Bishop Hughes reminds us that as we prepare for the season of giving, the best gift we can share during this time of division is our unity – our oneness with God and with one another through Christ. (Time: 4:48.)
Video Transcript
This is Bishop Hughes in the Diocese of Newark. As we head into the gift-giving time of year, and it really – it’s not too soon to start thinking about it. Here we are in mid-October, in a little bit we’ll be giving away chocolate at our front doors with all the trick-or-treaters, and then it’ll be time to give away recipes and things, treats for us to cook, and our time, spending time with people that we love. And then comes the big giveaway, as we give gifts for Christmas. I would even go so far as to say that New Year’s Day, when we start making resolutions, we’re trying to give ourselves a gift of a different, a better, a healthier new year, a different way of being.
That in this time of looking at gifts, I can’t help but think about the gifts that people of faith and faith communities have to give to the rest of the world. I might talk about that over the next few weeks, and I want to start with this one, one that I think is foundational and important, and that is our sense of unity. That we are one through Christ, and we are one with each other because of Christ. That Christ was the eternal and everlasting game changer. His incarnation, death, resurrection, ascension to heaven, and the promises that he left with us, that he would always be with us, that God would send the Holy Spirit to us, and that he was gifting us with things that we could do to help other people – that changed everything for us. We don’t have to go through someone else to be with God. There’s no emissary. That when we’re connected with each other, that we are connected to God too. That all of these things work together to do God’s work in the world.
And it’s a different way of being, this sense of being united. We say in our baptismal rite, at the very start of the service, the priest says, “There is one Body and one Spirit,” and then the people say, “There is one hope in God’s call to us.” And then the priest says, “One Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, and then we all say together, “One God and Father of all.” It’s that buildup of the “ones,” leading to that One, kind of supernova One, that there is one God of all, one God who cares, one God who created all and loves all of creation and cares about all of creation, and we are connected to that God. And because of that God, we are connected to each other.
That gives us an incredible sense of unity, that can give us great peace and give us comfort, and can give us wisdom in a time that seems to be driven by division. Where there are groups of people sided up saying who’s in and who is out, who belongs, who doesn’t belong, who has rights, who does not have rights, who’s a worthy person, who’s not a worthy person, who are making these decisions about power and justice and how all of these things work. And important to the people that are struggling this way is to be in division. They are not thinking about unity at all, nor are they thinking about how we come together.
And that is a gift that we bring, because in order to be united with people, we have to have respect for them. We have to see them the way God sees them. We have to uphold their dignity. And when we do something wrong, we apologize for it. And then we also spend time with each other, in prayer and in study, making sure that we are getting stronger and stronger in our faith and doing all of these things. We are a unified people, and we can share that unity with other people. That is our gift, our gift to the rest of the world – one of them.
So I offer you that as we head into this gift-giving season, to think of yourself as you move about your world. How are you one who stays connected to God and to other people? How do you bring that sense of unity, that sense of dignity, that sense of respect, that sense of care, that sense of prayerfulness, that sense of wonder and awe, that God has this creation before you. All of these people, as different as they all are, all created by a God who loves every single one of them.
We are one. We are one people because of God. We are one, united to each other and united to God, and united to a God who is one for all of us. Nobody is left out.
