I love a “feel good sports movie”. Last fall when I first saw the trailer for Invictus, I couldn’t believe it. A feel good sports movie? – and Nelson Mandella, too??? Does it get any better than that?

Much of this past college football season felt like one of those movies for us Disciples as, week after week, TCU just kept – on – winning!

Disciples across America became TCU fans. The point was not – do you love the Mountain West Conference, or do you love football. It wasn’t even really – do you love TCU. The point was – this was family. And you root for family.

In TCU’s moment of fame, our little “best kept secret” of a denomination was in the limelight, too. (So – I now own a purple TCU t-shirt. It’s part of being Disciples – like relishing the interview with the Hiram College professor on NPR a couple of months ago or claiming the Reagan Peace Park at Eureka College [whether you ever voted for Ronald Reagan or not] or rejoicing in Barton College’s own feel-good basketball come-back in 2007, when from seven points behind, they scored 10 points in the final 45 seconds and claimed the NCAA Division II National Championship!)

In the 2009-10 football season, we were all Horned Frogs.

It reminded me of something my OK-raised son has said. He says that when he is in Oklahoma, it matters which side of the state line down there at the Red River you come from. (I’m sure Texans feel the same.) But he also noticed that when he was at school up in Minnesota, and met someone from anywhere in the southwestern United States, those state lines faded into the background, and it felt like old home week as they reminisced about good chicken fried steak or French fries dipped in ranch dressing. (You know, they don’t do that everywhere.) It seemed that the boundary for who was “in” got bigger. The definition of who was “family” expanded.

In a terrible way, we had that same kind of boundary shift a month ago, when Port au Prince, Haiti, was leveled by that massive earthquake. Suddenly people and planes from all over the world were piling up in the sky trying to get into Haiti – always the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere –which could have used the help any time these last 200 years.

In this moment of unbelievable crisis, people around the globe identify with Haitians in our common humanity. We feel horror for them in their loss – which feels very much our loss, too. (I heard a reporter on ABC television say, “A lot of important things became unimportant today.”)

Normal boundaries have faded. The definition of who’s in and who’s out has shifted. Suddenly we’re all Haitians – or more accurately – all children of God, one human family. Suddenly we see Haiti through the lens of one.

The lens we look through matters.

Most of you have been to the eye doctor. You know the drill. You lean your head into the heavy mask and the doctor flips lenses one at a time. Better one? Click. Or better two? Better one? – or two? – till you find the one that gives you the clearest vision.

Our scripture passage this evening calls us to look through the lens of one – of love for the one God. “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up,” says Paul.

He’s talking to people who are experiencing a moral dilemma. Should they, in their pagan society, eat meat that has been sacrificed to idols? Now – they’re Christian. For them, “there is no God but one.” They don’t believe those statues are divine. It means nothing to them that this meat has been cooked on that particular pyre.

They love God, “from whom are all things and for whom we exist,” as Paul says in verse 6. It’s this love of God that is important. You love God. God knows you. This is a firm relationship now. It’s not like being puffed up with so-called knowledge which has the fragility of a puffed up anything – poke a balloon with a pin and it goes flat; squeeze a cream puff and it proves to be a lot of air.

For Christians there is one God and one Lord – the firm ground on which we stand, the unbreakable relationship on which we depend, the clearest lens through which to view the world. One God –

This is quite a claim for Paul to make. He’s talking to people who live at the bottom of the hierarchy in a vassal state of a mighty empire, people who are told that Caesar is Lord. To say otherwise in their context is sedition. It’s treason. To claim, “there is no God but one”, and mean anyone other than Caesar, is a bold and dangerous claim.

But Paul is arguing for a full-out love of the one true God. Like the love expressed in the classic praise chorus: “You are my all in all.” (This is not just a pretty line of verse, but a life-changing declaration of undying love that transforms your whole way of seeing the world into a global view that extends even beyond the bounds of the whole Roman Empire. Through the lens of love for the one God, old boundaries fade and a new more expansive one comes into view. You see a whole new community where “brother” and “sister” take on a whole new meaning.) Children of God. No family but the human family. Beginning with the love of God. One God. “There is no God but one.”

I heard a similar sentiment expressed recently from a surprising source. I spent part of my recent sabbatical in Beirut, Lebanon, at the Near East School of Theology. The NEST, as it is affectionately known, is a small ecumenical seminary that partners with several US denominations, including Disciples and UCC and Presbyterians.) While in Lebanon, I met with members of a longstanding Muslim-Christian Dialogue table. I asked each one – Christian or Muslim – to talk to me about unity and diversity.

Sheikh Hani Fahs surprised me. His black turban proclaimed, I assume, his direct line of descent from Mohammed. His brown flowing robe looked more like Bible times than 21^st century Beirut.

He looked to be from a different world, but his words sounded immediately familiar.

