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Minister and President’s Message
Reaching out to neighbors is difficult and holy work
September 2001
By Nancy Taylor
Standing about five feet tall, Mrs. Ella Ben, a native of Urik (a tiny atoll in the Marshall Islands) would tell her story to anyone, and everyone, willing to listen. Through a translator, she spoke of her baby’s death, her own thyroid cancer, and how 67 U.S. nuclear bombs have effected virtually everyone in Micronesia.
As I reflect upon my experience of General Synod 23, Mrs. Ella Ben represents what is precious and holy about these biannual gatherings of the United Church of Christ. By Mrs. Ben’s presence, a four-page document entitled, Ministry and Witness with Micronesians1 became enfleshed. The distance between her tiny atoll in the Pacific Ocean and we UCC folk in the United States was reduced. We encountered each other. We became neighbors.
General Synod does that. It happens over and over again, as visitors and delegates encounter people whose lives and personal stories are otherwise far removed from their own. We begin to encounter one another in the way God intends: as neighbors.
Encountering each other as neighbors is not easy. Perhaps that is why Jesus visited so many different neighborhoods throughout Palestine. He also focused his best stories, teachings, and even commandments on the subject.
A group of Synod delegates tasted the bitterness that sometimes comes with encountering neighbors who truly disagree. During a hearing on A Religious Declaration on Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing, a presenter reached such a point of frustration and anger that he threw (accidentally?) a Bible at John Thomas, General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ. John Thomas responded as a neighbor to this man. With graciousness, he recognized the other’s pain and frustration, but did not retract his own convictions. In writing about this incident in a Christians For Justice Action newsletter, the reporter addressed his words to John Thomas: “. . .we find ourselves charged, by your witness, to pick up the Scripture where it has fallen, to kiss the book in apology, and to ask forgiveness for the sin that causes it to be disrespected – whether that sin is in losing sight of the call to justice or the call to love those whom we don’t get along with.”
In my experience of the United Church of Christ, it is this holy impulse to reach out to different, distant, and diverse neighbors that marks our tradition as unique and precious. It is difficult work. It is holy work. It is God’s work. It was a blessing too at Synod, to encounter my new neighbors in the Massachusetts Conference: some 50-plus delegates and staff. You would have been proud of their dedication, camaraderie, commitment to reading reams of material and attending meetings (and the accompanying lack of sleep), and all the time they took from their families, work, or vacation, to serve as delegates to the biannual meeting of this brave denomination.
Those delegates, as well as those I met at the recent Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Conference, have shown how deeply committed the whole Conference is to this difficult and holy work of being neighbors to one another. I look forward to sharing it with you.
1 For more information, the document is available at www.ucc.org – under General Synod resolutions and actions; and/or read William Winslow’s report, United Church of Christ seeks to help Micronesians get a fair deal, at the same address.