Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com
Our reading today is part of what biblical scholars call Jesus’ high priestly prayer. This prayer has three basic parts. Jesus prays for himself, for his disciples and for the church universal. What we heard today was from that third part. Jesus is praying for the church, the whole church.
20“I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word,
This is a transitional phrase from the part about the disciples (on behalf of these) to the part about the church universal (on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word.) I often refer to all Christians as disciples, however, Jesus is praying here for the specific disciples who were his original followers. We are, in this passage, those who will believe in Jesus through the word of the disciples. And Jesus is praying for us. And what is he praying?
20“I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, 21that they may all be one.
There is a temptation to stop right there. Jesus is praying for us, that we may all be one. That sounds really great. Let’s do that. And many of you are thinking, “Yes, let’s do that.” And by that, we are all thinking totally different things. The idea of us all being one is a complicated one and Jesus is about to make it more complicated:
21that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.
So we should all be one, like the Father is in Jesus and Jesus is in the Father. So the oneness we are to share is just like the oneness the Father and the Son share. But what does that mean? Let’s take a shot at this. Jesus is asking God that we may be one as Jesus and God are one. Does being one mean being the same? Well that doesn’t work biblically or practically. Could you say Jesus and God the Father are the same? In a limited sense you might get away with it, but you would have to leave out all those little details about Jesus, like being born in human form, walking in human form, and dying in human form.
To quote from U2’s Bono, “We’re one, but were not the same.”
“Same” would also be a hard word to use to describe any two people. We may be united in some way, we may be similar in our humanity, but it would be a limited use of the word to say that I am the same as a young female Christian in Liberia.
Come to think of it, I am not even the “same” as everyone who is sitting in this sanctuary today. We are in many ways similar. We share many common beliefs, but by no means are we the same.
Since it is a little fuzzy how we are to be one, let me move on to why. Perhaps we can understand how we are to be one if we can know why we are to be one. Jesus may answer this in the very same line, “so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”
So if Jesus is talking to God and about us, perhaps he is saying that we should be one, so that the world (everybody else who doesn’t yet believe in Jesus through his disciples) may believe that God has sent Jesus. I want to be clear on this that we, the ones who already believe in Jesus through the word of the disciples, should be one so that “they,” everyone else ,may believe that it was indeed God who sent Jesus.
If we are to follow this line, some have suggested that this is a sort of unity of public witness.[1] If we are unified, others may believe that Christ was sent from God. But unified how? Let’s look at two different dimensions of this “public unity:”
First, there is unity of faith, the idea that we hold common beliefs, especially in the areas of worship and confession. And second, there is unity of our love and mutual service for each other and for the world.[2]
Let’s start with that first one, unity in faith. We may think we have that one licked at least as a congregation. We all worship the same and believe pretty much the same stuff, right?
You don’t have to prick the skin very hard to get someone agitated in the church. Church people fight about everything. People got mad when we changed the bulletins from single fold to two fold not to even mention changing the order in which we do service or not serving communion in a service that expects it every week. And let’s not even get started on music. But that is just surface stuff, what if we go deeper? In any one of our three services, I could find people with drastically different opinions on major issues, theological, social, moral, and practical.
Let’s take for instance…
I would guarantee I could find someone in this room who thinks the church should take strong stand against homosexuality, who might say that anyone of a differing sexual orientation shouldn’t even be allowed in our Christian community or at least we should make an effort to change their behavior. I bet I could find someone else who says we say we should go out of our way to welcome gays, lesbians and bisexuals into our community expressing grace and hospitality to all of God’s unique children and embracing them for who they are. I could probably find a few somewhere in between, some wishing we just wouldn’t bring it up and others just asking us to be more tolerant in general.
Well that is a sticky one, how about one we can all agree on? What about salvation? We all agree on salvation right? Will only Christians be saved? Some say yes, some say no. All Christians or only certain Christians? Should we be responsible to convert faithful Muslims to Christianity? What about someone who doesn’t go to church? Are they ok if they live a good life? What about someone who goes to church but doesn’t live a good life? How do you know if you are saved? What does salvation mean anyway? It is about this life or about the afterlife? What happens after death for those who haven’t been saved? If you have a clear answer to any of those, I guarantee there is someone in this room who doesn’t share your answer.