“God is One,” he said. “God is the creator of the universe. Including every person in it. And God has created humans in diverse groups – on purpose. To show us more about the rich and full nature of God. We need each other in our diversity. I need you and you need me. It is God’s plan.”

I began to see him differently.

From a Shi’a Muslim sheikh, “there is no god but God,” should not have surprised me. “There is no family but the human family,” surprised me.

And why wouldn’t it? Coming from anyone, I mean. When you look at the vast sweep of human history, you do see this tendency to divide. Everywhere in the Middle East, we saw the remnants of the conquering Roman Empire, the Crusades, the Lebanese Civil War, the Israeli/Palestine dilemma. I love a feel-good story, but the broad sweep of human history is not that.  We humans divide in order to conquer, we build boundaries to make clear who’s in and who’s out.

My own Disciples denominational history – which is so often told as a great flowering on the American frontier – is, then, by definition, implicated in the conquest and destruction of Native American peoples and culture, a story of slavery, of brutally pushing back the border with Mexico. My own denominational story provides more chapters in a dismal story of human violence, of seeing each other across lines of division.

All the more sad, because there is a good news story that we Disciples often forget to tell about ourselves. Disciples have also had a merger. The 1969 merger of the National Christian Missionary Convention with the United Christian Missionary Society – black Disciples with white Disciples– was huge. “One God, One Church, One Mission” was the motivating cry. We do know how to look across old boundaries – how to expand our vision of who “we” are – how to join former separated families into one new one.

But how fragile are our human alliances – We Disciples forget the positive notes of our own story and repeatedly tell a tale of failed unity – and then live out of that narrative.

Lebanon becomes again and again the site of civil war, proxy war – divided along religious lines. In Hani Fahs’ country, where he says, “We need each other,” one God does not necessarily make one people.

But it should. The challenge is for us to learn to shift our allegiance from – whatever small clumps of humanity we cherish: from separate teams, separate state or nation, separate so-called race – to the human race. The challenge is for us to claim our allegiance to the whole human family. To put on a lens of “one” that allows us to see past false division and care about all God’s children – even before the earthquake hits.

It’s a challenge we can answer if we start with love of God. With acknowledging no God but one.

Last month I spent time on the Oregon Coast – (In January: not sure why I wasn’t visiting my brother in Florida, but, never mind . . .) There on the Oregon Coast – even in January – in the cloudy, misty, windy cold – in the roar of the surf, the vastness of the sky, the patterns in the sand, I felt the presence of God.

The words of Psalm 104 made sense: 1 . . . O LORD my God, you are very great . . . 2 wrapped in light as with a garment. You stretch out the heavens like a tent, 3 you set the beams of your chambers on the waters, you make the clouds your chariot, you ride on the wings of the wind. . .

Don’t you just look at God’s creation – the vastness of the sea, the undulating desert, the play of clouds across sky in the wide open prairie – and wonder: how can you not fall down on your knees and worship?

What happens next depends a lot on who you see yourself worshipping.

My husband, Professor Rick Lowery, often tells his students about the Babylonian creation myth that lived side by side in ancient times with creation as described in Genesis. In the Babylonian story, the gods create human beings to be their slaves. Arrogant and power-hungry, Marduk, the storm god, patron deity of Babylon, gains power through death and destruction. A truly terrible image of a god – and no wonder that the human children of such a god might enslave each other, set up hierarchies of value among human beings, boundaries where it’s ok for some to be hungry or poor.

But Rick always contrasts that story with our creation story – the one we share in common with Judaism and Islam. In Genesis, God is a God who creates people to tend the earth, and who, when they do, bring order, fertility, rich abundance, enough for everyone. It’s a story where humanity begins with two human beings: Adam (the earth person) and Eve (the mother of all living). These are the primordial, cosmic parents of all humanity, created by God, making all of us, by implication, all one family, one human family. No God but One. No human family but one.

It’s a story that comes into further clarity for us with a savior who comes on purpose to reconcile the world to God and to each other, who comes to blur the lines completely, who’d sit down at table with anyone, who’d mingle with any crowd. As Paul says, there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist .

The lens matters. Paul says to the Corinthians and to us, “there is no God but one.” Through the lens of God, we see clearly. One God, strong and mighty beyond the Caesars of this world. One God calling us to see beyond the boundaries of nation, race and clan.  One God. One family of God.

In another big movie of this season – Avatar – the people of the distant planet say in greeting, “I see you.” It’s more than a physical seeing. It’s a look into the heart, an acknowledgement of the valued person that stands before you.

“I see you.” Looking through the lens of one; the one God we love, we see each other – beyond purple or magenta, beyond Oklahoma or Texas, beyond Disciple or any other confessional label. Boundaries faded. We see each other as children of God. Better one? Or better two. Better one.