Psalm 97; John 17:20-26

 

Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus Christ, the one in whom, through whom, by whom and for whom we are united and destined for salvation. Please join me in prayer: O Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of each and every one of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen

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We have come to the end of a season. Today is the last Sunday in Easter.

Oh, you didn’t know that Easter was a season? You thought it was one day? Most folks realize the church year is different from the secular or calendar year; that’s what these colors we have up here and on the communion table signify, in case you’ve wondered.

Most folks are aware of the Season of Advent and the Season of Lent, but fewer folks have heard of a Season of Easter.

Just to review – and while we do follow a pattern of four colors, it’s not marked in stone – traditionally we use purple to mark seasons of preparation or penitence, that is Advent and Lent and green, representing spiritual growth, is used for Ordinary Time, which is the bulk of the year. And ordinary doesn’t mean humdrum here, but the ordered time of the church.

Red shows up just one day – and that is next Sunday, Pentecost (although sometimes red is used for ordination services).

And that leaves the white you’ve seen since Easter. White, which signifies the special redemptive work of Christ and great joy, is used Christmas Eve through the Baptism of the Lord on the second Sunday of January and again on Transfiguration Sunday and then again from Easter through today – the seventh Sunday of Easter.

This season of Easter, sometimes called the Great 50 Days of Easter, is – or should be – the most festive time of the year, Christmas not withstanding. Christmas, after all, would be meaningless if it were not for Easter. The Easter Season is a time when we remember Christ’s resurrection and ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

Our readings this Easter Season have mostly led us to talk about our response to Christ’s love, the example we set in the world and some about what the future holds for us.

Today’s Gospel lesson comes from the so-called Last Discourse in the Gospel of John, and is Jesus final prayer with the disciples.

Let me set the scene for you: the group is in the Upper Room and has finished the Last Supper. Chapter 17 opens with Jesus turning from addressing the disciples to addressing God. He prays for his disciples, that God protect them.

Then at verse 20 where we begin today, Jesus begins to pray for the unity of his followers.

 

I ask not on behalf of these (Jesus prays) but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that they world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one as we are one. I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

 

Well, it’s been more than 2,000 years, and we’re still working on it.

Christ’s church has been divided from the beginning. There were disagreements between Paul and Peter, between the “elders in Jerusalem” and Paul, between Paul’s converts and Paul himself, and that’s before the church gets out of diapers.

Then we split east and west – Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox and don’t forget the Egyptian Orthodox church, that is the Coptics, to say nothing of all the other national Orthodox churches.

And then we get to the 1500s and the Protestant Reformation. I can’t even begin to count the number of denominations and divisions within denominations and divisions within divisions of denominations. For those of you who are interested, I can give you one website just listing churches that call themselves Christian.

Just within our own Presbyterian family, here in the United States alone, there’s the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) – the largest and of which we are a part, Presbyterian Church in America, Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, Bible Presbyterian Church, Cumberland Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Cumberland Presbyterian Church in America and, finally, the Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America. (Some of these, which are quite old by the way, I hadn’t even heard of until I was preparing today’s sermon.) There are probably others.

These divisions stem from a long list of things, from understandings about communion and baptism, to the way we worship, to the way we understand the Bible, to the way we view the church and ministry, to the way we say the Lord’s prayer, to our understandings of church activism and social justice, from something to something else.

You can just about figure that where two or three Christians are gathered, there’s a disagreement about something.

And yet…

Jesus prays that “all who will believe in me … may all be one.”

In December 1960, a man named Eugene Carson Blake – at the time stated clerk of the northern stream of Presbyterians – suggested in a famous sermon at Grace Episcopal Cathedral in San Francisco that the four mainline churches join together.

Blake’s sermon gave rise to more than four decades of discussions and efforts at church union. Initial efforts at true merger went no where; subsequent plans at mutual recognition and joining together eventually stalled when we Presbyterians and Episcopalians, the two denominations who had started the entire enterprise, couldn’t in the end stomach each other’s government, and were unwilling to let go of enough of our own. Presbyterians don’t like bishops and Episcopalians don’t understand this thing called elder. The other churches in the discussions might have come along, but our refusals doomed the effort, so what once seemed a promising move to reconnect a church divided centuries ago ended.