There are so many points of doctrine and belief that we don’t even know each others positions on. What exactly is sin? What about the commandments? What about divorce? Is it ok to drink? What about gambling? How are we to understand the Bible?
There is certainly a “diversity” of beliefs within this congregation, and even more so when you take the United Methodist Church as a whole and even more so when you take the entire “Christian Church” as a whole. As ironic as it may seem, I do not find this passage on unity speaking against that. If the purpose of this unity is so that the world might believe that Jesus was indeed sent by God, then some amount of passionate diversity actually needs to be part of our unity.
A lack of difference of opinion would not necessarily reflect unity, rather, a lack of passion. I mean, how many of you have ever had a heated argument over whether birdseed should be sold by weight or volume? But this stuff is important. Our core beliefs are the basis of our entire worldview. Or at least they should be. If we are Christians and we don’t argue at all about what we believe, it may seem to others that we just don’t care.
Blind lack of diversity, can reflect apathy and even worse, it can lead people to do stupid things. Imagine if people understood unity to me blind adherence throughout the history of Christianity. You know someone had to stand up and say that slavery was not ok because up to a point, the Christian church supported it. Someone had to stand up in the life of the church and say, “you know what? Women ought to be treated as equals to men, especially in the life of the church” It can be our passionate diversity that makes us a strong witness. It tells people that we are committed, not close minded. It tells people that we actually care about what we believe and are on a constant journey to better understand and live out our beliefs.
But…
What about that other dimension of unity of public witness I mentioned: the unity of our love and mutual service for each other and for the world. That’s the one I am hung up on. This passage talks of unity. Jesus asks that all who believe in him through the word of the disciples may be one, like Jesus and the Father are one, so that the world may know that God sent Jesus. Jesus then asks again, that we may be made completely one, so that… and now I am reading from verse 23.
23b“so that the world may know that you have sent me and loved them even as you have loved me.”
So that the world may know that God loves them as much as God loves Jesus. Man, from living in the world day to day, especially knowing young people who are just lost, looking to drugs and alcohol and bad relationships and material possession to fill the emptiness inside them. When I look at people racking up inconceivable credit card debt to buy more things thinking that it will give them some self worth, I tell you people really need to know that God loves them as much as God loved God’s own son.
Let me lay this out again. For the moment, we are the ones that believe through the word of the disciples. Jesus prays that we may be one, just like Jesus and the Father are one, so that the world may believe that God sent Jesus. Then Jesus prays that we may become completely one, so that the world may know that God sent Jesus and that God loves Jesus’ disciples as much as God loves Jesus. So that the world may know that God loves them as much as God loves God’s very son.
I know it drives people nuts, but I actually believe we can change the world. I think one way to begin changing it is to let people actually know that something greater than them loves them. If only we could convince people of that.
Maybe we can. Let me reread for you how this passage ends:
25"Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. 26I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them."
Jesus made his name known to the disciples and will continue to make it known. Why? So that the love with which God loved Jesus may be in us and in the world. So that Christ may be in us and that God’s love may live in us and through us so that the world may know God’s love. So that the world may know that God loves them as much as God loves Jesus.
This is a radical love that Jesus is talking about. Love like God has for Jesus, love like Jesus has for us. To make it more radical consider where and when Jesus says this. This talk of love comes at the end of his prayer for himself, then his disciples, then us. Jesus prays this prayer at the end of chapter 17 in John’s gospel. The next chapter begins Jesus walks to the cross where his love is expressed through painful humiliation, for us. That’s love.
We are supposed to let that love live in and through us? Well, yeah. If this passage doesn’t make it clear, back up. John 13:34, where Jesus says,
34I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.
But you know, I think we still get hung up that other dimension of public unity. Some Christians spend a lot of time thinking about other Christians to determine if they measure up. I hear phrases like, “he’s not very Christian,” or “she is going to hell.”
