prayer of unity, prayer for unity

7th Sunday of Easter

            Much theology is wrapped up in prayers.  In short, people pray as they believe.  What we believe about God comes out in the way we pray.  A child who believes that God is a kind grandfather waiting to bring another gift will pray something like this:  “Dear God, I want a new bike.”  A believer who thinks God delights in bringing judgment upon sinners may utter a prayer along the lines of:  “Holy God, pour down your wrath upon these wicked people!”  Someone who believes God knows our needs before we pray and cares for us before we do anything would probably say something like:  “O God, you know our needs before we ask, and you are more ready to answer our prayers than we are to pray.”  Those who believe that we are absolutely dependent upon God for everything, and that God may be trusted to meet our needs may offer a prayer that says, “Give us this day our daily bread.”  You can determine a person’s theology from the content of his or her prayer.  If you listen very carefully, you can even determine from the prayer if the one praying is requesting what he or she wants or prays instead for God’s will to be done.

            Now listen to Jesus’ prayer in our gospel reading.  You can hear that his will and the Father’s are one.  Jesus’ prayer both articulates and demonstrates the unity he and the Father possess.  Jesus does not operate from a divergent agenda for his life and ministry; he does the Father’s will.  He speaks God’s word.  Jesus acts as the One who was sent.  Here, in his prayer, Jesus puts into words what he is about to put into action.  In his death, resurrection, and ascension, Jesus will demonstrate his love for his Father, shown as faithful obedience.  In the same way, Jesus will demonstrate his love for the community of faith.  He dies obedient to God; that shows his love for God.  He dies on behalf of the people God intents to save through him; that shows his love for God and for the community of faith.  In his prayer, Jesus articulates his concern for the community of faith, generation after generation.  In all Jesus says and does, he remains at one with his Father’s will.  His prayer demonstrates his unity with the Father.

            Wouldn’t it be nice to have this kind of unity with God?  Jesus says we can.  He mentions it in his prayer, remember?  Jesus speaks about the fact that God had given him “authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom [God had] given him.”  And then he defined eternal life as knowing God, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom God had sent.  Eternal life means more than knowing about God.  You can go anywhere from Bible study classes to theological seminaries and learn what there is to know about God.  But knowing about God isn’t eternal life.  Eternal life, Jesus says, is to know God, not know something about God.  Knowing God means a relationship with God.  Not just any kind of a relationship, but an intimate, personal relationship.  The person I’m closest to on earth is my wife, Beverly.  It seems to me that to have an intimate, personal relationship with her there needs to be three fundamental ingredients:  learning, listening, and trust.  First, I have to learn about who she is from how she reveals herself to me.  She tells me about where she grew up and about all the things that interest her.  Next, I need to remain in communion with her.  I need constantly to be in conversation with her, not only telling her what I think and want and need; I also need to listen to what she thinks and wants and needs.  I need to hear what her dreams for our life together are now, not just what they used to be.  Third, I need to have sufficient trust that Bev wants to be in an intimate, personal relationship with me.  I need to trust that she is for me, and that she wants what is best for me.  Eternal life is something like that, to hear Jesus describe it.  It is an intimate, personal relationship with God.  The same fundamental ingredients for an intimate, personal relationship with a close friend or spouse—learning, listening, and trust—are needed for an intimate, personal relationship with God.  First, we need to learn all we can about who God is from the way God reveals himself through God’s activity, especially in his self-revelation in Jesus Christ.  Next, we need to be in conversation with God through prayer; but we need to engage in the kind of prayer that not only speaks but listens to what God is saying to us.  Third, we need to have trust in God that God wants to have an intimate, personal relationship with us.  We need to trust that God is for us and wants what is best for us.  We need to trust God enough to be willing to do God’s will, the way Jesus did.  Those are the fundamental ingredients for an intimate, personal relationship:  learning, listening, and trust.  Eternal life is an intimate, personal relationship with God.

