Our Hearts Beat As One

This weekend we will join with churches across the globe as we gather around Christ’s table for World Communion Sunday. It is a day, more than most, that reminds us that the Communion of Saints spreads far and wide across every nation and culture. We are bound together as one body, knit together as one garment, our global union sealed with Christ’s own blood – to share in life and ministry.

Several years ago now, in the summer of 2016, the community I was serving was hit with devastating flooding and multiple shootings in the same summer. The church where I was pastor was blessed to not be effected at our building by flooding, but our presbytery building was. The congregation included both first responders who were friends with police officers killed and teachers who were friends with the families of civilians killed by police. In other words, we were affected on all sides.

In the immediate aftermath of everything going on, the national media had a field day telling our city that we should be divided. Should be fighting. Should be against one another.

In those same early days, an organization of which our congregation was a part, along with many other churches, synagogues, mosques, and every other religion in the area, of all shapes, sizes, and colors – that organization gathered together to make the public statement that we would not be divided. We would stand together. We would fight for one another.

In the wake of such tragedy, the words of J.K. Rowling’s famous character, Albus Dumbledore, came to mind as the perfect sentiment: Though we may come from different places and speak in different tongues, our hearts beat as one.

Once again, there are many voices in our world telling us that we should be divided. Fighting one another. Standing against one another. This time not just in one community, but across our whole nation.

On this World Communion Sunday, may we remember that, as followers of Christ, we are tightly bound to all other children of God. Sealed in blood. Sharing in one body. Woven together into one single garment of destiny – and it is ours to be as much for one another as we are for ourselves.

Blessings, Pastor Janie