Unity
“Holy Father, protect them in your name…, so that they may be one, as we are one.”
We talk about unity a lot in the Church. Our Baptismal service starts with these words from the letter the Ephesians: “One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all.” In the Nicene Creed, we confess our faith in “one holy, catholic, and apostolic church.” That’s a small-c catholic that means “universal.”
But the very fact that I need to explain the small-c in the Creed illustrates the problem.
On the night before he died, Jesus prayed this prayer: that his followers might be one as he and his Father are one.
Two thousand years later, we’re still working on that one. All too often, unity is more prayer than reality. And sometimes that prayer goes a little too much like this: “God, please help those other people understand that they’re wrong and I’m right.”
We human beings aren’t very good at unity. We want connection, we want to be understood, but we too often define ourselves by the things that make us different from one another. “He’s nice enough, but he’s a foreigner.” “Why does she dress like that?” “He’s a Democrat.” “She’s a Republican.” “I just don’t get it.” Politics, language, appearance. All these things divide us.
Smaller things too. What would happen if I got up in this pulpit one Sunday and started my sermon by chanting, “Rock chalk, Jayhawk, K.U.!” (I thought about trying it today to make a point, but decided I didn’t dare.)
And then there’s religion.
Within Christianity, we have Episcopalians, Methodists, Catholics, Nondenominational Christians, Orthodox, Pentecostals, Quakers, Amish. And then there are Jews, Atheists, Hindus, Muslims. And I’m leaving out a lot.
All these divisions aren’t just descriptive. They can be dangerous. Sure, it’s fun to root for the Wildcats and jeer at the Jayhawks. But when we join too many exclusive clubs, we wall ourselves off from other human beings who, like us, are made in God’s image.
This isn’t a new problem. In 1960, Martin Luther King said that “it is one of the tragedies of our nation…that 11 o’clock on Sunday morning is one of the most segregated hours, if not the most segregated hour, in Christian America.”
Division isn’t a new problem. But it is a problem.
The divisions in our society right now worry me. I want to take some sort of action to make matters better, to avoid the threats that I see on the horizon, but I don’t know what to do. I’ve heard some of you say similar things. It’s frightening and it’s frustrating.
The trouble isn’t that we’re different from one another. The enormous diversity of God’s Creation can’t be an accident. Our differences are a gift.
The trouble is that we move too easily from difference to division, that we too often see other people as not quite as human as we are ourselves.
I think this is the point in the sermon when I’m supposed to tell you how we can bring about unity among Christians, with peace on earth thrown in for good measure.
I really wish I had that answer.
I do know this. We won’t achieve unity by trying to shape others into our own image of who and what they ought to be.
We might make some progress by trying to shape ourselves into God’s image.
(Of course, Christians even disagree amongst ourselves about how to do that. I didn’t say it would be easy. But we can try.)
What might it mean to be more like Jesus, to shape ourselves into God’s image?
It means at least this: It means to love God and to love our neighbor. It means to be humble, to consider the possibility that we might not have all the answers.
But it also means to follow God’s will as best we can understand it. Keeping our focus on Jesus doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t act in the world. Jesus says himself that we remain in the world, that he sends us into the world.
When I think about how we ought to work for unity in these times, I keep coming back to words that Abraham Lincoln used near the end of the Civil War, words that aren’t from scripture, but that are a prayer. “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
“With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right.” That’s a pretty good place to start.
We’ll get it wrong at times, because we’re busy, distracted, wrapped up in our own egos and our own fears.
But we ought to avoid causes of division wherever and however we can. We should listen to people who are different than us. Try to understand them. And we shouldn’t shy away from the work because it’s hard.
We can and we should pray that God will make us one.
I’d like to close with a prayer from the Book of Common Prayer:
“O God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our only Savior, the Prince of Peace: Give us grace seriously to lay to heart the great dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions; take away all hatred and prejudice, and whatever else may hinder us from godly union and concord; that, as there is but one Body and one Spirit, one hope of our calling, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of us all, so we may be all of one heart and of one soul, united in one holy bond of truth and peace, of faith and charity, and may with one mind and one mouth glorify thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”