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SERMONS

The Seventh Sunday of Easter
June 1, 2003

On the night before he was crucified Jesus gathered his disciples for a final meal. John tells us that as they were together Jesus prayed for them. Our gospel today is a part of that prayer. In it he prayed that the disciples might be one. Just as he and the Father are one so might they be one.

And he didn't pray just for that group gathered there with him. He prayed also for those who would believe in him through their word. That's us. There in that room, on the night before he was crucified, Jesus prayed for us. He prayed that we might be one, just as he and the Father are one.

How do you think we are doing? What is the state of the church today? There are Episcopalians and Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians. There are Baptists and Methodists and Lutherans and Presbyterians. There is the Church of Christ, the United Church of Christ, the Church of God, the Church of God of Prophecy, the Church of God in Christ, the Disciples of Christ, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And that only scratches the surface. The Jackson phone book lists 54 different denominations here in central Mississippi.

Where is the unity?

Even in our own part of the Church there are times when unity is difficult to perceive. We have fought over revision of the Prayer Book, over the ordination of women to priestly ministry, and over where to put altars and organs. And now we are fighting about sex. We can't seem to agree on anything.

Where is the unity?

We are tempted to look backward. To look back to a time when the Church was not divided. To a golden age when there was no disagreement. To a time when the Church really was one, just as Jesus had prayed.

But we can't find it. If we look at the earliest accounts we have of the life of the Church-the letters of Paul-we find controversy. In fact the occasion for the writing of most of Paul's letters was controversy. And Paul himself had some major fights with the leaders of the church in Jerusalem.

Where is the unity?

Perhaps what we need to do is to reconsider what unity is and where our unity might lie. Unity is not sameness. The comfort that I find when I get together with people just like me is not unity. Those meetings where we all know the rules and can agree on everything are not unity. Those times we gather with others who share our tastes or beliefs, others of the same skin color or heritage-those are not unity.

Unity requires diversity.

That seems paradoxical. But true unity requires the recognition that we are all created in the image of God. That each one of us was made by God out of God's love. True unity requires that we recognize that without those others who might look different or act differently or think differently, we are incomplete.

Pamela Chinnis, the former President of the House of Deputies of General Convention has said,

Only when we bring together those separate experiences of our differences, with all the friction and confusion that produces, the loss of neatness and control, the disorientation of not knowing all the "rules," the discomfort of not being able to anticipate how people will respond because they're not the same as I am ...

Only as we are able to live with that uncomfortableness, to let go of our fear of people we don't understand, to learn to listen first and to look through the eyes of others, only as we let the glory of God in Christ Jesus truly transform our lives together ...

Only then can we begin to live in the unity for which we pray.

here is an image-a metaphor-that has been helpful for me in seeking to understand this relationship between unity and diversity. That image is light-white light.

Any of you who have ever played with a prism know that when white light passes through the prism it separates into the colors of the rainbow. All of the colors that we see in the world are contained within white light. When we pass those colors back through the prism then the white light is reconstituted.

But we only get white light when all of the colors are combined. If any color is excluded then the light that results is not white.

Our unity is in God. We find our unity only in Jesus, the Christ, the Light of the world, who is one with the Father. Through the prism of God's love we are united in Christ.

We are the diversity. If we are to begin to comprehend our unity in God we need every one of us. We cannot exclude anyone. Without being open to all people we are diminished; we are less than whole.

So rejoice that in Christ we are called into a unity that comprehends without sameness all our differences, our conflicts, and our diversity; and uses them to bear witness to the universal love of God; to whom be all glory now and to the ages of ages.

Amen.

David Christian
The Chapel of the Cross
Madison, Mississippi

John 17.11b-19