Ordination Paper

Daniel Noel Ross-Jones, child of God, you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever. –Lutheran Book of Worship

I do not remember hearing those words spoken over me on a seasonably mild February morning in 1985. I do not remember anything about Minnetonka Lutheran Church, having never attended a Sunday morning worship or educational hour during my memory since my family changed churches not long thereafter. I do not know what was the hymn of the day, what setting of the liturgy the worship community used, or what was the theme of the sermon. At six weeks of age I did not have a formulated theology of God, the Sacraments, or any idea that I would be writing a paper explaining such details to church administrators 26 years later. Regardless, the promise of the Christian life, the foundation for all Christian theology, the beginning of my journey towards ordained ministry and fulfilling God’s vocational call on my heart, happened on that February morning as my parents brought me to the waters of Christian baptism and I was initiated into the faithful community of God on earth.

Others identified my journey toward ministry of word and sacrament earlier than I did, sometimes in different language or in reference to different traits and signs. My faith has brought me from the Lutheran church of my upbringing, through Episcopal and Baptist congregations, to the United Church of Christ. My education and work has expanded that exposure to also include Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Charismatic, and modern evangelical expressions of Christianity, alongside Baha’i, Islam, Hindu, Jewish, Sikh, Australian Aboriginal, Native American, Humanist, and numerous other faith traditions. One of my clearest internal calls to ministry came while sitting in the Baha’i House of Worship in New Delhi, India; it was encouraged by the experience of being with a dear friend near death’s door in Milwaukee; it was reinforced through experiencing the pastoral ministry in Auckland, New Zealand; it is grounded in the early years of my faith at church in Grand Rapids, Minnesota.

Entering Plymouth Church in Milwaukee for the first time in early 2007, I felt a sense of peace at worship that I had missed for most of the preceding five years. As I further explored my new congregation and it’s wider family in the United Church of Christ, I felt compelled to stay and put down roots. Our church’s commitment to radical hospitality, relentless compassion, and the image of covenant have resonated with me since I joined Plymouth and continue to sustain my journey to ordination in this church.

Preamble to the Constitution and Statement of Faith of the UCC

The United Church of Christ originates as a union of two churches, themselves each a union of two prior churches. Included within the faith families of predecessor churches are connections with many other Christians in the United States. The character of our church as a united and uniting church is primary to our understanding of how to be church in response to Jesus’ prayer in the garden that all believers will come together as one.  (John 17:21)

Our basic statement of faith – recognizing Jesus Christ alone as our savior, leader, and guide – is intentionally broad and inclusive. Our statement that our church “acknowledges as kindred in Christ all who share in this confession” establishes ours to be a church that is flexible enough to allow different opinions and the free movement of the Holy Spirit in the convictions of believers, yet strong enough to identify the central focus of our faith and action is uncompromisingly on the one who is God incarnate on earth.

Our reality is not the same as our forebears in faith 2,000 years ago. The second paragraph of the Preamble continues, “It looks to the Word of God in the Scriptures, and to the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, to prosper its creative and redemptive work in the world.” As our faith practice must be ever-evolving and responsive to our surroundings – acknowledging the margins of society and aligning ourselves on the side of the poor, oppressed, and rejected – so too does our church understand its evolving nature. The Scriptures point to the example of Jesus Christ and call us to listen for God’s voice by the leading of the Holy Spirit in our own time and place.

We are not, however, a group of people in isolation; neither do we hold such arrogance as to assume that ours is the pinnacle of Christian fellowship. We are the custodians of a rich tradition established in the ancient creeds, the contributions of the Reformation, and the legacy of revivals and developments in North America. Our responsibility – indeed, our joy – is to reinterpret and apply those developments in a way that is genuine to the present age and can contribute to generations yet to come. As such our practices bind us not just with God but also the whole beloved community of God’s people across the ages.

God is Creator, who set in motion the ways of the universe. God is Jesus Christ, fully divine and fully human, who being of both Creator and created has reconciled the two in an expression of love and grace. God is Spirit, sustaining and empowering those who trust in God and find their faith in Jesus Christ to “be servants in the service of the whole human family, to proclaim the gospel to all the world and resist the powers of evil, to share in Christ’s baptism and eat at his table, to join him in his passion and victory.”

