You Want Me to Love Them?!

January 1, 2006

This was my ordination sermon, based on John 17:20-26, and preached on May 23, 2004.

“I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as thou hast loved me.Father, I desire that they also, whom thou hast given me, may be with me where I am, to behold my glory which thou hast given me in thy love for me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the world has not known thee, but I have known thee; and these know that thou hast sent me. I made known to them thy name, and I will make it known, that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

Yesterday’s ordination and the days leading up to it have been an amazing time for me, filled with sentimental reflections of all that has led to this day and curious wonderings about what God has planned for tomorrow. That wild collision of past and future we often experience in the now of life’s remarkable moments. Our passage in John is such a moment for Jesus as he reflects upon the completion of his earthly ministry while looking ahead to the days that await his followers. And so I’ve chosen to take a detour into the text with the thoughts that have been flooding my mind and heart in recent days.

My reflections have taken me back to this chair; a chair from my kindergarten Sunday School of more than 43 year ago. My grandparents attended the tent revivals back in the 1920’s that led to the building of that church and as teenagers my parents played in the churches marching band where more than 60 years later they continue to be members…of the church, not the marching band.

I have such clear memories of growing up in that church; of sitting in this chair and swinging my legs back and forth, the bottoms of my shoes barely touching the floor; of listening to my teacher tell stories from the Bible while attaching brightly-colored felt figures onto the flannel graph board. Though I haven’t been in that old three-story building for more than twenty years, I could walk through it blindfolded today and find my way in and out of every nook and cranny because so much of my childhood was spent inside its walls. If the doors of the church were opened there was a good chance my family would be there. I loved church then as I love church now. I loved being surrounded by people who knew my name and loved me. I loved the stories and the music and the way the old wood floors in the sanctuary rumbled when the church organist hit the low notes.

It was in this old chair I first began to learn of God. I learned to have faith in God’s care and in the love of Christ. I learned to believe in the continual presence of God’s Spirit in all my days. I was taught all about Jesus and what it meant to follow him; of serving the church, of giving God the first part of every penny I was given or earned, of sharing the Good News of Jesus with others. It was in the church of this chair where I first came to the table, where I spent my youth in summer camp and on mission trips. It was in this chair and all the chairs that followed where I fell head over heels in love with God, where joyful worship inspired me, where community was lived out around me and where I first came to hear God’s call.

It was also the church where I learned how to tell the difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’, between ‘true’ Christians and ‘those’ Christians, and where God’s grace held against a judgmental understanding of God’s justice lost every time. It was also the church where I heard things and saw things that didn’t fit with what my heart told me about God. It was where I was given answers to every question and where questioning those answers was seen as a lack of faith.

Today I find myself standing in another Christian tradition, one that I have chosen, one that is authentic for me and reflects what is most true for me about God and the Christian faith. Though the distance is great between here and there, as is the distance from one edge of Christianity to the other, both traditions are a part of who I am and who I am becoming. I didn’t forsake one for the other but each has impacted my life and faith. Some of what I was given there I cherish. Some of what I was given I have left behind. Lest you think otherwise, this was by no means an effortless transition, moving from that chair to where I stand today. Theological tensions, warring perspectives on current issues, opposing ideas of even what it meant to be a Christian, all these fueled a religious battlefield that was fought in my own heart, and among my closest loved ones.

I’ve seen this clashing of ideologies and viewpoints continue to play out within the church in recent years. It’s a wonder that we who learned to play fair and share our toys in preschool now bicker over our ideas of God and faith so heatedly that conversations break apart into debates and table fellowship erupts into food fights. Conservative Christians slam liberal Christians. Southern Baptists denounce American Baptists, Mainstream Protestants criticize Evangelicals, proponents of infant baptism argue proponents of believers baptism, those who affirm gays and lesbians stand against those who hate the sin but love the sinner. And so it goes.

In the Gospel of John we hear bits of conversation and see story after story that emphasis what was the most significant aspect of the Christian faith for John and that was the incarnation of God in Jesus. For John all that Jesus is, is because God is. The story John told of Jesus is the story of God because they are one. Two beings in perfect oneness. And now in these final words of Jesus, this oneness is extended, beyond the confines of the divine relationship to all of us.

