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I am so honoured to join you today and to lift my voice with yours in joy and thanksgiving for the many gifts, important legacy, and promising future of the United Church of Canada. And how wonderful it is to celebrate your centennial today, on the feast of Pentecost, the birthday of the church, and to be joined online with people across Canada.
I also bring greetings and congratulations from the many other churches in our World Council of Churches—with whom the UCC has journeyed from the start. We thank God for you and for your “deep spirituality, bold discipleship, and daring work for justice,” around the country and across the decades.
For me and for colleagues in the WCC, it is so gratifying to mark 100 years for a church that has ecumenical fellowship and unity in its very DNA, and I thank Moderator Landsdowne and General Secretary Blair for inviting me to participate and to preach at this special celebration service.
As already said, today is Pentecost Sunday. We celebrate the coming down of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said to his disciples before his ascension that while they may be eager to go and tell the world about the Risen Lord, they must first wait for the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit gives us the power to be witnesses. The Spirit gives us gifts to give us power and fruit to give us character. We need both to be God`s witnesses in the world.
There is so much to celebrate about the UCC and to reflect upon today. An ecumenical initiative from the start, the UCC merged after World War I and in the first flush of ecumenical fervor and of the Social Gospel, bringing together Protestant traditions that had only gingerly accepted each other and each other’s ministry theretofore. Gathering disparate traditions together raised all the questions about belief and creed, polity and politics that a nationwide church body must confront. But it also led, over the years, to a new and distinctive sense of identity, a deliberate effort to preserve the best of prior liturgical traditions, and a new era of ministry.
Over the decades, as the postwar world went through wrenching decolonization, the nuclear age and the Cold War, along with economic globalization, the UCC has become increasingly forward and progressive in its ecclesial policies and its public statements. It has deliberated about and spoken out about military conscription in World War II, internment of Japanese citizens, the morality of the Vietnam War, ordination, sexuality and sexual mores, native rights, recognition of and apologies for wrongs in First Nations residential schools, Israeli settlements in Palestine, affordable housing, disability justice, and the ecological crisis. Yours is a legacy of bold, prophetic public witness, even if it entails also admitting historic failings, complicity in unjust social structures, or looking critically and afresh at Christian ethics and theology.
More recently, the UCC has, like many other churches in the global north, had to come to terms with decreased membership, having less of a stake in conventional power centers, and the advent of a pluralistic, largely secular cultural milieu. It has responded by clarifying its beliefs and social values, nurturing local communities in a variety of contexts, and doubling down on its foundational commitments to God, Christ, justice, and community.
Today, the marks of the United Church of Canada are, as its moniker proclaims, deep spirituality, bold discipleship, and daring justice. At 100, the UCC can claim a strong Christian presence across this great land, a countercultural witness, and a public voice for justice and peace. Yet, all of these we cannot do by ourselves. We need the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit moves us to:
DEEP SPIRITUALITY
Those who worship God are called to worship in Spirit and in truth. The Spirit draws us to God and helps us to see God for who God is, and it is an awesome encounter as Isaiah discovered in Isaiah 6 when he saw God in the temple holy, high and exalted. But it did not stop at that. He immediately saw himself and exclaimed “Woe is unto me for I am unclean.” God`s holiness reveals our sins, wickedness and evil. It is strange how there are many religious people in the world who do things in the name of God, they lie, kill and sin against others but cannot see their own sins. God`s holiness does not seem to show them up for what they really are and bring them to that powerful cry of the prophet Isaiah: “Woe is unto me for I am unclean”.
But it did not stop at that. Isaiah then saw the people around him and said, “I live among a people that are unclean.” And God says to Isaiah, now that you see, “whom shall I send?” And Isaiah responds, “Here I am Lord, send me.” Spirituality and worship are both piety and praxis (action). Not just the one without the other. Deep spirituality is the full circle of seeing God, self and the world.
