Sunday, May 29, 2022

Becoming one

 

A Sermon preached on Easter VII, May 29, 2022, at St. Augustine’s and St. Christoph

Acts 16:16-34, Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21, John 17:20-26

I know that Hannah Cranbury only preached about unity only a few weeks ago, but both with today's gospel reading and having just returned from the Katholikentag[1], which is an increasingly ecumenical event, and where I was helping to staff the ecumenical stand run by the ACK, the German Council of Churches, I can hardly not talk about church unity.

Here, in the longest recorded prayer of Jesus, he prays to the Father, asking that his disciples enjoy and preserve the unity shared between the Father and himself. But as we also heard, he prays not only for those in the room with him, “but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word,” (John 17:20) so in a sense, Jesus is praying for us!

This a special sort of unity, divine unity, it is not enforced or commanded. Jesus asks and desires it. It is the unity of love and a reflection of the intimate unity of the Father and the Son: “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us.” (17:21)

Unity is a theme of our service every week, when we recite the Nicene Creed and say together: “We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.” How can we claim to be one if we are clearly still divided? Well for one thing we say we believe, not we are. We can believe that we are one even if that oneness is not immediately visible. The Nicene Creed is for example a shared creed. Unlike the Apostle’s creed, which has its origin in the western church, this is also used by the Orthodox and Oriental Churches. But we are one even when we don’t share a formal, written creed, like many free churches. All it takes to be part of the ACK is to “confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Savior according to Scripture and to seek to fulfill together what they are called to do, for the glory of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”[2]

In his prayer, Jesus also made reference to this glory of God as a sign and element of unity: “The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one.” (John 17:22)

Not only do we believe that we are one, or should be one, but also that we are holy. Holy is another overladen word. “Holier than thou” describes a form of excessive self-righteousness. Holy can be understood to mean perfect …. which we are not, and the church is not! But we use holy here to mean devoted to God and to God’s work, to fulfilling together what we are called to do, and that is certainly something all churches should share in.  

The church we believe in is also catholic. Not catholic as in the sense of Roman Catholic but meaning universal. As Anglicans we do not claim to be the Church, but to be part of God’s universal church. together with the RC and OC, and the Lutherans, and the Reformed, and the Baptist, and the Orthodox and any church that shares in God’s mission of reconciliation.

Finally, the church is called apostolic. To be apostolic means two things, that the church is built on the teaching of the apostles. As Jesus said: we are those who believe in him through the word of the apostles. Secondly it means we are sent (Greek = Apostolos – one who is sent) with a mission (Latin = Mission – to send), “so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (John 17:23) The Church’s purpose is to bring the Good News of God in Christ and of the God of love to the world.

Again and again in this prayer, Jesus says that it is when we are completely one that the world will believe that God has sent Jesus. Clearly, we are not yet completely one and that can hinder the mission if we send conflicting messages to the world or if we stand more for division than for the Oneness of God. “If we are one in faith, there can be no final reason why we may not be one, also, in our life and worship;”[3] Tom Wright says when commenting on this passage. As I said earlier, I have just come back from the Katholikentag and we are not one in worship while we cannot all share in the bread and wine made holy at the Lord’s Table.

Of course, when Jesus is taking about unity he was not thinking of denominational boundaries. I doubt that even Jesus foresaw how creative we can be in finding and defining differences! The unity he was thinking of is the one crossing all the traditional barriers of nation, race, class, custom, gender etc. His word, his teaching, his sacrifice, his promise was and is meant for all people.

And yet, however important it may be, unity, divine unity cannot be forced. It is not uniformity, as Hannah told us a couple of weeks ago, nor is it sameness. Too often, throughout history, unity has been enforced by coercion, by propaganda, and the elimination of dissidence and difference. I understand that it was the custom of the time, but I still always feel a little uncomfortable when I hear, as we did this week in the Acts reading, that the gaoler “and his entire family were baptized without delay” (Acts 16:33) or last week that Lydia “and her household were baptized.” (Acts 16:15) How much choice did they have in the matter, I ask myself.

Here in Germany, after the Reformation, the principle known as cuius regio, eius religio provided for internal religious unity within a state: The religion of the prince became the religion of the state and all its inhabitants and the only escape for those who could not conform to the prince's religion were to leave and to move to a place where their particular brand of religion was established or at least tolerated. That is not the unity God wants.

God’s unity is never coercive, it is an invitation into a relationship with God through Jesus and through Jesus with one another. Divine unity flows out of that relationship when “the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” (17:26) Our unity with other Christians is not so much the result of structures, but a sign of the presence of Jesus in our churches, in the sacrament, and in us. It is this presence that provides the great bond of union connecting Christians of all times.[4] Christians are not one, for the sake of being one, but are called to be united in the love of God and tasked with bringing that love into the world. It is when we embody this love that we will be like an advertisement, inviting people to join in union with God – in whichever church may suit them best. Our invitation is to share in one single common life in Christ, the invitation we heard at the end of the Book of Revelation:

The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’

And let everyone who hears say, ‘Come.’

And let everyone who is thirsty come.

Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift. (Revelation 22:21)

Amen.



[1] https://www.katholikentag.de/

[2] https://www.oekumene-ack.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Grundlagen_der_Zusammenarbeit/ACK_Satzung.pdf

[3] John for Everyone II, N.T. Wright, p. 100

[4] Raymond Brown, The Gospel and Epistles of John, p. 86

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