That’s not to say advances weren’t made and that ecumenism hasn’t come along way since 1960. For example, there are bilateral agreements between many churches – for example we Presbyterians have adopted an agreement with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Reformed Church in America and the United Churches of Christ to recognize each other’s ministers and sacraments. It’s a small, but important step.

Nevertheless, God’s church remains divided.

Why is that a bad thing? In many ways it’s not.

I acknowledge that it is a good thing that there are many expressions of Christian faith. There are foot-washing Baptists, and hallelujah-singing, hand-waving, amen-shouting Penecostals. There are groups which dismiss educated clergy, saying all you need is the Spirit. There are those who believe that during communion the bread becomes the physical body and the wine or juice the actual blood of Christ.

Because of who I am, and how I have been taught and raised, I am not comfortable in any of those traditions. I’m comfortable in this one, and feel it represents the most faithful response to God’s call that I can give.

However I will also acknowledge – at least when I’m being good – that those other traditions can be just as faithful an expression for those individuals as mine is.

Unfortunately, however, too many of us on either side of the many divides don’t necessarily want to acknowledge that the “other” has any validity at all.

We can’t seem to understand that differences do not have to mean disagreement and diversity doesn’t has to mean disunity.

When someone is ordained an officer in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), whether as a deacon, an elder or a minister of word and sacrament, they answer the same eight questions. Although there’s really only one germane to today’s topic, it never hurts to hear them all again and recall, if we’re ordained, our vows, and if not, what we expect of those who are:

Do you trust in Jesus Christ your Savior, acknowledge him Lord of all and Head of the Church, and through him believe in one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?

Do you accept the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be, by the Holy Spirit, the unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ in the Church universal, and God’s Word to you?

Do you sincerely receive and adopt the essential tenets of the Reformed faith as expressed in the confessions of our church as authentic and reliable expositions of what Scripture leads us to believe and do, and will you be instructed and led by those confessions as you lead the people of God?

Will you fulfill your office (or for ministers, be a minister of Word and Sacrament) in obedience to Jesus Christ, under the authority of Scripture, and be continually guided by our confessions?

Will you be governed by our church’s polity, and will you abide by its discipline? Will you be a friend among your colleagues in ministry, working with them, subject to the ordering of God’s Word and Spirit?

Will you in your own life seek to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, love your neighbors, and work for the reconciliation of the world?

Do you promise to further the peace, unity, and purity of the church?

Will you seek to serve the people with energy, intelligence, imagination, and love?

Deacons are asked: Will you be a faithful deacon, teaching charity, urging concern, and directing the people’s help to the friendless and those in need? In your ministry will you try to show the love and justice of Jesus Christ?

Elders are asked: Will you be a faithful elder, watching over the people, providing for their worship, nurture, and service? Will you share in government and discipline, serving in governing bodies of the church, and in your ministry will you try to show the love and justice of Jesus Christ?

Congregations get two questions:

Do we, the members of the church, accept (names) ____________ as elders or deacons, chosen by God through the voice of this congregation to lead us in the way of Jesus Christ?

Do we agree to encourage them, to respect their decisions, and to follow as they guide us, serving Jesus Christ, who alone is Head of the Church?

And ministers get asked: Will you be a faithful minister, proclaiming the good news in Word and Sacrament, teaching faith, and caring for people? Will you be active in government and discipline, serving in the governing bodies of the church; and in your ministry, will you try to show the love and justice of Jesus Christ?

Congregations also are asked:     Do we promise to pay him (her) fairly and provide for his (her) welfare as he (she) works among us; to stand by him (her) in trouble and share his (her) joys? Will we listen to the word he (she) preaches, welcome his (her) pastoral care, and honor his (her) authority as he (she) seeks to honor and obey Jesus Christ our Lord?

…

So we promise, when ordained as officers of whatever kind in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), that we will “further the peace, unity, and purity of the church.”

