What’s The Bottom Line?

I can’t say I was surprised, but I was mildly concerned. Here we were, twelve members of the same UCC church engaged in a class on the history of the traditionally “orthodox” understandings of Jesus only to discover that our beliefs were all over the map. Some participants confessed that they were struggling to accept the assertion of Jesus’ divinity while others felt it was absolutely central to their faith. Still others found the whole discussion somewhat unsettling because they had always assumed people in the same tradition would believe generally the same things. At one point, one of the participants asked the question: “Jed, what’s the bottom line? What must we believe to be called a Christian in the United Church of Christ?”

I sat with the question for a good half a minute as I considered the freight of her question and felt the weight of anticipation in the room. Fortunately, in that moment, the words of Sam Solivan, a former professor, came back to me: “In the end, what counts more than orthodoxy is orthopraxis.” In other words, “right practice” is more important to the Christian life than “right belief.” So I replied, “I suspect Jesus might answer your question with two short sayings: ’Love one another as I have loved you; ‘ and ‘Come, follow me.’”

A week later, the evaluation forms rolled in and I opened them with a hint of trepidation. Had the class helped people grow in their walk with Jesus, or had it only unsettled them? To my relief, the responses were filled with gratitude. Apparently, the very act of coming together and engaging our questions and hungers in an atmosphere of love and non-judgment was not only eye-opening: it left them hungry for more. They wanted to continue the journey together.

For those of us seeking to follow Jesus, Frederich Beuchner wrote, “You do not come first to understand a person fully and then to love him, but love comes first, and then it is out of the love that understanding is born.” (The Magnificent Defeat, HarperCollins, pp 98-99.) It’s as true with Jesus as it is with one another. Love comes first. That is the genius of moving beyond the question “what must I believe?” to the question, “what must I do?” The answer isn’t complex: love your neighbor as yourself, and strive in all you do to follow the way of Jesus.

What a gift it is, to call the United Church of Christ home. Here, we are called beyond the black and white of creeds to the color of deeds, beyond the anxiety of passing tests of faith to the joys of sharing our testimonies of faith. What a gift to have as our guide these words: “In essentials unity; in non-essentials diversity; and in all things, charity.”