October 31: Celebrating the Death of Unity

Halloween has little joy for me. Maybe that's because I didn't really celebrate it much growing up because my family didn't do Halloween. But I think it's more than that. Every Halloween, my Facebook feed fills with "Happy Reformation Day!" While at school, there were literal parties celebrating the day Luther pounded those 95 theses on the Cathedral doors and liberated the Holy Spirit from the clutches of the Evil Catholic Church.

Do I sound overdramatic? I only wish I was. 

It breaks my heart, and I often take a haitus from Facebook around this time if I think about it because of how much it hurts to see our brokenness being celebrated. 

“Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand." (Matthew 12:25)

Jesus' words could not be more clear, and I believe we reap the results of the dissent we sow. 

"I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment." 1 Corinthians 1:10

Instead of doing as Paul begs, we flaunt and celebrate our divisions. We seek to drive that wedge further and further. We watch the spider web of cracks in our unity cover even more of the windshield, obscuring even more of our already limited vision.



We celebrate the fact that a group of people decided fixing the boat wasn't worth it, so they set out on smaller boats and, instead of coming back aboard when the repairs were finished, decided they liked being captain more than they liked authority and rowed off. 

There was a lot of corruption in the Church, yes. And that had to be cleaned up. And that happened. In many, multifaceted stages. But instead of trying to heal the body, we decided to sever it.

Today, instead of mourning an amputation, many people will rally and believe that breaking away from the body has made them stronger. We will glory in the breaking. Perhaps it is fitting that this celebration occurs on the day many believe darkness and evil have greater access to our world, and maybe it's true, for no other explanation makes sense. 

I ask everyone, from all Faith Traditions, to pray with me the prayer Jesus prayed the night before He died for us:

"I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one... I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me." (John 17:9-11, 20-24, emphasis added)



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