It is the spirituality that empowers us to stand firm in the face of danger, destruction and death. It is the foundation of our faith and hope. It the kind of spirituality that Daniel exercised when he defied the emperors order to worship no other God but him. Daniel opens his windows and prays to his God. He shall bow down to no other gods but the one in whom he trusts. No matter what. Not even if he is thrown into the lion’s den.
Job displays a spirituality that would not take him from the presence of God. No amount of suffering, sickness, and impending death will bring him to curse God and die. No matter who says what, Job would not take his eyes of God.
Friends, we are living in difficult times. We are surrounded by conflicts, wars, trade wars, poverty, injustices, climate catastrophe, natural disasters, broken relationships, divorce, and death. Too much to handle. Too much to fathom. Too much to bear. What is needed is deep spirituality that enables us to never take our eyes off God.
A spiritualty embedded in faith, hope and love in God. A spirituality that says no matter what, God is in control. The Apostle Paul prays this for the church in Ephesus. He prays that they may be given the Spirit of revelation and wisdom. He prays that the Spirit may give them the power to have faith and hope. He prays that they may know the depth and expanse of God`s love. How long, wide, high and deep it is. Paul wants them to know that they are fully covered. Job knew that Daniel knew that, do you? Deep spirituality is about love. Love for God and neighbor.
A spirituality that says here I am Lord, send me. A spirituality that moves piety into praxis, salvation into service, and decision into discipleship. The Spirit moves us into:
BOLD DISCIPLESHIP
Sisters and brothers, in a suffering and struggling world, bold discipleship is needed. Today, our hope is challenged. We can feel overwhelmed by the sheer scale and magnitude of global challenges, from poverty and hunger to wars and mass migration of refugees, to continuing economic and gender injustice, to deteriorating governance and a recession of human rights. The planet itself is now threatened with the disintegration of its ecosystems, the extinction of many species, and even the possible, eventual disappearance of humans, erasing this incredible and wondrous evolution of life, consciousness, and human knowledge and freedom from the earth. All given and blessed by the Creator God.
We see these converging probabilities, the signs, the trends and likelihoods of impending crises, and we ask, where is our hope? How can we, working along with others of goodwill, defy probabilities, effect real change, and rescue our world from disaster?
For us as Christians, true, realistic hope is anchored by faith, by a deep trust in God’s love and God’s promises, as revealed in the life and message, the death and resurrection, of Jesus.
The Scripture tells that with Jesus, and through him, we have access to such faith. We find in Jesus one so close to God, so beloved of God, so trusting of God, as to banish fear and engender hope and courage equal to any challenge. (It is a recognition that animates the New Testament and finds definitive formulation in the Nicene Creed, whose 1700th anniversary we also celebrate this year.)
Such faith is not primarily a matter of beliefs, precious though they be. Nor is faith a question of affiliation with and allegiance to a church or denomination or confession, however important they be. Nor is it a matter of keeping the Sabbath or following other religious practices and laws, as Jesus himself showed us. No, faith is falling in love with God and knowing the love of God as Paul tells us in Ephesians 3. Faith is opening our hearts and trusting God and God’s compassion with our lives and destiny. Despite suffering, tragedy, and even death, we affirm with gratitude God’s gift of life, and we work tirelessly to protect, support, and nurture it. As the Psalmist affirms, “Those who know your name put their trust in you, for you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you” (Ps. 9:10).
This commitment, this self-surrender to God’s love, revealed in nature and history and especially in Jesus Christ and vindicated in his resurrection, frees us from our wants and fears, our petty comforts and delusions, and enables us to face reality, heal from trauma, and make ourselves available to others. It sets us on a sacred journey.
Part of that journey in faith is to take critical responsibility for our faith and faith traditions. Genuine religious faith liberates us not only from our obsessions and delusions but also from the misguided tendencies that religious commitment is sometimes prone to such as: self-righteousness, a purely therapeutic spirituality, a defensive dogmatism, a merely transactional relationship with God, religious exclusivism, and the prosperity gospel. They are not worthy of God, nor us. We need critical faith in critical times, faith renewing our minds as well as our hearts (Rom 12:2). A virtue of the ecumenical movement has been its aim not only to renew but also to reform Christian church life.
