Living in Unity

Dear Friends,

Earlier today we celebrated our last Senior Fellowship Luncheon of the spring. It was a wonderful time. We had a half-a-dozen of our brothers and sisters from Hidden Springs join us as well, including Don Brown, a retired Baptist minister who told wonderful Baptist preacher jokes and played old-time Baptist hymns for our hymn sing.

We actually had two retired Baptist ministers present (and the mom of another one). But it wasn’t just denominational clergy diversity. There were five people from the UK in the room, and several who grew up in other countries. We had the chronically ill and the healthy, at the same table!

Listening to Don play and our little congregation of 45 or so sing, I was struck not just by the “Sweet, sweet Spirit in this place,” but also by the “Amazing grace” of having people from all over the world and from all different sorts of Christendom gather together in Christ’s name. What unites us is greater than what could divide us, for what unites us is Christ, and “I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:39).

The Psalmist says, “How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity.” The Psalmist then goes on, “It is like precious oil poured on the head, running down on the beard, running down on Aaron’s beard.” To be honest, I can’t grow my own beard, much less Aaron’s, so I’m not sure about that last part. But I know unity in Christ is good and pleasant though. There’s plenty of division in our world; let that not be our spirit at St. Andrew’s.

In Christ,
Fr. Andrew