            Wow!  That should be enough to unify the community of faith!  Think of it!  If you have eternal life and I have eternal life, that ought to make us one as we each share an intimate, personal relationship with God.  We naturally belong to each other if we all belong to God.  People who work for the same company belong to the same team, right?  Yes.  So they are co-workers.  That’s their unity.  Some may work on the assembly line.  Others may work in the office.  But all belong to the same team that produces Ford trucks.  Or think of the groups of people who believe in their candidates for mayor or city council.  They’ll do anything for their candidate.  They’ll make phone calls, pass out literature, put out yard signs, compose print and broadcast messages.  Anything.  They all feel the same about the candidate.  All on the team are unified in their passion for their mayoral candidate or their candidate for city council.  That’s how we are as the church.  The church is unified in that we all belong to God.  If we all have eternal life, we all have an intimate, personal relationship with God.  So then all in the church are unified.

            Sad to say, there are churches that don’t always act as though they are unified.  What happens?  Quite simply, they suffer from a kind of spiritual amnesia.  They forget who they are.  They forget Whose they are.  When you see factions within the denomination disregarding the unity of the church because of their zeal to promote a particular issue, you can immediately identify the problem.  They have forgotten who they are.  They have forgotten Whose they are.  Whenever there are individuals or groups disrupting the unity of the local church, it’s the same problem.  They have forgotten who they are.  They have forgotten Whose they are.  Oh, to be sure, unity is not the same as uniformity.  Our oneness in belonging to God doesn’t mean that we will be in total agreement with everyone.  There you are in a meeting.  Your task is to decide which books your group will use for Bible study.  The majority may vote to use the study of Mark.  You think the group would have been better off with the one on John.  Your difference of opinion is not a break in the unity of the group, because you are all interested in Bible study and being faithful disciples of Christ.  The group is still unified.  But let’s say that someone who voted with you began to undermine those who voted with the majority, saying that they should have voted your way—her way.  She begins a campaign to ridicule them.  As a result, the group begins to lose its focus.  Talk around the table and outside the building begins to concentrate on “them” and “us.”  It no longer has to do with Bible study and being faithful disciples of Christ.  This kind of behavior in the church serves to undermine the effectiveness of the local church.  The reason it happens is simple.  Whenever you witness disunity in the church it is because of spiritual amnesia.  Sometimes people in churches forget who they are.  Sometimes church people forget Whose they are.  Makes you wonder how the church will ever make it.

            Good thing Jesus entrusts the future generations of the community of faith into God’s hands in prayer.  His prayer shows that he trusts the future of the church will be in God’s care.  The life of the community of faith depends, not upon itself or upon its own resources, but on God.  The future of the church ultimately depends on God.  Why is that so important to know?  First, we need to realize that we did not bring ourselves together.  You might start a club that studies art.  You brought that club together.  But the church came into being because of the grace of God.  We’re here because of what God in Christ has done, not because we decided to start a new organization.  Our mission is not our own.  God’s work, which was given to Jesus to do, becomes the continuing mission of the church.  Even the message we speak is not our own.  We did not invent the gospel.  The good news comes as the result of remembering and telling what God has done in Christ.  So the message is one we have received, not made up.  All this points to the fact that we are not dependent upon ourselves for the life of the church.  We worry about how the Christian church will make it in a world of competing claims.  Jesus’ prayer articulates the fact that the community of faith, from generation to generation, is in God’s hands.  To say that the church is firmly in God’s hands for its future existence is no guarantee that this or that local church will exist in the future.  If a local church becomes unfaithful because of spiritual amnesia, it may lose its ability effectively to witness to the gospel.  The gospel has to do with eternal life, with an intimate, personal relationship with God.  If this or that local church diverts its attention toward internal antagonism, then it can hardly witness to the life our gospel calls “eternal.”  Unless.  Unless, within that very struggle, this or that local church learns that reconciliation is always possible through forgiveness.  Such a church would indeed be a witness to the nature of the gospel, for God’s grace produces new life.  That new life is eternal life, an intimate, personal relationship with God.  A forgiving and reconciling church would indeed demonstrate an intimate, personal relationship with God.  Our session at its regular April meeting celebrated together a wonderful retreat we had had the week before.  We sat around the table and celebrated the unity we have, how we enjoy working and being together.  Why does our session stand out as an example to other churches?  Because we try to remember at each meeting who we are and Whose we are.  We remind ourselves that we are in God’s hands.  The church is in God’s hands.  We need not worry about the future of the Christian church in a world of competing claims.  The church is in God’s hands.