The Gift of Unity Psalm 133; Isaiah 43:1-3a; Ephesians 4:1-6; John 17:20-26 First Presbyterian Church of Greenlawn The Rev. Frederick Woodward May 16, 2010 Psalm 133 (NIV) How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity! It is like precious oil poured on the head, running down on the beard, running down on Aaron s beard, down upon the collar of his robes. It is as if the dew of Hermon were falling on Mount Zion. For there the Lord bestows his blessing, even life forevermore. Isaiah 43:1-3a (NIV) But now, this is what the LORD says-- he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: "Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. For I am the LORD, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. Ephesians 4:1-6 (NIV) As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit-- just as you were called to one hope when you were called-- one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. John 17:20-26 (NIV) "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you 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. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. 1
May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. "Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world. "Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them." The Gift of Unity So, what is this passage about that I just read to you, and what does it have to do with you and me? In other words, what difference does it make? What it is about turns out to be a big deal. For what this passage is about is a prayer Jesus prayed. And one of the remarkable things about this prayer, as it is recorded in John s Gospel, is that it is a prayer that Jesus prayed even for us. I receive tremendous comfort from the fact that Jesus prays for us right now at the right hand of God, but I find it stunning to contemplate that Jesus prayed for us even as he walked on the earth. For according to John, Jesus prayed not only for his first disciples who followed him about 1 ; Jesus also prayed for all those who would come to believe in him through the word of his disciples, and that would include the disciples of his disciples down through our own day. And so, Jesus prayer includes even you and me. And so, according to John s Gospel, Jesus has been praying for us for a long, long time. And what is the nature of Jesus prayer for all of us who have come to believe in him? His is prayer for unity. It is a prayer that all who trust in him may be one just as the Father is in Jesus and Jesus is in the Father. Lost in our translation is a wonderful play on words, for in the original Greek, the word for in and the word for one are identical except for what is called a breathing mark (smooth in en and rough in hen). The effect of the word repetition in such phrases as may they be one, you are in me, and so forth is almost hypnotic. But there is much more going on here than simply a play on words. For Jesus prayer for our unity is rooted in the heavenly unity of the persons of God. John expresses that unity in the language of indwelling: that the Father is in Jesus, and Jesus is in the Father, which is the basis and pattern of our own unity not only with God in Jesus Christ, but also with one another. But let s pause here. Notwithstanding that Jesus prayed for our unity, we in the church of Jesus Christ don t seem to do unity very well together, do we? We could well ask, what sort of witness are we making to the One who prayed for unity when there are literally hundreds of denominations? And it is not as if our disunity ended at our denominational doors. Internal divisions threaten almost all of the various denominations 1 Jesus prayed for his first disciples in the verses immediately preceding our passage (John 17:6-19). 2
at times, including our own. Divisions threaten even churches that describe themselves as non-denominational, churches that seek to stand above the fray of denominationalism. When divisions in the church simply mirror divisions in our outlying culture, do they not bring shame upon our gospel? There may be red and blue states, for example, but the possibility that there could be red or blue churches is surely an offense to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who shed his red blood for us, and whose blue veins were pierced by nails. Often disunity in the church has arisen when we Christians have held up the purity of the church at the expense of peace- whether in matters of doctrine or morals. When an emphasis on purity of doctrinal or moral truth is regarded as trumping every other emphasis, including peace, there will always be the temptation for folks to believe that if they could only divide one more time, then they really could be the true church of Jesus Christ. But neither purity nor truth is achieved through subtraction or division. And that is one reason, I think, that officers of the Presbyterian church are asked to pledge to uphold at once the peace, purity and unity of the church. Now if that strikes you as humanly impossible, that may be precisely the point. For peace, purity and unity of the church are a gift of God. Now, of course, the unity for which Jesus prayed is not simply an organizational or institutional unity. The unity for which Jesus prayed is more than simply a unity of purpose. It is a unity, as I suggested, that we cannot work up on our own, for it is given us by God. It is a gift rooted in the unity between the Father and the Son, in their mutual indwelling. The indwelling between the Father and Son is the ground and basis of the indwelling between believers in Christ and in their relationships with one another. And so a question always before us as the church is whether we will receive that gift, the gift through which, as Jesus reminds us, the world comes to believe that the Father has sent his Son, the gift of unity that itself expresses the gospel of Jesus Christ. We can, of course, refuse the gift of unity. But if we do, we weaken our witness to the reality that God sent Jesus. We can refuse the gift of unity, but then we undermine our comfort that God loves us even as God loved his only begotten Son. We can refuse the gift of unity, but then we are obscuring the radiance of the glory that Jesus has given us so that we may be one, even as God the Father and Jesus the Son are one. We can refuse the gift of unity, but we can also receive it, and when we accept God s gift of unity for which Jesus prayed we are witnessing to who Jesus Christ was and is, and what he came to do. Just over a week ago, I attended Early Ministry Institute, which is designed to assist pastors in their first years of ordained ministry. There were ministers of every stripe and color at this event, but one of things that I found refreshing is that certain of our threadbare distinctions, for example, between liberals and conservatives, proved altogether unhelpful to our understanding of one another. Such worn out labels mattered little to us because we had discovered our identity in Jesus Christ, and through the course 3