There is a really fine line here. It is ok to disagree. I am not saying “lets just all get along.” It is ok to actually work through our differences. I mean if someone walked in here and said, “I want to join your church but I like to murder people, is that ok?” We would say, “We are glad you are here, but no it is not ok to kill people.”
Our unity of belief is something we should work on and that is hard. It means we have to argue over points of belief over what it looks like to be a Christian, over what our stance on issues facing society should be. But that should add to and not get in the way of our unity of love and support.
You see diversity, debate, delving into the depths of our understanding these are good things. It is when it turns into petty bickering and gossip that the bus stops.
Dan Dick and Evelyn Burry write in their book, A New Kind of Church:
Judging the activities of individual members of the community of faith, while interesting and enjoyable to some, does nothing to transform the world into the kingdom of God. When we perpetually lift up the mission of the church, we help people see what they are saved for, instead of what they have been saved from.[3]
You may not realize this, but the perception people have of the Christians church is not always pretty. If you read the paper and watch the news the picture that is painted of us Christians is of a bunch of bickering spoiled brats.
This past week The Reverend Jerry Falwel died. I must admit I was never especially fond of the man because he said some very hurtful things including blaming feminists, the ACLU and other groups for bringing God’s wrath upon America and causing the September 11th attacks and hurricane Katrina. However, the reaction to his death among Christians was not helpful. On one side, there were liberal Christians publicly shouting “hurray.” On the other hand a fringe Christian group was immediately sharing plans to demonstrate at Falwel’s funeral because they perceived him as being too tolerant.
If the Christian church really wanted to make a strong witness about the life of this man they would ignore the politics and the theology and anything we didn’t like about him and talk about love and mutual service for the world. We should be constantly lifting up the mission of the church and even Falwel did that. Forget for a moment the Moral Majority and lets talk about Liberty Godparent Parent Foundation a Falwel ministry that moved from condemning unwed mothers to giving them a place to live and options. Or what about the Elm Home to help people with substance dependency issues put their lives back together?
I am by no means supporting these specific ministries or anything about Falwel except to say that where our unity lies is in the mutual understand of our need to change the world in the name of God.
I am telling you all, our way of being Christians right now is affecting the future of Christ’s church. We may be killing the chances of inviting a whole new generation to know the love of God through Jesus Christ and the unity that can only be found in God We have a choice as Christians, shrinking or growing. We can be bicker about conformity or morality or we can get to work changing the world and opening the doors to a new generation of Christians who are much more interested in knowing what they have been saved for, what they are called to do than what sin we are saving them from.
Ok, but I hate to leave you with lofty big picture stuff. What are you supposed to do about this tomorrow? There is a piece that I posted a link to on my weblog called “Saving the Darfur Puppy.” It is about our human tendency to get overwhelmed by big problems and do nothing while we react intensely to much smaller problems. We are enthralled when a lost puppy falls in a hole and rescuers work for hours to get her out, yet we flip the channel when the story comes on about the hundreds of thousands of dead in Darfur. So, let’s make a big problem a small problem. How can you change the world one life at time? I challenge you to take a week off. Not from work, not from your diet. Take a week of from judgment. Give yourself a break. For a week, don’t worry a lick about who is a Christian, who believes like you believe, who is not morally upright, who might be cheating on their taxes, who hasn’t been in church for a while. Take a week off. Here is what you can do with all the free time. Convince one person that the God of all creation loves them. Just one. I don’t care if it is your neighbor or an orphan in Rwanda. I don’t care if you have a conversation or send someone a million bucks. I don’t care if it is your kid or a perfect stranger.
20“I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, 21that they may all be one.
25"Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. 26I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them."
[1] Bruce D. Marshall, “The Disunity of the Church and the Credibility of the Gospel” in Theology Today, Vol. 50 No. 1, April 1993, online at: http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/apr1993/v50-1-article8.htm, accessed 6 September, 2003; internet
[2] ibid.
[3] Dan R. Dick and Evelyn Burry A New Kind of Church, A Systems Approach (Nashville: Discipleship Resources 2000-2006) 56-57