The Trinity

One of the values of participating in interreligious dialogue has been the opportunity to have wonderful conversations with people of other faiths. In those conversations I often both learn new things of the other person’s tradition as well as clarify my own beliefs. I think of one of those conversations in context of the Trinity. During a course on religious pluralism, I had the opportunity to take a tour of the Hindu Temple of Chicago led by Krishna, one of the temple priests, along with a classmate. Krishna was informing us of the deities in the temple complex and the nature of deities within the Hindu faith as different avatars of the supreme eternal God, Brahman. “It is similar to your concept of Jesus in the Trinity,” he told us.

Of course, it’s not quite the same. For Hindus, there are potentially hundreds of thousands of deities and their number is continually developing. For us Christians, God has chosen to reveal Godself in a threefold manner: Creator, Christ, and Spirit.

The Nicene Creed establishes the substance of each person of the Trinity, yet emphasizes that the whole is a manifestation of one, single God. “We believe in one God… maker of all that is, seen and unseen.” God as Creator is the parent of all things having spoken at the time of creation and calling that which was created good. (Cf. Gen. 1:4, Isa. 44:24) God has set all things in motion and entrusted the everyday details to humankind for our careful, responsible stewardship as an expression of divine grace. (Cf. Gen. 1:28-30)

Jesus Christ, as “of one being with the [Creator],” was also “incarnate from the Virgin Mary and was made man.” Jesus is begotten of God the Creator for the salvation of the world – the reconciliation of the created with the Creator. While humankind was created in the likeness of God (Gen. 1:26), in the person of Jesus Christ God took on full human form to challenge a broken humanity to live into divine justice and grace. (Cf. Luke 2:34-35, John 1:10-14, 3:16-17, Gal. 3:13)

The Holy Spirit is sent from the Creator, first, and speaks to the Son. (Cf. John 14:26, 15:26) It intercedes between humankind and the Creator in a way incoherent to human capacities. (Rom 8:26) It “has spoken through the prophets” and continues to indwell in faithful women and men, regenerating Christians to follow the teachings and witness of Jesus Christ in response to the justice of God the Creator. (Cf. Rom. 15:16)

Christians in New Zealand have written to describe God as “Eternal Spirit, Earth-Maker, Pain-Bearer, Life-Giver, Source of all that is and that shall be, Father and Mother of us all, Loving God.” The formula of the Trinity as Earth-Maker, Pain-Bearer, and Life-Giver sounds different to North American ears than the language of Father, Son, and Spirit or the modified language of Creator, Christ, and Spirit. Ultimately the great challenge of the Trinitarian formula – of any theology – is the inability of human language to adequately contain the vast, incomprehensible reality that is God. Words are important and finding diverse and expansive language to represent the diverse and expansive nature of God is an appropriate responsibility for people of faith – even more for their leaders entrusted with formation and development of the community. I find a renewed promise of covenant in the functions of the persons of the Trinity – a new hope of community function and action in the interrelatedness of God as Earth-Maker, Pain-Bearer, and Life-Giver that challenges us modern Christians to life in community that is ever creating, ever sacrificing, and ever promising a new life to our fellow earthly citizens; that is, the ones who we are called to serve.

The Sacraments

In accordance with the teaching of the Lord and the practice prevailing among evangelical Christians, it recognizes two sacraments: Baptism and the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion. –Preamble to the Constitution, United Church of Christ

Huldrych Zwingli explains the sacraments as “sacred and venerable things instituted and received by the great High Priest Christ himself… [taking] the place and name of that which they signify.” (Fidei Expositio) John Calvin defines a sacrament as “a testimony of divine grace toward us, confirmed by an outward sign, with mutual attestation of our piety toward him (sic).” (Institutes IV.14) Martin Luther teaches that a sacrament is instituted by God, in which God joins the word of promise with the visible element and through which action God “offers, gives and seals the forgiveness of sin earned by Christ.” (Concord, Small Catechism)

In sacramental celebration God’s presence is felt in the life of the community of believers in a particularly specific way. At once God is spiritually present in the proclamation of the scriptural word and becomes physically present in a tangible symbol of grace. The mystery of this spiritual union is just one of the many mysteries of faith; the physical presence of this union gives the congregation a window into encountering God in materials familiar to the human condition.