Is that what Jesus is praying for? Peace, unity and purity?

Just last year, a denominational task force named after that ordination vow produced a report – commonly called the PUP report – which has in some quarters done anything but furthered peace, unity or purity. I won’t talk here about the report itself, we’ve done that before and it’s not really on the table at the moment.

But I mention it because my son Greg, who I will be visiting in Richmond next weekend to see him graduate with a masters of divinity from Union Theological Seminary-Presbyterian School of Christian Education, is spending his last classroom days studying the report under one of the task force members who is on faculty there.

Just this week, he shared with me his first paper from the course, and I think some of it’s worth sharing with you, especially in light of Jesus’ prayer for the church. I apologize in advance for the lengthy lifting of his work:

 

Peace, unity, and purity, for me, are about struggle, honesty, and commitment. We must struggle to not respond in anger or to let our frustrations lead us to disengagement. We must be honest with one another about the things that we feel passionate about and not subvert our own thoughts and beliefs because they might stir up some conflict. We must commit to staying in the fight with one another, sometimes going back to our respective corners to lick our wounds or celebrate a good day.

    …

If we are serious about peace, unity, and purity, we must continue the conversation, after the hurt feelings, after the apology, to seek to understand where the other person is coming from and why they have those passionate feelings, and maybe more importantly who that person is beyond the issue.

…

For me, … peace, unity, and purity are about family. In the abstract, it would be great for everyone to agree, for everyone to like each other and for no one to do anything wrong. But in real life, family is messy; peace, unity, and purity are messy. We will never be a picture of Up with People that some long for until the Kingdom comes, but what we can be is real. Real to one another about what upsets us, what excites us, what destroys us. We can be pure. Pure in our openness to disagree and share our true feelings; … We can be unified. Unified in our love for God and our commitment to one another regardless of our faults and differences; we can’t choose our family members but we can choose to work with them and to love them even if we do not like them that much. If we can do this we can have peace. Not peace with doves and sweet music, but peace that provides people from all walks of life and all different opinions a place to come and worship God together faults and all.

 

Why do we need to bother with all this unity? And do we sacrifice “purity” for the sake of “unity.”

Well, to be blunt or maybe simplistic, Christ doesn’t pray for purity. He prays for unity “so that the world may believe.”

How can we hope to truly persuade the world that Jesus, with all his teachings of love and caring, is who we believe him to be if we’re spending so much time ripping each other apart and castigating those with whom we disagree?

How can we hope to persuade the world to wage peace instead of war if we’re battling each other over points of doctrine, however important they may seem, or modes of worship?

We sang earlier: they will know we are Christians by our love, by our love. Yes they’ll know we are Christians by our love.

Really?

There’s one website I stumbled across this week with the title “They’ll Know We are Christians by our Hate.” The site went on to cite many of the unfortunately plentiful examples of acts of hatred justified by “Christian” claims or rationale.

Do those kind of actions – judgmental, unforgiving, divisive actions – show that we are together in love?

As he was preparing to be arrested and murdered, Jesus prayed to God that all his followers, those alive then and those who would come to believe later, would be one “so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me.”

Maybe we should walk down the street to the Church of the Nazarene, over to the Kanawha City Apostolic Church, then on down to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, stop at the Church of Christ, swing by Morris Memorial Methodist, St. Agnes Catholic, St. John’s Greek Orthodox, King’s River Worship Center, Kanawha City Baptist, Church of the Good Shepherd Episcopal – and let’s not forget Village Chapel and Westminster/South Park Presbyterian – and ask if they want to join us in showing the unity that Christ prayed for.

I know, I’ve gone from preaching to meddling, but, in the end, it is comforting to know that Jesus is praying for us. There can’t be any stronger or more effective prayer, so one day, we will all be one.

To God alone be the glory, amen.

 

Please join me in prayer: Good and gracious God, as Jesus prayed for unity of his flock, so we pray that we may demonstrate love to the world – even if we remain separate and divided – so that we can show unity to the unbelieving that they may believe. We pray in the name of Jesus the Christ, as he prays for us, amen.