The Promise of Unity -- Lectionary (RCL) Reflection for Easter 7C
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| Celebration by John August Swanson |
20 “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they 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. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. 24 Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.
25 “Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. 26 I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
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It's the Seventh Sunday of Easter but it's also the Sunday closest to the Day of Ascension, so preachers and congregations have choices to make. There are designated readings for both, so which direction do you go? If you choose Ascension, you have a reading from Luke 24:44-53 to consider. If you choose this route, you can hear the call to prepare for the coming of the Holy Spirit not many days hence on the Day of Pentecost. The
promise of Ascension Sunday is that Jesus, despite leaving the disciples
physically, is sending them out on a mission. Luke will pick this up again in
the first chapter of Acts, where he recounts the Ascension story, telling the
gathered community that when the Spirit comes upon them, they will be empowered to preach the
good news to the world starting with Jerusalem and then continuing on until they (we) reach the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). This text from Acts 1 sets in motion the entirety of the Book of Acts and that which follows from the story found in Acts.
The readings for the Day of Ascension give us one path to take, but if we follow the path set for the Seventh Sunday of Easter, we step back to the pre-Easter/pre-Good Friday context. Jesus is in the Garden with the disciples, and he's praying for the disciples whom he will soon leave behind since death is imminent. In this prayer, Jesus also speaks of mission, so it connects with the message of the Ascension. What we have here is known as Jesus' "High Priestly Prayer," in which he connects his vision of mission with a prayer for unity among those who are committed to his cause. To be honest, it's a prayer we have largely ignored throughout Christian history.
One of
the constant themes in John's Gospel is that God's glory is revealed to the world in Jesus. It is
the reason for the incarnation (John 1:1-18). This glory that Jesus derives
from the Father is given to those who follow him so that the world might see
and believe. If the world is to see the glory of God revealed in Jesus, then this glory will be revealed in the unity experienced by the followers of Jesus.
Unity
and mission have long been associated with each other. The ecumenical movement
was essentially born on the mission field. Missionary leaders such as Robert
Speer spoke of a unity that went beyond friendly relations between denominations. Rather, he envisioned a unity that reflected the unity within the Godhead, as described here in John 17. As Speer
declared: “You cannot express One God in a split church” [Christianity and the Nations, (Fleming Revell, 1910), p. 339].
My own
denominational tradition emerged out of a concern that disunity among
Christians inhibited the spread of the Gospel on the "American Frontier." Thomas Campbell, a Scottish Presbyterian minister, and recent immigrant to western Pennsylvania, issued his Declaration and Address in
1809 lamenting the damage done to the faith because of the divisions within
Christianity. In his tenth proposition, Campbell declared "That division among christians is a horrid evil, fraught
with many evils. It is anti-christian, as it destroys the visible unity of the
body of Christ; as if he were divided against himself, excluding and
excommunicating a part of himself. It is anti-scriptural, as being strictly
prohibited by his sovereign authority; a direct violation of his express
command. It is anti-natural, as it excites christians to contemn, to hate and
oppose one another, who are bound by the highest and most endearing obligations
to love each other as brethren, even as Christ has loved them. In a word, it is
productive of confusion, and of every evil work." Campbell offered his document as a solution to this "horrid evil," and yet we became just another denomination among the many produced through the ages. Nevertheless, while he didn't solve the problem of division with his proposed "Christian Association of Washington, Pennsylvania, he offered an important diagnosis of a disease that continues to
disrupt the Christian faith and hinder the proclamation of good news to the world.
