Words of encouragement and support for those ministering "in the fields."

Celebration. The definitions of the word bob and weave and dive and soar. Celebration can be euphoria, or commemoration. Revelry, praising God, jubilation. All of the above.

There is, in almost all of this celebration stuff, more than just a whiff of disruption. Of creative chaos, as we give thanks for the saints that formed us, the demons that stalked us, the identity and promise that ferment and foment and slap up against us, powerful and perilous as the salty tide of new life.

We celebrate our denomination. The word itself, “denomination,” comes from the Latin “denominare”—“to name.” “Denomination” is related to “denominator,” in the non-mathematical sense of “a shared characteristic.”

As a denomination the United Church of Christ has been marked by certain shared characteristics, foremost among which are a seeking, questing, Biblically-based, soaring-into-unexplored-mysteries kind of faith, and that commitment to radical inclusivity. We really are convinced of the truth recorded in Genesis that all people are created in the image and likeness of God and that somehow our calling is to live into that Spirit-infused reality. That there is yet more light to break forth from God’s holy word. That God is still speaking.

How do we celebrate all that?

First, we may well need to go out of our minds. More accurately, that means to get out of our hobbling denigrating mind sets about the UCC, identifying the mine fields, the explosive devices that are planted in our own UCC minds, that wound and damage us whenever they are tripped. There’s that rather pallid joke: “You know what UCC stands for, don’t you? Unitarians Considering Christ.” Or maybe you’ve heard someone comment brightly, “I’m going to quote from the Bible—am I allowed to do that in the UCC?” Becoming more and more obstreperous as I age, whenever someone says something like that in my presence I engagingly ask, “Do you really believe that?” or “Is that true about you?” or “Do you think that’s true about everyone but you in the UCC?” or some combination thereof. I never have to fake my exasperation, or my genuine interest in the response.

Besides going out of our minds, we may need to go out over our heads. Way out there, and plunge into incarnation, with the vision and commitment, as expressed in the Preamble to the UCC Constitution, “in each generation to make this faith its own in reality of worship, in honesty of thought and expression, and in purity of heart before God.”

In 1998, the Community UCC of Oakland [now Faith Healing Prayer Deliverance Center UCC] dedicated its new building—a converted service station. Artists, architects, engineers, contractors, and laborers had donated their talents, dispelled the smell of used motor oil and created a holy space. You notice many things when you come into this church, but the first to whap you in the face is the mural all across the wall behind the communion table. It’s a heavenly revelry. Cherubs fill the sky. A mother with piercing gaze holds on her lap a baby who is giving you his blessing. In the woman’s right hand is an orb. The globe inside the orb is turned to Africa; the faces and bodies of the figures are clearly of African heritage. This is a powerful statement of incarnation. Of word taking flesh and dwelling as one with this community. And there’s more. When it came my turn to speak on the occasion of the dedication I just had to say what I may have been in a unique position to see.

As a person of Eastern European descent I grew up with icons around the house. Windows to the Divine, icons have a particular symbolic vocabulary. And it was not lost on me that this mural was an African American manifestation of traditional iconography. The one iconoclastic aspect of this mural was that the woman was holding the orb. The orb, the scepter, is the sign of authority and power. In every icon I have ever seen or studied, the Christ child holds the orb. By putting the orb into the woman’s hand, the artist shifted the imagery so that we could see Mary and Jesus, but, in the blink of an eye, we could see God in female form. I called it as I saw it and as I left the sanctuary after the service the artist was waiting for me. She embraced me and then stepped back with a wide and weeping smile, saying, “I was afraid nobody would get it.”

Incarnation. God putting on the flesh that each of us wears. The skin and pores of every color. The chromosomes of every gender. In that tender and risky collapse into mortality Jesus became the Word beyond words, assuring each one of us that God loves us not from a benign distance, but with an active desire for our well-being. Whenever we “get it, whenever we produce the artistry, the expression, the embodiment so that someone else “gets it,” we’re into mega-celebration.

Celebrating, as the United Church of Christ, we need to go out of our minds; go out, over our heads; and, finally, go—out of our hearts. Out of the heart of who we are called to be. A denomination. Named. Named the United Church of Christ. We unite as autonomous congregations “in covenant with God and one another…genuinely seek[ing] one another’s welfare” [Louis Gunnemann, Uniting and United, p. 46]. We are called by Jesus Christ, so that we can do together what we could not accomplish individually. So that we can reach beyond ourselves and what we can know personally and be a network of grace across the globe. So that we can be companions to one another, enhancing our “shared characteristics” and rejoicing in our very real diversity, having a “common denominator,” and also a superbly uncommon denominator at the heart of us.

Celebration. Euphoria. Commemoration. Revelry. Praising God. Jubilation.

                                                                                                        ~ Mary Susan

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