Seventh Sunday of Easter
I’d like to begin today with what’s probably an apocryphal story a Church of Christ congregation. Sometime at the beginning of the twentieth century there was a Church Of Christ congregation in Texas. When people came to church, dressed in their Sunday best, the men would have to keep their hats with them in the pews, so someone suggested that they build a hatrack and place it in the entryway where hats could be hung. This led to division in the church, because some people did not want a hatrack in the entryway. The church ultimately split and it is said that there is now the Hatrack Church Of Christ and the Non-Hatrack Church Of Christ.
This story probably isn’t true (although in America anything is possible). But it illustrates the degree to which we have taken so-called religious freedom. In America, churches split over silly and not-so-silly things. There are hundreds of thousands of different churches registered with the federal government as non-profit organizations. In the course of my life I have had the privilege of attending many different types of churches in different parts of the country. One thing that’s impossible to ignore is that churches often take their identity by asserting what they are not, that is, they are not this or that. If they hold a symbolic view of the sacraments, they do so in opposition to those like us, who believe in Christ’s real presence in communion. If they sprinkle with water at baptism, they do in opposition to those who dunk. If they perceive church leadership in terms of laity, they do so in opposition to those who have clergy. If one group ordains openly gay or lesbian persons they do so in opposition those who don’t. If one group accepts inerrancy they do so in opposition to those who don’t. And the list could go on ad infinitum (or ad nauseum as the case may be).
Christian unity is no longer a reality, if it ever was. While we confess that ‘we believe in one church’ we don’t live it out. It’s become an ideal for us. Something to be pursued but not realized. The twentieth and twenty first centuries have seen all kinds of ecumenical conferences and conversations and even the establishment of the World Council of Churches, which some have not joined in opposition to liberalism. And so, we continue to splinter further and further apart so that we create confusion as to who is the true church. We are holy, they are not. We are saved, they are not. We are righteous, they are worldly. We are God’s children, they are doomed to hell. And so on and so forth.
What kind of message does this send to the world? Suppose you weren’t a Christian but wanted to study the Christian faith, where would you begin? Which branch of Christianity would you say is the ‘true people of God?’ Catholic? Episcopal? Lutheran? Reformed? Baptist? Holiness? Pentecostal? Nazarene? Church of Christ?
The independent house-church down the street?
I took the time to google the term “Churches near me” Here’s the list I got: Transformation Christian Fellowship, Heritage Community Church, Calvary Lutheran Church ("Great congregation."), Mount Airy Bible Church ("This church is a great place to start."), Damascus Road Community Church, Saint Michaels Catholic Church, St Andrews Presbyterian Church, Calvary United Methodist Church, St Paul's Episcopal Church, West Falls Christian Community Church, Church of the Redeemer (Gaithersburg Campus), Mt. Airy Baptist Church, Lisbon United Methodist Church ("Pleasant people."), Winfield Bible Chapel, Christ Church of Mt Airy, Mt. Airy Presbyterian Church (PCA), New Beginning Nazarene Church, Mt Airy Full Gospel Church, Mt Hope Christian Church, Wesley Freedom United Methodist Church, St. James Episcopal Church, Pleasant Grove Community Church. Which is the right place to begin? Which has any claim to be “historic Christianity”? Does longevity give this right? Doctrinal purity? Morality? Who is the true example of Jesus in the world today?
In this Sunday's gospel, Jesus asks that "those who will believe in me through [the disciples'] word… may all be one." He asks that we may also "be in [Jesus and the Father]” as the Father is in Jesus and Jesus in the Father, "so that the world may believe" that the Father sent Jesus. Well, that shouldn’t be too hard. No pressure, Jesus. And if we can’t laugh, we should probably cry. It’s a tall order. And especially so in these days of headlines about schism and disagreement and traded accusations of heresy. And, yes, accusations of heresy are very much alive and well. I recently saw a Facebook post which stated, “If your god allows gay marriage, then your god is Satan.”
Sometimes Jesus' words from reading are used as a finger-wagging warning – "Jesus said we were to be 'completely one,' so you better get back in line!” Honestly, when I read this text, I feel that all I can do is to sigh. How can we not sigh when we see the distance between Jesus' words here and the all too apparent divisions in the world around us?
We forget amid our dejection that Jesus’ words are not a set of marching orders. They are Jesus’ prayer to God. In other words, the unity – the communion – that we share is God's gift. Jesus asks God to grant it. Jesus does not ask us to create it. If we doubt our own abilities to achieve unity with one another in Christ, we can be confident that God will answer Jesus' prayer. Unity in Christ is not a medal to be won, nor is it a negotiated settlement achieved by some at the expense of others. It’s a gift flowing freely to and through us out of God's grace. That being said, like so many other of God’s gifts, it is a gift that must be claimed, embraced, and intentionally lived out. As the body of Christ, we are called to manifest in our own lives the reality of Christ’s prayer and promise for us.
In other words, this is GOOD news. This is a word of Good News. We can respond with sadness, sighs too deep for words, maybe even frustration and anger when we recognize how deep the brokenness is that exists between us. But we can also respond with wonder and amazement that God heals that brokenness and reconciles to God and to one another in Christ. Our call is to embrace and embody that reconciliation. It is ours to claim.
Not that it initially appears that way to everyone. We have been born into a complicated network of relationships in a broken world. And by action and inaction we continue on as if anything of importance was a zero-sum game: The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Good survives and thrives only when evildoers are punished or killed. The news that the oppressed will be liberated can only be bad news for the oppressors; the actors switch roles, but the script stays the same. In that world, a slave girl's freedom from the powers that enslaved her is bad news for those who benefitted from her enslavement. They demand that Paul and Silas be jailed for "disturbing our city".
What God did through Paul and Silas upended the relationships of slave and master, socially as well as spiritually. But what if the slaveowners had received this change as a gift? What Good News might they have experienced had they received this disruption of the old relationship of slave and master as an opportunity and an invitation to experience a new kind of relationship; a new kind of freedom?
Paul's and Silas' jailer did. And the night of an earthquake and a prison break became the night that he and his family became sisters and brothers with the former prisoners, together breaking bread and rejoicing. It's a powerful set of stories from Acts, in which division, injustice and imprisonment give way to healing, reconciliation, and joy.
These came as God's gifts, freely given, as are all God's gifts. Paul and Silas responded to grace by extending grace, freeing the slave girl, singing in their cell, and, when their jailer appeared to be ready to respond to grace as well, receiving him as a brother. Along the way, we witness powerful signs: miraculous liberation from spiritual and literal imprisonment, Baptism, the breaking of bread. It's a pattern that repeats itself around the world as the Spirit moves among communities: God's grace in healing and reconciling moves a grateful receiver of God's gift to extend that grace to others in turn. We celebrate that grace, remembering God's work among God's people and embracing the identity that is ours in Baptism: one Body of Christ, called to Christ's ministry.
God's mission of reconciliation, of making visible and tangible the unity God has given Christ's Body is not something in which we engage as reluctant employees who grimaced when we got the memo; It’s the natural response of those already joined together as family by God's work in Christ. Thanks be to God! AMEN