“That They May Be One”
John 17:6-19
The passage from John that I
have just read is sometimes called the “great priestly prayer.” It is the
prayer that Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before he was
crucified. In the context of Holy Week and of the behavior of the disciples who
deserted him, there is a sense of poignancy in this prayer as Jesus asks the
Father to be with his disciples and to continue the work that he has begun on
earth through them.
This is a prayer that is not
only for Jesus’ disciples, but also for us. Jesus has done the work he was sent
to do, and now must return to his father, and trust that those whom he has
taught will continue in his name. The prayer is not only for the 12 who walked
along side him, but also for the generations who followed, right down to us
today.
I’d like to focus our
thoughts this morning on one particular verse of this prayer, verse 11. Here
Jesus prays, “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so
they may be one, as we are one.”
“So they may be one…” When I
was asked a month ago to preach this morning, I read the passages that the
lectionary dealt us for today, and that phrase jumped out at me in light of
what is happening now in our denomination. For many years now, a schism has
deepened between extreme groups in the church. The most polarizing issue has
been the ordination standards of our church, especially regarding the
ordination of homosexuals. But other rifts have occurred about Christology,
that is, the understanding of who Jesus Christ was and is, and the exact nature
of his divinity. A highly publicized dispute surfaced before the last General
Assembly two years ago questioning whether Christ is the ONLY means of
salvation or one of several means as understood in other faith traditions. The understanding of Biblical authority is
another “hot button” issue in the church—what we believe the Bible to be
underscores our interpretation of it.
Now these may not be the
issues that inspire passionate dialogue around the water coolers where you
work, but these are the “hot topics” which actually have the potential to split
our denomination, and are also polarizing other Christian denominations as
well. The Methodist Church and the Episcopal Church are also in the news as
they deal publicly with these issues and more.
So I was particularly moved by Jesus’ prayer for us, that WE may be one.
The 217th General
Assembly convenes next month, on June 15, in Birmingham, Alabama. At this
General Assembly, which is the national meeting of the Presbyterian Church,
USA, which convenes every other year, elders and clergy from around the country
will meet to worship, debate, study, pray, and make decisions for our church.
One of the major
undertakings at this year’s General Assembly will be to consider the “Peace,
Unity, and Purity” report. Five years
ago, the General Assembly of 2001 created a Task Force whose mandate was to
discern a way to bring about peace, unity, and purity in the church. The Task
Force was comprised of 20 members, and it was as intentionally diverse as it
was possible to be—sort of a microcosm of our denomination. It included
ministers and elders, men and women, young and old, black and white, gay and
straight, northerners, southerners, easterners, westerners. It included
well-known activists at the extreme ends of controversial issues, as well as
people who had not allied themselves with either side. The Task Force was
charged with the mandate to develop a process by which governing bodies, from
the local congregational level right up to the national level, could discern
the matters that unite and divide us, and find a way to promote unity. The Task
Force was not supposed to solve the problems of the church, but to find a
process to live together peacefully.
The task force decided early
on not to jump right in and try to tackle the most contested issues. Instead,
they spent the first few years establishing a broad foundation of agreement,
and reflecting on what they could all agree. This theological foundation
comprises most of the 45-page report. Of course, the one very controversial
recommendation that is spurring most of the debate comprises about half a page,
and is usually lifted out of the context of the whole document. But that is not
our focus this morning. It is on the areas of agreement that I want us to
reflect this morning because the diverse group that made up the task force
found that the theological convictions that they shared were bigger than the
issues and conclusions that divided them.
The first point of the task
force report is this: The ground of our
faith is that God loves us. Surveys show that this is the most widely held
theological conviction of most Presbyterians. The God who loves us is the
Triune God, the God of Israel, the God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead.
This is the identity and the faith of Presbyterians. There is room for
diversity on secondary points, but the church is united in proclaiming the core
faith of God’s love through Christ. And it is through Christ that we find
salvation, not through our own merit or our own accomplishments, but through
God’s grace. This is one of the basic tenets of Reformed theology.
The action that unites all
Christians, not just Presbyterians, is baptism.
