What in the World is "Ecumenical"?
Ecumenical? What's that? And why is it in your name? Warning: The explanation includes Greek words and maybe more than you REALLY want to know. Basically, just remember that we believe we are part of a world-wide church, created by God and not under the direction of any particular denomination like Methodist, Baptist or Presbyterian.
We believe God loves the whole world, and we want to do the same.
It's Greek to us
The word, "ecumenical" comes from the
Greek word oikoumene, which means the world inhabited by human
beings. The New Testament uses the word to talk about the entire world
population of human beings whom God seeks to redeem and reconcile through Jesus,
which is everyone who ever has or ever will live.
A simple way of saying "ecumenical" is to say "world-wide."
Many of us have experienced "sectarianism," which is the opposite of being ecumenical. Sectarianism is the idea that unless a person is a member of one's own particular group of people, then he or she cannot possibly be Christian and cannot be welcomed as a fellow believer until they become like that group in every way.
A few words from the apostle Paul in the Bible
Paul reminds believers in his own day about
trying to put chains on God. "For he says to Moses, 'I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.'” (Romans
9:15)
Or, as he says just a few chapters later,
"Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand.
5 Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds. 6 Those who observe the day, observe it in honor of the Lord. Also those who eat, eat in honor of the Lord, since they give thanks to God; while those who abstain, abstain in honor of the Lord and give thanks to God.
7 We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. 8 If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. 9 For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.
10 Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or
sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. 11 For it is written,
“As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me,
and every tongue shall give praise to God.”
12 So then, each of us will be accountable to God (Romans 14:4-12 NRSV)
And so we say
To be ecumenical is to be grateful for God's
mercy and to surrender all attempts to argue with God about who is worthy to be
accepted by him and who is not. To be ecumenical is to claim and proclaim
the mercy of God for the entire oikoumene and to leave the judgment to
God alone.
To be ecumenical is to say, "Jesus is Lord" of the entire world--and that no other human being is entrusted with judgment of people.
To be ecumenical is to celebrate the Good News of God's great love in Jesus Christ, to seek to share that mercy with every person in the whole wide world, to seek to help every person to grow in faith toward God and to bow before Jesus as the One who will make all judgments about who belongs to God and who does not.
That's what we try to do as individuals and as a congregation, and it is why we try our best
- to love and serve all people the way Jesus loves people,
- to pray for and to nurture faith in everyone
- to be merciful and forgiving toward others, just as God is toward us
- and to entrust the final destiny of all people freely and confidently to the One who died to save us all.