy of holies where only the high priest could tread now thrown open and violated.  Not a holy object or decoration is left after the Babylonians came and plundered it all away.  King Hezekiah is gone, blinded and led away to captivity with most of the rest of the people of Jerusalem.  And all that are left in the city is this small handful, this remnant of people left behind to tend the land while the rest of their people are led into exile, spread across the world like fall leaves in a hard wind.  The mood in Jerusalem is one of despair, of anguish, of fear and of loss - in the aftermath of the city’s destruction, the Israelites had to have feared for their future.  How would they survive as a people?  All the major families of the city had been taken captive, the city was destroyed, the streets filled with dead, dying, and wounded people from the siege, and even those who weren’t wounded were slowly dying from starvation in a city that now had no resources whatsoever.  Their entire world had fallen down around them.  God felt distant, if not absent entirely from the picture.  The outlook was bleak.

And so the poet, having no other language with which to express himself, puts his anguish into verse in a Lamentation that has survived into our scriptures today.  He pours his heart out onto the scroll in a series of five different poems, collectively known as the Lamentations.  He speaks into the situation at hand, expresses his innermost grief and suffering, and somewhere along the line, he finds hope: even in the midst of death and destruction, this poet still remembers the promises of God: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

So great is that faithfulness of God, so powerful is the Bible’s message of hope even in the midst of despair that it inspired Dr. Hugh Thompson Kerr and the leaders of the Shadyside Presbyterian church, even in the middle of the Great Depression, to do something different in the worship service that Sunday.  In a response of faith and assurance, these leaders established a World Communion Sunday, a day where the Shadyside church proclaimed that God is bigger than state or nation, that God is more powerful than any economic structure or political party, that God is God of both past, present, and future.  They decided that even in a society marked by uncertainty, fear, and sadness, the church could be a visible, real demonstration of the poet’s assertion that “The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him.”

What’s perhaps most interesting about this event in recent church history is that it   didn’t immediately become the worldwide celebration that we recognize it as today - the National Council of Churches didn’t even recognize or endorse it until 1940.  As Dr. Kerr’s son, Dr. Donald Craig Kerr, shared in an interview for the Presbyterian Outlook magazine, “The concept spread very slowly at the start.  People did not give it a whole lot of thought.  It was during the Second World War that the spirit caught hold, because we were trying to hold the world together.  World Wide Communion symbolized the effort to hold things together, in a spiritual sense.”

It wasn’t a major ecumenical conference; it didn’t start as a joint declaration from the major heads of the church; it started as a service of unity to bring different churches together, to point to the importance of the church of Jesus Christ, and to emphasize the connections that each congregation has with the other as members of Christ’s body.  In other words, it was the church doing what it is supposed to do, especially as we gather together to celebrate the sacrament of Communion.  It was the church acting in humility, as slaves to Christ together.  

And out of that tiny mustard seed of simple, humble faith, we now come together on the 80th celebration of this World Communion Sunday, remembering that we are One body, One faith, and One in the Spirit of Christ.  We come together, in the midst of a world that doesn’t seem to have changed all that much from the world of 1933; our government is deadlocked in argument to the point of shutdown, our economy uncertain, and we fight one war while we consider the thought of another.  We come together amidst fear, anxiety, mistrust, and pessimism.  We come together on this Sunday as a church affected by the same disease, split in hairline divisions over wordings and rulings, practices and polities, split even over the way we celebrate Communion or Baptism - a church that struggles with the very notion of unity... yet we come together on this day to remember that unity we have in Christ - the only unity that matters.  Because in the midst of all this brokenness, our confession still remains: Christ is still on His throne.  Christ is still bigger - bigger than state, bigger than nation, bigger than government.  Christ is bigger than any of our arguments or differences, bigger than any disease, famine, or drought - bigger than the destruction of war, bigger than death itself.  And it is at Christ’s table that we come together to partake of this holy meal, brothers and sisters all, one bread, one body, one Lord of all, sharing in one cup of blessing together, remembering that in Christ we are one holy, universal Church held together by his body and blood, shed for us.  Now to the One who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or imagine, to God be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.  Amen.