While most of the controversies of the church recently have been about
standards for ordination, of elders, deacons, and ministers, the report reminds
us that to be a member of the church,
one need only confess Christ and be baptized. And the sacrament that unites us
with other Christians is communion, a
meal we share together which unites us in our diversity.
These roots of our Christian
identity not only bind us now to other Christians, but also to Christians
throughout the ages. But the task force reminds us that we are called to discern
God’s will in this particular time
and place, and we must “seek the will of God revealed in the Scriptures by the
Holy Spirit as we discern our unique calling in these unique times.” This book,
the Book of Confessions, is one part of our Constitution. The other is the Book
of Order. The Book of Confessions contains eleven confessions and catechisms,
ranging from the ancient Apostle’s Creed and Nicene Creed to the recent Brief
Statement of Faith, adopted in 1991, written in response to the reunion of the
northern and southern churches in 1983.
In between are others, including the Westminster Confession of Faith
from the 1600’s and the Declaration of Barmen, adopted in 1934 by Protestant
Christians against the pro-Nazi German Christian Movement.
The Book of Confessions,
including all eleven of these confessions and catechisms which span almost 2000
years, is itself a useful illustration of how we are called to “discern our
unique calling in these unique times.” Scripture, of course, is the primary foundation
of what we believe, but the confessions which are adopted by our church
illustrate how the church has come to interpret its calling in the unique times
and circumstances of other ages. Our calling may be a bit different from what
other people and other ages of the church were called to do.
But the report also cautions
us “to resist the temptation to substitute our own theologies and forms of
thought for the reality of God.” In the face of persistent attempts to polarize
the church, the task force makes the powerful claim that “God refuses to live
on one side or the other of these humanly conceived boundaries.”
One of the things that
impresses me most about the report of the Task Force on Peace, Unity, and
Purity is that it was unanimously endorsed and recommended by this diverse
group. That is highly unusual for most reports to the General Assembly. There
are usually majority reports and minority reports. But this intentionally
diverse group, a microcosm of the Presbyterian population, showed that it could
not only agree, but also come through this process with mutual respect and
understanding for each other’s positions. Probably the most valuable aspect to
this report, more than the recommendations themselves, is the model that it
provides for congregations, sessions, presbyteries, synods, and the national
church as a whole. It shows that peace and unity can be achieved, and that what
unifies us is greater than what divides us.
As I re-read the Peace,
Unity, and Purity Report the other night, I was struck by the concluding
paragraphs. The report closes by citing the very passage we read this morning,
and I’d like to close with the final paragraphs of the report:
“On the night before he died, in the longest prayer
recorded in the Gospels, Jesus prayed for us, the church of the future, lifting
our names and our troubled church before God in prayer. And chief among his
petitions in our behalf was his prayer that we “may all be one. As you, Father,
are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may
believe that you have sent me. . . . By this everyone will know that you are my
disciples [he said], if you have love for one another” (John 17:21; John
13:35). How is the world to be challenged
to know the truth about God? The world needs not only to hear our witness to
the gospel, but also to see and experience the embodied witness of a community
joined in love of one another.”
“Jesus does not, it should be noted, pray that we may
all be the same or that we all agree.
Indeed, one of the most compelling reasons to continue to hold on to one
another is to persuade one another of the truth as God has given us to know
it. Another is to strengthen and
support one another, different as our vocations and life circumstances may be,
in personal holiness and in service to a world riddled with suffering and
injustice. Nevertheless, even as we differ and even as we contend with one
another, Jesus prays that we may all be one, that we might love one another
despite many differences that threaten to divide us. At a time when people
readily kill one another over their differences, a church that lives and works
for that kind of witness will capture the attention of a polarized world. What
besides the mystery of divine love could give us the capacity to love those
whose goals and views differ from, even contradict, our own?
The task force is convinced that the world is
watching the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and other denominations as we engage
in highly publicized debates. To be one is not to say that we will be the same,
that we will all agree, that there will be no conflict, but as the church
listens to Jesus pray, all its members are reminded that the quality of our
life together—our ability to make visible the unique relationship that is ours in
Jesus Christ—is compelling testimony to the truth and power of the gospel we
proclaim.” Amen.
* * * * *
Elder Jill
Fandrich
Westminster
Presbyterian Church
Auburn,
New York
May 28,
2006