Unity isn’t an option for the church, a nice extra to round out the Christian life but it’s an essential component of who we are as those who follow Christ. Even while affirming their value and necessity and honoring the ongoing call to church unity, “being one” isn’t referring to ecumenical dialogues, joint partnerships or any human endeavor. In our passage Jesus isn’t addressing his followers and what they are to do. Jesus has finished talking with them and has turned full attention to God, and in prayer Jesus places the future unity of the community of faith, not in the hands of the community (fortuitous planning given what we know of ourselves!) but rather, he entrusts it to the care of God, because our oneness resides within the very substance of the relationship between the Father and the Son.

John’s use of Father/Son language throughout his gospel account has everything to do with emphasizing the intimacy of the relationship between God and Jesus. It’s a relationship of deepest connection, revealing the inseparable union of the Incarnation. Just as the opening words of John proclaim that “the Word was with God and the Word was God” so this prayer of Jesus’ builds upon it; “You Father is in me and I am in you…we are one.”

So it is that the church isn’t to mimic the unity of the Father and the Son, our oneness isn’t be like that the oneness that exists between God and Christ but to recognize that we share in the very mutuality of that relationship. We aren’t one with God and Christ but we are one in God and Christ, immersed in the very essence of their union, comprised of the very same spiritual DNA, if you will. That’s what makes it possible that at this very moment we are “one” with all those who have come before and all those who will follow. With our oneness rooted in the oneness of the eternal God there’s no limit to how far our unity may reach.

But what about ‘them’? Notice how even our language gives away our separateness rather than our oneness. But really, does our oneness hinge on resolving every conflict, patching up every disagreement, finding middle ground that will satisfy everyone? No. There are times when opposing voices must be lifted up to address what is unjust in the church and in the message it gives to the world. Unity doesn’t require that we conform or compromise our values and beliefs, it simply asks that we open our hearts to everyone, even those we don’t understand, whose theology rattles us and whose viewpoints make us shudder.

A story is told of an old rabbi who once asked his pupils how they could tell when the night had ended and the day had begun. “Could it be,” asked one student, “when you can see an animal in the distance and tell whether it’s a sheep or a dog?” “No,” answered the rabbi. Another asked, “Is it when you can look at a tree in the distance and tell whether it’s a fig tree or a peach tree?” “No,” answered the rabbi. “Then what is it?” the students demanded. “It is when you can look on
the face of any woman or man and see that it is your sister or brother. Because if you cannot see this, it is still night.”

“Being one” means we no longer set our vision in the intolerance of night but allow the light of God’s love to illuminate the face of each man and woman as our brother and sister. It’s not about loving because we have to love though our teeth are clenched and our knuckles white. It’s simply about knowing how passionately we are loved by God…love so deep and wondrous that the thought of it takes our breath away. And then, living in the fullness of that magnificent love we love ‘them.’ We love as we have been loved and as we are being loved at this moment, and it is that love, God’s love, that makes us one. We who have received all love have no right, and should have no desire, to withhold love from anyone. No one is to be left out. No one is to be written off. The German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer confessed, “I can no longer condemn or hate other Christians for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble they cause me. In prayer the face that may have been strange and intolerable to me is transformed into the face of one for whom Christ died, the face of a pardoned sinner.”

Unity established in the divine relationship allows us to live out compassionate consideration rather than antagonized condemnation with all believers. It frees us from defaulting to attitudes reflected in the language of “us” and “them” to truly seeing ourselves and speaking of ourselves as “being one.” We are already one, sharing in the oneness between the Father and the Son. Our call isn’t to create unity in some future tense but to live out of our oneness that already exists in God.

The repetitive message of Ephesians 4 removes all doubt. “There is one body, and one Spirit, one hope in one calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and one Father, who is above all, and through all, and in us all.”

And so we the church, arguing over doctrine, debating war or human sexuality or the reproductive rights of women or the headline of the day, who come to blows time and time again, lurching and stumbling like weary boxers in the final round, are called to lay it all aside and meet at one table.

Perhaps we will never stand at the same physical table and break the bread. Perhaps our differences are so glaringly opposed that we simply cannot, but before Jesus who is the Living Table we can stand, and together in his presence, we are one.

May we be one, so that the world might know of the love of God given extravagantly and indiscriminating to all; a love embodied in the life of Jesus, and now lived out in God’s church. May it be so.

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Posted in Christian Unity, Church, Public Homilies