That They May Be One
John 17:20-26
"That they may be one."Words that are as important today, as they were 2000 years ago. I don't think we have any idea how important this can be.
This morning I thought I might tell you a story about a family from Maine. It isn't a particularly happy story, but it is one that is worth thinking about this morning.
This family had three children, and they had their ups and downs as most families do. They had their good times and their bad times. Times when they would get along, and times when they didn't get along particularly well. Sure they would argue and bicker back and forth from time to time, but they were generally a happy family. Their youngest boy was about 4 and one weekend in November there was an early winter snow storm. Early in the morning it started out as rain, but quickly turned to snow.
After it had been snowing for a few hours that morning, the family noticed that their littlest member was not with them. That he wasn't playing in the basement like he usually was. He wasn't in his bedroom, or even hiding in a corner playing with his brother's toys. And so they started frantically to look through their house, trying to find the little guy. They looked high and low, but he was nowhere to be found.
Finally they started to search outside house. This was a cold wintery day in November. They looked in the yard, and up and down the street in front of their house. They called the neighbors and asked for help in finding the boy. People started to rush up and down the streets of the little town, looking and calling.
Then someone noticed that even though they had nearly the whole town out looking for Billy, they weren't working together. People were looking over and over in the same places and they were missing all sorts of places where "Billy" might be.
So finely the town's people got together. They assigned different groups of people to different areas of town. One small group was assigned to the streets by the family's home. One group to the playgrounds in the neighborhood. One large group linked arms and started sweeping the fields that were behind the neighborhood that Billy lived in.
And it was there, in the late afternoon, as the sun was starting to set, that they came across a mound of snow that was just a bit bigger than the ones around it. And under it, they found the cold still form of Billy, curled up in a tight little ball under the snow.
IF ONLY. If only the people had gotten together earlier, if only they had started to work together sooner. Maybe, if they had worked together, instead of spending hours rushing around in confusion, they might have found the little boy in time.
This morning we have read about how Jesus prayed that we could be one. That we could be one with him, one with the Father, one with each other. And this too is a prayer that is critical, a life and death prayer. Jesus prays that we might be one in him, so that the world may know him. How can we talk of God's plan of love for the whole world when we don't love each other? Jesus came so that we might have life not death, and he came that we might have it more abundantly.
How do we hang together as a community of Christ followers? How do we remain as one with the other Christians in our community? Do we love each other? Do we link arms and work together, or do we run around in circles, plowing the same ground over and over? Or worse, do we actively work against each other?
With in our own church, our Anglican Church, we are facing things right now that are causing deep divisions between us. What are we to do, what are we to say, when we hear of these things in the context of Jesus prayer for his church, his prayer for us. Do we throw up our hands in despair?
I say NO. Our reading from Act's certainly point's out that even if things seem impossible for us, they are certainly are possible for God. I doubt that Paul and Silas thought things were going well, as they were flogged and lead to that innermost cell. When things look bleak DON'T despair. Pray and sing hymns!
We also need to look more closely at what exactly Jesus prayed. He prayed "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."
That is the key. When we work on our own, in our own power, when we try to come at this, in our human strength, so to speak, we seem mostly to fail.
But we are to be one, IN HIM. Let us turn our eyes, and our hearts to God. For in doing this we can come to see things not only in our own human understanding, but through Jesus eyes. And it is only in this that we can have true unity.
This morning I ask that we continue to follow our Lord's example, to pray for the Church. Let us, every one, pray daily for the church as we move toward the General synod this week. And let us pray not only for the Anglican church of Canada, or even the worldwide Anglican communion, but for the whole church of God, that we might be formed and shaped not by our own human agendas but by God. That we might turn and follow in all things.
God does not call us to all be the same. To all walk as identical robots, but to each struggle and come to understand what God is calling us to. It is in working together, and in recognizing that each of us has a part to play, that we can come to the kind of unity that Jesus is talking about. Paul talks about the church as a body with many different members. Let us remember that image, and the fact that all are needed, and all are important.
Jesus prayed "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."
Lord let it be so.
Amen
©2004 Steve E. Timpson
(613) 272-2360
P.O. Box 69
2764 Highway 15, Portland, Ontario
stimpson@ontario.anglican.ca