Sunday Sermon: Make Them One
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Text: John 17:20-26
Series: “The Prayers of Jesus”
Some years ago, someone sent me a cartoon they thought I would appreciate, and they were correct. It was a cartoon that showed a notice that someone had posted on a church bulletin board, a notice that announced simply, but celebratedly, “213 days without a split!” To appreciate the cartoon, you’d have to have spent a little bit of time in a church. Obviously, the cartoon was a takeoff on those safety notices that get prominently posted in factories as a way of reinforcing everyone’s attention to safety protocols. But in the context of the church, the cartoon clearly was a dig at the tendency of too many congregations to fray and fragment and unravel and divide.
How does that happen? How does a congregation that starts out with a vision to be the presence of Christ to their community suddenly become a hotbed of conflict and discord, to the point that they bring nothing but shame to his cause?
The answer is complicated because no two churches are alike and the forces that threaten their togetherness are indeed “Legion.” But if there’s one common thread that runs through most of the conflicted churches I have known (and sometimes served), it is their attempt to locate their unity in everything but the one thing that can keep them together, which is of course, Jesus. No church will ever be able to hold things together by agreeing on politics or culture war positions or sports team or even theological viewpoints. The only way a church can rise above all of the things that otherwise could split it up is by grounding its life in Jesus, the one God sent to be the Light of Life and the Church’s True Head.
We’re reminded of that truth as we look at this last part of Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer. On this Thursday evening after Jesus had shared his last meal and his last teaching with his disciples, Jesus ends the evening with prayer. He has prayed for himself – that God would honor the sacrifice he would be making at Calvary the very next day and draw others to him and the life God had sent him to bring. He has prayed for his remaining disciples – for their protection and their purity and their unity. Now, he prays for those who will in God’s future come to faith in through the ongoing proclamation of his gospel – people like you and me. “Father,” he prays, “I pray…that all of them may be one. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and (that you) have loved them even as you have loved me.”
What’s interesting to me about this part of Jesus’ prayer is how it shows us that the unity of the church is not really because of anything we bring about. It’s not a result of some technique that savvy church leaders take their congregants through. It’s not a program or a plan. It’s not the result of some larger congregational conversation at the end of which the church takes a vote (even though none of those things is inherently a bad thing for a church to do). Instead, the unity of the church, according to Jesus, is more of a gift, a gift from above, a gift that comes about as a result of church members being drawn into the intimacy that exists between God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, who though separate and distinct persons within the Trinity were one in nature and substance. “Righteous Father,” Jesus prays, “I have you known to them, and (I) will continue to make you known (to them) in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.” What Jesus is inviting us to experience is something that is much more “organic” than it is manufactured or invented.
Let me explain. The image of a community of believers “completely unified” is like the difference between a living tree and a brush pile. Think about that. Those two things have much in common: they are made of the same material and they both have many branches. But a crucial difference exists between them. The living tree grew by a principle of biological design; the brush pile came about simply because someone threw a bunch of branches on top of one another. The tree is organic and alive. The brush pile is lifeless and meant to be burned.
No doubt this is what Jesus was getting at when a few moments earlier, he had said to his disciples in the last of his “I Am” sayings in John’s Gospel: “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; (but) apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire, and burned” (John 15:5-6). In other words, Jesus expects his church to bear much fruit and the only way we can do that is by abiding in him and experiencing the love he shares with the Father, a love he put on display at the cross.
What, then, is the fruit that Jesus expects his church to be bearing? Clearly, it is for the church to show this fallen world how Jesus has brought an otherwise disparate and dissimilar people together and made us one body. Especially in a day when so much in life is polarized and people can’t seem to come together over much of anything, for us who look different and think differently and come from different backgrounds to find a common hope and share a common life and to give witness to it in a compelling and contagious way, our unity causes the world to stand up and take notice and ponder the possibilities of what force keeps people together when so many other forces are at work to tear them apart. Our unity points them in the direction of Jesus and is the best evidence we could offer as to how he is indeed the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and whoever believes in him to that effect might have life in his name.
Philip Yancey is a popular Christian author. Many of you have most likely read some of his writings. Some years ago, he wrote a column in Christianity Today magazine titled, “Denominational Diagnostics: What I Look for in a Healthy Church.” In the article, he references a conversation with a pastor in India who told Yancey how so much of what happens in a Christian church in India can be duplicated in both Hindu and Muslim congregations there, except for one thing, which is to bring men and women together from different castes and races and social groups. As the pastor told Yancey, “It’s that diversity that causes the church in India to look like a real miracle.” As Yancey thought about his comments, he realized how much diversity complicates life much more than it simplifies it. And it is perhaps for this reason that so many Americans tend to surround themselves with people of similar age and economic class and political opinion and musical taste. But it’s church that offers a place where infants and grandparents, unemployed and executives, immigrants and blue bloods can come together as one body with one purpose. Yancey asks what I think is the question that Jesus was posing to the Father in his prayer: “Where else could anyone go to find that kind of mixture?”
So, what are you doing to help unify the Church in general and Mountain Brook Baptist Church in particular? How are you finding it possible to rise above the bias and prejudices, the penchants and the preferences that each of us has in order to come together in the love of God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ to show this divided world a better way to live? One thing is sure: we cannot change the world except insofar as we have been changed ourselves. We can only give away who we are. We can only offer to others what God in Christ has done in us.
You know, we could put up a big sign on Montevallo Road that reads: “76 years without a split!” Because we really haven’t had one in the history of this exemplary church. Of course, I’m not sure that the city would let us put up a sign like that. But come to think of it, we don’t need to. We’ve already got something in the front yard of the church that says it all. It’s the cross, which bears witness to the love that has brought us together, the love that has kept us together, and the love that will always make room for everyone God brings our way.
Believe it or not, we are the answer to Jesus’ prayer. So, let us go forth in his love that the world might know Jesus, trust in him, and become all that God created it to be.