By Michael Spencer
Moderators note: This post was previously published by Michael Spencer at Internet Monk. I believe it captures a good part of the spirit of what we are trying to accomplish at Eclectic Christian and so asked Michael Spencer’s permission to republish it here. – Michael Bell
I love Christmas movies. We have many great family memories of watching Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas or singing “Sisters” and “Snow” with the cast of White Christmas. I have some personal favorites like almost any version of A Christmas Carol, the original Tim Allen Santa Clause and the strangely dark and mysterious Prancer.
I’m not a fan of the popular Christmas film Miracle on 34th Street. I’ve watched it 3 or 4 times, and maybe I just wasn’t quite in that particular frame of mind where a Christmas movie really appeals to me, but it’s never been a favorite of mine.
But there is something about “Miracle” that does appeal to me. We can call it “Miracle on 34th Street Ecumenism.”
In the story, the supposedly insane Kris Kringle (Santa to the unintitated) is inspired with a plan. The two large downtown New York department stores can change the way they compete with one another. Instead of making the other store the enemy, they could each take a more gracious view of one another. (At least at Christmas.)
How did that work? Each store did what stores do: they tried to offer the best products at the best prices to the most customers. But when the other store had a better product at a better price, you cheerfully sent the customer to the other store, with best wishes and the simple recognition that your store couldn’t do everything.
This change in behavior and attitude sparks a revolution in the retail jungle. Long time competitors treating one another with respect? With grace? With generosity? Actually recommending that someone go to the other store? And spend money?
Isn’t that unthinkable?
No…it actually sounds like Jesus and his upside down Kingdom. (It actually sounds like St. Nicholas, too. But that’s another story.)
What if Kris Kringle’s crazy idea became the model for ecumenism?
What if we all recognized that we get some things right, but we also get a lot of things wrong? And what if we recognized that some other traditions get the things right that we get wrong?
What if we recognized where others have been more Biblically faithful than we’ve been? What if we recognized that our pride can turn us into bullies when we ought to be friends? (We are all in this together, aren’t we?)
What if we recognized some churches feed the poor, or do liturgy, or preach faithfully or address the issue of race better than we do? And what if we weren’t afraid to point out those strengths?
What if we sat down and learned from one another? What if we sent some of our people to the other church to listen, watch, worship, pray, work and learn? And then come back and share the gathered wealth?
What if we embraced our brothers and sisters in Christ rather than in every point of doctrine? What if we confessed our common faith rather than constantly pointing out the deficiencies of the other tradition? What if we imagined what we’d do if all Christians were persecuted, imprisoned or tortured?
What if we extended the name of brother and sister to other Christians, rather than the theological labels that immediately advertise our differences…and our “rightness” in comparison to their “wrongness?”
What if we valued differing traditions as preserving different and valuable aspects of Christianity rather than seeing them only as competitors to be defeated and perpetuators of error?
If department stores could send a customer to the other store for a better price on a refrigerator, why couldn’t we send someone to another tradition to find what we’re out of, threw away, devalued or never had?
If department stores could take advice from Jesus (or Santa), why can’t we? The stores didn’t go out of business. They didn’t merge. They didn’t publish pages and pages of heated rhetoric about one another. They didn’t act as if their mission was to put the other store out of business.
They embraced something new. The embraced serving people; they embraced a higher sense of what it meant to do business. They believed a kind of radical, backwards logic that resembles what Jesus constantly calls us to. It is the transforming and surprising logic of the Kingdom of God, where the law of love says to love our enemies, to go the second mile and to wash one another’s feet.
Oh, I know….this is a ridiculous post. I know that I don’t exemplify what I’m writing about. I know there are a dozen serious objections and a hundred people waiting with their own stories of how badly they’ve been treated and misrepresented. Sometimes I’m the culprit.
But it’s a better way, and I think we all know it. We can’t conduct our relations with other Christians as if our books and arguments and podcasts are going to make them go away. A dozen books and a thousand blog posts aren’t going to turn Christians into Catholics or Calvinists or Lutherans or Charismatics or Baptists.
So, until Jesus comes back, why don’t we treat one another- as traditions and as churches- with the same crazy grace that Kris Kringle believed could transform department stores?
Michael Bell
Joshua Hearne
Tim Melton
Joel Black