Returning to Jesus' final prayer before his arrest, we note that he prays for his followers, asking that they
would be one even as he is one with the Father. He prays that they would be
one so that those who hear the word of Jesus might believe. In their oneness,
our oneness, the world will know that the Father sent the Son, who in turn
sends the community out in mission. In his address to the churches on the
Pennsylvania frontier, Thomas Campbell held out the premise that Christians could unite
on essentials, and agree to disagree on non-essentials (so-called human inventions), so
that they might be bound together in love. The problem is that no one has figured out how to fully distinguish between what is essential and what is non-essential. The Campbells (Thomas and his son Alexander) thought that creeds got in
the way. They weren’t opposed to the use of creeds as summaries of the
Christian faith, they just didn’t think they should be used as tests of
fellowship. Influenced by the likes of John Locke, they offered to the folks on the frontier a simple
Christianity that they believed was present in the New Testament. Unite on
these things and then one could move out into the world as one body and
influence the world positively on behalf of Christ. They looked to John 17 for
guidance. They believed that this was their duty as followers of Jesus to unite
with one another.
Since we live in an age that places increasingly less emphasis on denominational distinctives (clergy seem to care, but lay church members rarely do) it seems as if pursuing Christian unity might be worth pursuing seems less urgent. The issues that seem important have to do with to interchange of ministries and who can preside at the Table. So, perhaps it's worth looking back to an earlier time when ecumenism seemed to be more urgent. Thus, in 1938, just before he took the reins of leadership of the Federal Council of Churches (the predecessor to the National Council of Churches), Edgar Dewitt
Jones (founding pastor of Central Woodward Christian Church (the church I served for thirteen years prior to my retirement in July 2021)—then in Detroit)
spoke of the need to put Christian unity front and center, especially among the
youth. He noted that to this point young people were being trained as
“denominationalists,” and that had to change. He affirmed the value of learning about
one’s own faith tradition, but he also insisted that if this effort failed to also reveal the “evils of the partisan spirit,
the weakness of division, and shamefulness of competitive Christianity,” it
isn’t a truly catholic understanding of the church. He declared that “it is a magnificent
achievement to permeate a church with the spirit of reunion, to keep before
every phase of congregational life the unanswered prayer of Jesus for the
oneness of his followers, together with the inspiring stories of the apostles
of unity, the men who caught this ‘vision splendid’ and became flaming prophets
of a reunited Christianity” [Jones, The Great Business of Being Christian, Harper, 1938, pp. 88-89]. This message resonates with me as I participate in various ecumenical and interfaith efforts.
The
unity that Jesus prayed for on this momentous night takes many forms. It starts in the local Christian
community—our ability to share the love, glory, and grace of God is
influenced/affected by the relationships within the community. To what degree
do we reflect God’s person in the way we live together? But, we can't stop there, for as Luke Powery suggests,
what Jesus is suggesting here is a discipleship of resistance. He writes that “a
call to unity resists temptations to divide along racial, educational, socioeconomic,
and gender lines. To divide is easy. To be one is difficult” [Powery, in Preaching God’s Transforming Justice, Year C, p. 248].
When
the ecumenical movement was born at the turn of the 20th century the
focus was on overcoming denominational/theological divides. Part of this effort was rooted in the desire for more efficiency in overseas missionary efforts. But the underlying spirit of unity that reflects Jesus' prayer served as a foundation for these conversations (I need to note that there was also colonialism that infected that effort). Nevertheless, the desire to overcome division that was present in the twentieth century ecumenical movements and in the efforts of the
Campbells and Barton Stone at the beginning of the 19th century should still guide us. The concern isn't for uniformity, but a recognition that when Christians are divided we send the message that the gospel is divisive and destructive to the good of human life. We're seeing that played out before our very eyes as polarization takes hold within the Christian movement..While building bridges across denominational lines is important, as Luke Powery reminds us, the divides are even broader than this,
and the path to unity is not easy. Thus, the prayer of Jesus remains
unfulfilled, or perhaps better, unfinished.
The love that God shared with
Jesus and Jesus shared with his disciples is there for us to experience so that
we might express to the world God’s love for the world. In this God is glorified. This is also the foundation of Christian mission, for God is love (1 Jn. 4:7-8).
image Attrimbujtion Swanson, John August. Celebration, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56538 [retrieved May 14, 2022]. Original source: www.JohnAugustSwanson.com - copyright 1997 by John August Swanson.
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