In Baptism a believer is incorporated into the faithful community as a form of initiation ritual. “Baptism is the sign of the initiation by which we are received into the society of the church,” writes Calvin. “It is like a sealed document to confirm to us that all our sins are so abolished, remitted, and effaced that they can never come to [God’s] sight, be recalled, or charged against us.” (Institutes IV.15)

Jurgen Moltmann calls baptism “a liberating event,” when one is incorporated into the freedom of Jesus Christ. “In baptism as a call, the important thing is to stress not merely the alienation from the existing groups and associations of life, but even more the commission to service for their reconciliation and liberation… It is the sign of the dawn of hope for this world and of messianic service in it. It is a missionary sign.” (The Church) More than the image of baptism as a cleansing ritual I find compelling the missional nature of baptism, the commissioning of the new believer into a life of intentional service, radical hospitality, and relentless compassion.

In spite of the divisions that exist in humanity the Sacraments ought to act as the great unifier in faith. The water of baptism flattens that which divides people; Lamin Sanneh challenges Christians in the twenty-first century to take seriously the idea of oneness in Christ in light of the changing face of Christianity from structures that suppose European supremacy to a faith that is increasingly non-White and non-European. (Cf. Changing Face) How might we as modern Christians – and I as a leader – reconsider the commissioning that all faithful persons have in the water and the word in a way that honors the God-given dignity, value, and worth of all?

In late 2006, I was holding a workshop on congregational marketing and media outreach for a group of about 15 Lutheran congregations in southeastern Wisconsin.  After we had finished, one of the participants came and told me how offended they were at one of my claims: that as Christians, the celebration of the Lord’s Table is intrinsically linked to our identity.  This link is not just symbolic it is also linguistic. Communion shares the same Latin root, commun-, with common, community and communication.  To communicate is to share, to commune is to be together, to be in community is to hold in common that which unites you.  It is the communion that encompasses all of these: where we share together in the unity of believers in all times and places the common practice of our faith.  “There’s no better external communication strategy than that,” I concluded.

Such a claim, to this person, was “too Catholic.”  Since then, I have shared this story with someone else, who told me that my claim was not Catholic but “too post-modern.”  The mystery that surrounds the category of that thesis, I believe, reflects some of the mystery of the experience of the Lord’s Supper – the very mystery of God.

The World Council of Churches in its landmark Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry report says that Holy Communion “embraces all aspects of life,” demonstrating the unity of the participants and witnessing to a single divine commonwealth of abundance. The Sacrament of the Table, like other actions, can “give historical faith, that is, they remind us of some event, refreshing the memory,” as Zwingli taught. (Fidei Expositio) Italian reformer Peter Martyr Vermigli described Communion as “bread and wine, sanctified by the word and prayer, [remaining] to us only a sign, mark and visible witness of the thing signified – spiritual and invisible, without transformation, confusion, or harm of the substance or anything else.” (Personal Confession)

As God’s grace alone calls the faithful assembly together at the feast of communion, so too we are called to be witnesses in society to God’s justice and love in response to the grace we receive at the table. Table fellowship is a profession of abundance. The early believers shared what was around them in response to God’s bounty. Unlike our human-made systems and structures – which oppress and discriminate, breeding fear of not having enough – the communion table is open and free with more than enough blessing and opportunity, more than we can even imagine, for all who respond to the invitation. (Cf. “Big Mac”)

Walter Brueggemann makes analogy of the heresy of scarcity to the Pharaoh. Afraid that he might run out of good things Pharaoh is not satisfied until he is in control of everything so that he can adequately ration and preserve the standard of living to which he is accustomed. As a result of his fear he becomes ruthless and destructive, eventually resulting in the slavery of Israel. (“Liturgy of Abundance”) Against that scarcity it is rather abundance in the meal that witnesses to a future banquet where Jesus Christ will preside at the end of time, where the ways of division crumble in the unifying experience of God’s beloved community. (Cf. Gal. 3:26-29, “Big Mac”)

Lillian Daniel writes about her experience moving from the opulent beauty and rich display in the Eucharistic celebration in her upbringing in the Episcopal Church to the meager, orderly practice of her Congregational church. (Wondrous Calling) What pain to the image of bountiful grace to be so limiting in our practice! How can we, as the United Church of Christ, move toward a wider display of God’s grace in our practice around the table?

The Sacrament of the Table as communion – the gathering of the community – is a powerful image. Remaining grounded in the fact that eating and drinking are basic necessities for human life and instinctive for our own survival, the action of eating as a community and responding to the reality of human beings as social creatures must not be overlooked. When we gather together in a group it is always more than celebrating the basic elements of food and drink; it is an experience that nourishes our mind and soul, holistically permeating our entire being. The experience is of greater importance than the action. (Cf. Worship)

The communion experience is undoubtedly different for each person. In the midst of this corporate act a deeply personal, intimate engagement between the believer and God is taking place. God’s spirit empowers us to restore creation and make all things new. Christ’s sacrifice for the reconciliation of the world is celebrated and honored. Thanks and praise is given to God for all God has done. The meal comes not only as a commemoration of the past but indeed a response to the present and a plea for the future.