The Holy Spirit empowers us to be bold disciples. We cannot do this on our own strength. We need God`s power and presence. God pours his Holy Spirit into our hearts and hope does not disappoint us. Faith is renewed and restored.
So our faith is neither arbitrary nor naive. Nor is our hope some simple-minded optimism. Christ’s triumph over death and his continued presence among us, bringing God’s compassion: that is the basis for a hope we can embrace in ourselves and offer to the world. Hope changes everything!
In the words of this generation’s ecumenical prophet of hope, the late Jűrgen Moltmann, “Christian hope draws the promised future of God into the present day and prepares the present day for this future…. In light of our faith, as Christians we can honestly assess and face the full force of humanity’s contemporary challenges yet also experience and instill a realistic hope of transcending them.” We can bank on hope, he says, because hope reframes our situation, invites creativity, and fuels our engagement in the cause of justice. Such a “life in joy is already an anticipation of eternal life . . . . In joy over the hoped-for future, we live here and now, completely and wholly, weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice . . . . Life in hope is not half a life under a proviso; it is a whole life awakening in the daybreak colors of eternal life.”
I believe that in the story of the UCC we glimpse not just the messiness of an evolving church in a tumultuous century but also the shape of authentic, albeit costly, Christian discipleship for today. The brave ecumenical communion across former religious barriers has led over the decades to a wonderful liturgical life and ministry, to a protracted discernment of what the Spirit asks of the church, to an honest accounting of the gifts and failings of our ecclesial life. It has fostered a determination to tackle the biggest issues in both church and society, and to moral leadership and a respected voice in Canada’s public affairs and its destiny as a nation. The UCC has gone from an ecumenical experiment to being a moral beacon for society, for thoughtful Christians, and for others. Your history as the United Church of Canada offers clues to the shape of authentic and bold discipleship today and how we might address the many crises we face today.
I believe your ecumenical solidarity has made and still makes the difference, even beyond the church itself, because our shared experience of God’s love sparks hope in us and is expressed in love for all humanity. So, let us be bold. Let’s be strong! For the Spirit of the Lord is upon us. That is the message of Pentecost. The Spirit comes to give us power to be bold witnesses and disciples in this troubled and bleeding world. Yet covered and saved by the blood of the Lamb.
DARING JUSTICE
UCC correctly says that deep spirituality and bold discipleship must lead us to daring justice. We cannot see what is happening and choose to remain disinterested, indifferent and unmoved. The world is in a mess. Thousands of people are dying daily. We see what is happening in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine, Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar, etc., how can we remain silent? We see thousands of people dying of hunger and starvation and humanitarian aid is denied to them; how can we remain silent? We see how incompetent and disempowered political leaders are to work for peace, safety and security of all people, how can we remain silent? We see the destruction of the planet, ecological disasters, climate emergency, how can we remain silent?
Remaining silent, detached and complicit is not the way to go. We need to prophetically say “Enough is enough” We need to proclaim God`s justice and peace and love. We need to speak truth to power and even to the church. Churches are often influenced by nationalism, fundamentalism, materialism, secularism and other isms. Our message and mission have become weak and feeble, powerless and hopeless when we should be doing the exact opposite. We need to stand up and be counted. We need to fearlessly stand where God stands. God stands with the poor, needy, sick, afflicted and oppressed. Are we standing where God stands?
Martin Luther King stood where God stands as he fought for justice for black people in America. He refused to retreat. He refused to be afraid. Instead, he dared to die for justice. And he did. Nelson Mandela and others in South Africa stood for daring justice when they fought against racial injustice and rejected the policy of apartheid which dehumanized, disenfranchise and deprived the black people of their human rights in South Africa.