of our work and fellowship with one another, we were seeking to be servants of Christ, and not servants of some liberal or conservative agenda. One of the first people I met there, however, a recently retired pastor from New England, was someone none of us would have had any difficulty pegging as a dyed-inthe-wool liberal. But what Pastor J shared with me had nothing to do with church politics, but about the night her husband, who was a Presbyterian pastor here on Long Island, lay dying. And it is a story that intersects our own story here at the First Presbyterian Church of Greenlawn. And so I thought I would share it with you. Pastor J told me about a long night she had spent at Huntington Hospital at her husband s side after his internal organs had begun to shut down and he had ceased to be responsive. Sleepless with anxiety, J found herself still awake and praying at three in the morning as most of Huntington slept. She thought about Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane where Jesus prayed alone as his disciples dozed, and I don t doubt but that she felt very alone in that night s darkness. As she related it to me, J s prayer was one of relinquishment. Her husband was dying, and J was praying for continuing trust that whether living or dying, he was in the safe hands of our loving God and his Christ. She was praying to accept God s will even if God was calling her husband home. She was praying for the trust that neither life nor death could separate either her husband or her from the love of God in Jesus Christ. Through God s grace, confirmed to her within her own prayer of relinquishment, J was finally permitted some of the rest she so much needed. When she later awoke at her husband s bedside, J heard the words of a hymn stirring deep within her. The words that came to her were from, How Firm a Foundation, a hymn which we sing around here and will sing together later. Let me read a few of its stanzas to you now: Fear not, I am with thee, O be not dismayed, For I am thy God, and will still give thee aid; I ll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand, Upheld by my righteous, omnipotent hand. When through the deep waters I call thee to go, The rivers of sorrow shall not overflow; For I will be near thee, thy troubles to bless, And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress. When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie, My grace, all-sufficient, shall be thy supply; The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design Thy dross to consume, and thy gold to refine. 4
As she woke up with these words, J soon realized she was not waking up that morning alone. Her husband was also waking up, this man who was as good as dead. And when he began to speak in his familiar voice, clearly and normally, J was flabbergasted: her d husband was now alive. To J s amazement, her husband related his own personal awareness that he had indeed been dying, and of his grace-filled knowledge that that he was now very much alive. For J and her husband, what happened in that room through that night was nothing short of a miracle. The doctors were just as amazed as J was although they did not use the language of miracle. They could not explain her husband s return from death to life; they could only acknowledge it. But J and her husband did use the language of miracle, and they also used the language of gratitude, which is the mother tongue of Christians everywhere. In her gratitude, J set out to thank all the people who had been praying for her husband, and one of the people J made a point of thanking was the Rev. M, the then associate pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Greenlawn, who served here between 1984 and 1989. Rev. M had learned of J s prayer request for her dying husband through the presbytery- as I mentioned, J s husband was a pastor here on Long Island, and M had brought that prayer request regarding him back to this church. And when J shared the miracle that her husband had been restored to life, M explained in fuller detail that prayer teams had covenanted to pray in shifts around the clock and were in fact praying through the night J s husband lay dying. When she was praying at her husband s bedside that early morning, J thought she was praying alone, but she was wrong. You were praying with her. M also shared with J the words of scripture from Isaiah, chapter 43:2-3 that shaped the prayers of those who had been praying for her husband. J could not recall those specific verses, so M quoted them to her: When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. For I am the Lord, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior This was the biblical text, of course, that inspired the hymn, How Firm a Foundation, the very hymn that just happened to come to J as she awoke from her sleep at the side of her husband who was restored to life. J wanted me to tell you that she still remembers all of you here at Greenlawn with profound gratitude. She wanted me to pass along her thanks to all of you for praying for her husband that night. Although her husband, the Reverend T, eventually died, J was quick to remind me that even Lazarus eventually died after Jesus had restored him from death to life. But neither Lazarus death nor our own deaths are the end of the story. 5
J hoped that I might relate to you how, by God s grace, your prayers and hers were spun together into a single yarn, and expressed the saving intention of the three persons of God, in whose unity or tri-unity all of us who come to believe in God in Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit ourselves become one. As I heard J s testimony, I recognized again in a very concrete way how God has indeed answered Jesus prayer for unity. I recognized again how the gift of unity really is a witness to the world that God has indeed sent us his Son, the Son the Father loved even before the creation of the world. As I heard her testimony, I thanked God again for the gift of unity, and I hope you will too. In every church and among our various churches there are differences that tend to divide us. And so a question that we all have to work out together as Christians is what we are to do about all those differences. How do we become good stewards of our disagreements so that they do not destroy our witness to who Jesus Christ is and what he came to do? Some of the differences that divide us are frankly not very important, and as an old teacher of mine used to say, differences that don t make a difference aren t differences at all. But there are other differences that really do matter, differences that are not easily overlooked. There are deep differences, for example, in the way contemporary Christians read and interpret scripture. But as such differences crop up in our conversations with one another, we should take great care not to confuse the authority of scripture with the authority of our own interpretations of scripture. And when we bear in mind that beneath our most contested readings of scripture are deep currents of hurt, anger, anxiety and pain, we may better recognize our calling to listen to each other with pastoral attentiveness in and beneath our own cherished readings of the Bible. We can take comfort from the fact that Jesus prayer for unity was not a prayer for uniformity. The very concept of unity presumes diversity, presumes that something or some things are being brought together as one. And so my prayer for all of us here at Greenlawn is that as we receive the divine gift of unity, we will all continue to celebrate our diversity together in this place whether we express our diversity sociologically, culturally, or even in matters of church doctrine. It is my prayer that as we better discern the nature of our unity in our common life here and with Christians everywhere, we will better witness together to who Jesus Christ is, what he has done, and what God meant by sending him. Jesus means life! To God be the glory. Amen. 6