Division and restriction have no place at the communion table. “Because of Christ’s prevenient and unconditional invitation, the fellowship of the table cannot be restricted to people who are ‘faithful to the church,’ or to the ‘inner circle’ of the community,” Moltmann writes. “For it is not the feast of the particularly righteous, or the people who think that they are particularly devout; it is the feast of the weary and heavy-laden, who have heard the call to refreshment.” (The Church) The table of communion is open to everyone. Jesus Christ extends the welcome; the response empowers us to continue his mission in the world and join together as the community he has called together through the ages.

Covenant in the United Church of Christ

Randi Walker writes, “the Congregational, Reformed, Christian, and Evangelical traditions all had within their understandings of the nature and purpose of the church some idea of a covenantal relationship both of the church with God and the church and its people with one another.” (Evolution of a UCC Style) John Calvin emphasized God’s covenant as one of grace – God’s steadfastness over a broken humanity’s sinful failings. Jane Fisler Hoffman considers the contributions of Puritan leader Robert Browne who claimed the language of covenant with God to be connected to the relationships among Christians who compose the church. “Covenant with God is the primal covenant from which our human covenants are derived and by which they are shaped,” she summarizes. (Covenant)

Our structure is one that agrees to disagree. The traditions which flow within the United Church of Christ include families of faith that today span across numerous denominations: Lutherans, Presbyterians, Reformed, United Methodists, Baptists, Anabaptists, Unitarian Universalists, Evangelicals, and Restorationists. The independence of the local congregation as the basic unit of our organization is uncompromising. Individuals covenant together to relate as a congregation, and congregations further covenant together to relate as Associations, Conferences, and the national setting. We are responsible to each other and to God, and we understand our strength to be our collective differences.

The actions of faithful people are magnified when they join together for common work and witness. Yet ours is a church that can be faulted for focusing on what we do, rather than what we believe. An opportunity for the United Church of Christ in the future is to better articulate how centuries of writing, teaching, and practice have influenced our faith in God as revealed by Jesus Christ.

Ours is a church that speaks with one another, not exercising undue authority over and against each other. We remain grounded in the word of God revealed and given testimony through the scriptures, creeds, and confessions. We honor the journey of faithful women and men as being led by the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit.

As a leader in the United Church of Christ it is my responsibility to listen to the work of the Spirit in the community I serve. It is important that I listen for voices that are on the margins of the assembled community, seeking that all people are heard and valued. In responding to the diversity that creates our church – a diversity that I understand to be witness to the rich tapestry of God’s creation – it is imperative that my leadership is one that fosters love, demonstrates grace, and models a life that listens for the voice of our still-speaking God.

We are a denomination of congregations – local churches seeking to be as Christ’s hands and feet in their particular communities. Yet it is also important to recognize the wider reaches of our covenant with Associations, Conferences, and national setting. As a leader in the United Church of Christ, and a former judicatorial leader in another denomination, I recognize the importance of honoring our covenantal commitment with the whole of the United Church of Christ, reaching to the full expression of our diverse church outside of the local setting.

We are a United and uniting church. While we may not bear witness to the expression of structural unity that was the hope of our founding, we recognize that we are in further covenant in a number of ecumenical partnerships: full communion with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Presbyterian Church (USA), and Reformed Church in America; ongoing dialogue with the Churches Uniting in Christ; and members in the National and World Councils of Churches and the World Communion of Reformed Churches. As a leader in the United Church of Christ it is important to always recognize the fractured and broken nature of Christ’s church and to continually seek ways to witness to our common confession of faith in Jesus Christ across sectarian divisions.

I did not grow up in the United Church of Christ. It is not the church that provided my early formation in faith and it is not a place where I have long-standing ties. Yet it is the church where I choose to find myself and in which I seek ordination. Its traditions and witnesses I have adopted as my own; it is a place where I feel nurtured and yet given room to discern the Spirit’s presence in my life. As with any human institution, our church is not without its flaws and challenges. Yet as a group of people collectively seeking to live out God’s commission in the world, I humbly accept God’s calling on my heart to serve here in the confidence and assurance that God’s grace will accompany and guide me every step of the way.

Bibliography

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