Photo by Jachan DeVol on Unsplash
What if the lack of unity is a feature not a bug?
The more I immerse myself in scripture, the more I come to see that the Church of Jesus Christ has always had a lack of unity. Read Corinthians or Romans. Perhaps the Jerusalem Council in Acts or the obvious lack of unity between Jesus and Judas or Jesus and Peter. The Church has always had a lack of unity.
But why would a lack of unity be a feature and not a bug? Perhaps it is because the lack of unity in the Church means that the Church is bound together by something deeper than beliefs, doctrine, interpretation or anything else.
Imagine we were to create a Church that does have a lack of unity. Imagine a Church that has all the answers, that has all the questions properly ordered and the interpretations unquestionably clear. This Church would be unified on all matters and all thoughts. This Church would not need a savior.
Paradoxically, what holds the Church together is our collective lack.
The Church of Jesus Christ has a lack of unity because it has a unity in lack.
The thing that binds the Church together is the reality that we all have a lack. We all have fallen short, we have missed the mark. We lack the ability to save ourselves. We lack the knowledge of how to get out of the messes we make. We lack the foresight and the insight to see how far reaching our sin and mistakes are. The Church has gathered for two thousand years to declare, “We lack salvation, we repent, forgive us and heal us, O God!”
The lack of unity in the UMC is not a problem, it reminds me that we are always and all in need of the savior we call Christ. The Good News is tied up in the reality that the Church is a unity of lack.