Bonhoeffer dared justice when he went to Germany and resisted Hitler and the Nazi regime. Bonhoeffer spoke of costly grace. Costly grace should lead us to daring justice. It does not mean that we must be reckless and stupid. It does mean that we must be calculated and courageous. The Spirit gives us conviction and courage. He helps us to know God`s will and to do God`s will.
This is the point that the Apostle Paul makes in Ephesians 1 and 3, the passages we read. He prays that the church in Ephesus may know the faith, hope and love we have in Jesus. He prays that the Spirit will help us to know this but more importantly, he prays that we may live these as God`s witnesses and transforming disciples in the world. A broken, suffering and troubled world, yet loved, ransomed, healed, restored and reconciled by God. Children of hope, as the Father has sent me, so I send you, says Jesus.
Friends, faith grounds our hope, so hope fuels our engagement in the world. Christian hope is an unstoppable power by which faith does justice in the world. Such faith and hope stirs us to become transformative disciples in the world boldly announcing and declaring God`s justice and peace amidst brokenness, suffering and pain.
In this way communities of faith, acting ecumenically, become bearers of hope and agents of reconciliation in and for the world. We step up and step out to be advocates for justice, makers of peace, counsellors of unity, catalysts for creative engagement at all levels. Following Jesus’ example and his mandate, we are healing the wounded, caring for the afflicted and vulnerable, telling the truth about ourselves and our world. Christian service can therefore engage us all, creating and nourishing community among those who serve and with those we serve.
This way of life is also embodied in the ecumenical Pilgrimage of Justice, Reconciliation, and Unity. Through it, you and all of us in the ecumenical fellowship pledge to pursue justice, reconciliation, and unity in concrete ways at the WCC, the Pilgrimage is a guiding light to all our work, an umbrella over all our programmatic efforts. We see the whole global ecumenical movement journeying toward justice, peace, and reconciliation. Practically, that means pursuing human dignity, human rights, peace among peoples, and the health of the planet through deep engagement in concrete activities and consequential partnerships. As Christians, and as Christian churches, our discipleship finds concrete expression in enhancing the human good. It is pleasing to note that this vision is deeply consonant with and indeed shaped by the current vision of the United Church of Canada.
It is also what we, as Christians, can uniquely offer to our world: a deeply rooted, resilient, creative hope that is not swayed by the latest poll or downward trend, but labours mightily and joyfully to realize God’s promised New Creation on this earth.
And so, I urge you today, my fellow disciples of the Lord, sisters and brothers of the United Church of Canada, keep the faith, nurture unstoppable hope, and live in love. We, as Christians and Christian communities, need not fear the future but must embrace it. We can claim hope and offer it to others. We are communities of hope and reconciliation because we know that the God of Life is continually sustaining, renewing, and transforming ourselves and all creation. Each moment presents us with redemptive possibilities for resurrection to new life and God’s New Creation in Christ. Fired by faith, expressed in love, we in the UCC and the WCC are a movement of hope for life.
We give thanks for your 100 years of faithful ministry and witness as the UCC. As you continue to deepen spirituality, encourage bold discipleship and daring justice, let us be reminded on this Pentecost Sunday that we cannot do these on our own strength. We need the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. Without the Spirit we are powerless and self-set rather than God moved. We must not move the Spirit but allow the Spirit to move us. When the Spirit moves us the impossible becomes possible, the unimaginable becomes real, despair turns into hope, fear into faith, darkness into light and justice prevails.
Once there was a huge storm in mid-western America. After the storm passed, they found a straw penetrated a thick concrete pillar. They asked how it is possible that something so light and weak could go through the concrete pillar. They established that it was not the strength of the straw for it had none, but the power of the wind that made it do the impossible. On this Pentecost may we give ourselves fully and completely to the wind of the Spirit to be on the move for God in this troubled and suffering world. May the Spirit help us to be agents of hope, love, peace and reconciliation. May Spirit continue to move us to deep spirituality, bold discipleship and daring justice. To God be the glory! Amen.
Rev. Prof. Dr Jerry Pillay
General Secretary
World Council of Churches
