A Sermon preached on Easter VII 1 June 2025 at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden
Acts 16:16-34, Revelation 22:12-14,16-17,20-21, John 17:20-26
Recently, all our gospel readings from John have all been coming from what we call the final discourse, a long speech and in part prayer that makes up chapters 14 – 17 of John’s Gospel and is set during the last supper. One hopes that the disciples were sitting comfortably and had had enough to eat!
Today we heard Jesus pray for his disciples, “that they may all be one.” In my new function as chair of the German National Council of Churches, I can hardly not preach on this unity prayer. We see it as one scriptural mandate for church unity. In the context of the setting during the last supper, just before Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion, we can see it as Jesus praying that the disciples will stay together through “thick and thin.” That they will not let their fear or pressure from the authorities divide them. After all, "Divide et Impera" "divide and rule" is an ancient strategy to weaken an opponent and maintain control. The disciples would need to maintain unity, to stay together, to encourage one another in those early years.
Then, by the time John’s gospel came to be written, there were also already different groups of Christians, evangelized by different disciples each with a slightly different memory of Jesus, but now needing to find unity to be able to take the necessary collective decisions as Christianity spread beyond its Jewish roots. What to do with Gentiles for example? What local practices can be retained without endangering unity and the gospel? Our patron saint, Augustine, whose feast was this Monday, was later confronted with questions of church unity when he came to Canterbury in 597, sent by Pope Gregory to lead the mission to England. There were, perhaps surprisingly for him, still many existing Christian congregations in Britain, left from the time of Roman occupation. Over time they had developed separately. When St. Augustine asked Pope Gregory how to handle the differing customs in the various churches, Gregory answered that he should “select from each of the church whatever things are “devout, religious and right,” and to “let the minds of the English people grow accustomed” to them. An early example of what we call inculturation and a sign of tolerance for difference that has not always been a mark of the Roman Church, or of many other churches for that matter.
Coming back to the Gospel. What is unity? Unity is the basis of the Christian community, not just the community of the first disciples, but of “those who will believe in Jesus through their word.” (John 17:20) It is the call to imitate or reflect the unity of the Father in Jesus and Jesus in the Father. The oneness of the Father and the Son is both the cause of and the model for the believers' unity.
Unity is a gift, not a burden. “The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one.” (17:22) It is through our unity therefore that we reflect God’s glory, the beauty of God’s being and God’s character of perfect relationship. And unity is a necessity: “so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” (17:21) How can we claim to believe in one God if we are divided and not “one” ourselves? How can we be a witness to one God, if we contradict each other in the basics?
What does this unity look like? It is not uniformity. First and foremost, it means being in fellowship with one another, based on a common faith. The World Council of Churches, and the ACK, both describe themselves as "a fellowship of churches which confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Savior according to the scriptures, and therefore seek to fulfill together their common calling to the glory of the one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit."[1] Jesus is the bond of unity. God’s glory our common purpose. In his prayer, Jesus includes all believers in the inherent unit of the Father with the Son.
We need of course to be clear about what the “visible unity” that is the goal of the ecumenical movement means, and what it doesn’t. It does not mean that we all look the same, that is not how we were created. It does not mean that we all have to worship the same way, and with the same music. [Thursday I was at and enjoyed a Baptist service – it was very different!] And it does not even mean that we all have to wear the same brightly colored vestments, or even vestments at all. Each church can choose which century and culture it takes its liturgical clothing from.
What visible unity means is that we accept each other as church as long as we fulfil the basic condition of confessing the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Savior according to the scriptures and living out that faith. It means that we participate in each other’s worship, recognize each other’s baptism (almost there) and share eucharistic fellowship – that’s where we still have a long way to go! Visible unity is working together for mission and evangelism and in joint Christian service – quoting again from the WCC – “by serving human need, breaking down barriers between people, seeking justice and peace, and upholding the integrity of creation.”
This is still work in progress. There are two basic approaches to achieving unity:
The first is to reach bilateral agreements on basic doctrine, offices, and sacraments such as the full mutual recognition we have with the Old Catholic Church among others. Next weekend a new full communion agreement between the Bavarian Lutherans and TEC be signed in Munich by our PB Sean Rowe and Landesbischof Christian Kopp …. It only took 10 years to negotiate 😊
The other approach is what we call multilateral ecumenism, between lots of churches at the same time. That is the main area of work of the ACK: Finding common ground between all churches in core areas of faith and practice, while accepting differences in secondary things. Multilateral agreements include the mutual recognition of baptism among most mainline churches, our Christian engagement for the environment as stewards of God’s Creation, our responsibility for the stranger, how we engage with other faiths, and many other joint projects. This is what Jesus means when he prays that “the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” (17:26) That we show that love and make God known through our faith and our works! Our unity flows from a common life that is characterized chiefly by love. Then we will be like an advertisement, inviting people to join in the union with God that is the ultimate goal for all of humanity.
The Book of Revelation is a vision of that ultimate goal. And the very last words of the Bible, from chapter 22 of Revelation that we heard from this morning, are not a conclusion, but an invitation. “The Spirit and the bride (that is the Church) 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.” (Rev. 22:21) That is our common calling as the one Church of God, to extend an invitation to all people to experience God’s love and to partake in the water of life that flows from God through Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. All our ecumenical work serves one purpose, that we pray together that ancient Aramaic prayer “maranatha,” “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” inviting Jesus into our churches and worship, and into our hearts and lives: “I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one.”
Amen.
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