Therefore, as a prisoner for the Lord, I encourage you to live as people worthy of the call you received from God. Conduct yourselves with all humility, gentleness, and patience. Accept each other with love,  and make an effort to preserve the unity of the Spirit with the peace that ties you together.  You are one body and one spirit, just as God also called you in one hope. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father of all, who is over all, through all, and in all. Ephesians 4:1-6 (Common English Bible)
Last week I was blessed to have a family vacation in the Florida Keys. I had never been there, and it was hot and sunny and a wonderful time with family.
One family member worked a year ago to get rare tickets to Dry Tortugas National Park, which is 70 miles west of Key West by boat. It is barely a speck of land in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, but it has the largest masonry fort built in the US. Construction started in the early 1800s and was largely based on enslaved labor. The speck of land was a critical navigation point around the dangerous reefs of the Keys, so controlling this speck with a big fort was vital for the fledgling United States of America.
Then the Civil War hit. Along with a couple of design flaws regarding fresh water and sewage disposal, the fort was an abysmal place to serve. It ended up housing Confederate prisoners after the war, and was managed by an Army regiment of Black soldiers.
A fort built by enslaved labor and later managed by the people who were enslaved and marginalized. Movement toward unity and liberty.
In our reading today, Paul is once again imprisoned because of his faith, but instead of whining and grumbling, Paul used the time to write letters and continue to build up people in the faith. He encouraged us to live humble lives as we labor in the purpose God has placed on our lives. We are to tie ourselves together in peace, through the strength of the Holy Spirit.
We are entering another election cycle, and it seems that unity and peace are far from our hearts and minds. Within our own faith family, I am sure that every candidate on the ballot will get at least one vote from someone in our church. We have many opinions on the policy and laws and leadership for our community within our church, which reflects our wider community.
I'm glad so many of us will be voting this year. I'm glad we have the freedom to have a wide variety of candidates running, with a wide variety of policy ideas. Our unity doesn't come from complete agreement on politics. Our unity comes from the love and grace of Jesus Christ. We can be humble and gentle and kind with each other, even when we have different opinions on issues.
Fort Jefferson stands as a beacon of hope that we may find ourselves in a place of division and separation, but we can move toward a place of unity and liberty. The founder of Methodism, John Wesley, preached that "in essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all else, charity." Our essential unity comes from the gift of salvation in Jesus' victory over death on the cross: a gift free for each of us to accept. As we prepare for our church's global General Conference in a few weeks, we are free to disagree on the non-essentials of faith, and still be a unified church serving our communities. Finally, we can be charitable to everyone, everywhere, all the time.
Let's be inspired by the people who lived at Fort Jefferson, and find ways to move beyond our separations to a new community of unity and peace.
