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Reverend Timothy B. Cargal, Ph.D. Bound by a Spirit of Love First, a disclaimer: It has been decades since I formally studied mathematics, and so it may be that someone more up on the intricacies of plane and spherical geometry would arrive at a different solution to the problem I am about to put before you. That being said, I’m also quite sure that the solution I am hoping you will seize upon is both the most intuitive and quite likely also in fact the formally correct one. So, here is the problem: You have a large set of individual points—the specific number isn’t really important, but to assure sufficient complexity and also a degree of manageability let’s say there are a couple hundred points. These points are randomly arranged in the space provided, with the result that some are in clusters and others rather isolated but with no identifiable pattern among them. Your task is to connect each point with every other point using the fewest number of lines possible. How would you go about it? Well, as I have suggested, the most intuitively obvious solution to the problem is to begin by selecting one of the points, and then drawing lines from it directly connecting to each other individual point. Having done that, all those other points will now be connected to every other point by only two lines—the one that connects it to the now-central point and the line connecting that central point to the other particular point. Now, this is a sermon and not a lecture on analytical geometry, so why have I asked you to engage in this thought experiment? Well, the answer to that question is easy. The image you have now created in your minds (and perhaps the simplified version some of you may be even now sketching on the back of your bulletin to test out my proposed solution) is the simplest way to understand Jesus’ prayerful solution to the problem of disunity among God’s people. That answer is easy, but perhaps not exactly intuitive; so, let’s go back to the beginning to understand the problem as something more than just randomly arranged points. Our gospel lesson for this morning is excerpts from Jesus’ prayer for his disciples, offered according to the Gospel of John only hours before his crucifixion. Just prior to beginning his prayer, Jesus has told his disciples that the events that were about to overtake him are going to cause them to scatter in every which direction—much like those randomly arranged points in our thought experiment. Some of them might end up clustered in little groups seeking to support one another, but others are quite likely going to end up alone and isolated. Jesus’ desire is that they not remain in this condition. His hope and prayer for the disciples is, as he it expresses it to God in John 17:11, "that they may be one, as we are one." It is a glorious and beautiful vision of Christian unity, but alas—as one of my colleagues in the lectionary study group with which I regularly meet put it this last week—it is vision long on beauty but short on specifics as to how exactly it is to be achieved. An initial response to that observation was that after all this was a prayer; Jesus was asking God to accomplish what clearly we are incapable of accomplishing ourselves. Now, those of you who heard my sermon last week about how we often make the future into an idol can imagine what was going through my mind at that point. "Here we go again, creating an idolatrous God who will absolve us of any responsibility for either the mess we find ourselves in or its solution." Soon it was clear, without anyone having to articulate it, that we were all uneasy with the suggestion that the only thing we could do in response to all the divisions among God’s people was to trust in the efficacy of Jesus’ prayer that God would clean up our mess. Certainly, as another of my colleagues put it, in Jesus we have an awfully good pray-er working on our behalf. But what might the answer to that prayer look like? Surely the God of so much creativity who has brought this universe into existence, has made us with such wonderful variety and richness of gifts, wasn’t going to make us "one" through a process of homogenization that would transform us into identical automatons? So with some trepidation we pressed on through the end of the prayer. You see, even preachers can get lost in the tangled web of language near the conclusion of Jesus’ prayer. "As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us .... I in them and you in me that they may become completely one." It’s enough to make anyone’s head spin. What was clear to us, however, is that Jesus here envisions the key to Christian unity as being in relationship. "Well, duh?" some of you are no doubt thinking, "Of course unity is about being in relationship." True, but if you think carefully about what Jesus is asking for in that prayer, a picture begins to emerge that unity is the result of relationships being organized in a very particular way. And so it is that we arrive once again where we began, with that thought experiment about all those isolated points. Only now, these aren’t points on some geometric graph. Think of them as the myriad denominations that isolate Christians from one another. Think about them as interests groups within our own Presbyterian denomination who see themselves as in competition with others for the future of the PC(USA). Think of them even as the roughly two hundred members of Northwood Presbyterian Church. So much distance and sometimes even animosity between us; yet Christ’s prayer continues to be that we may be one even as he is one with the Father. And therein lies the key: That unity among Christians is only going to exist at all these levels of the church when we begin with the unity of each Christian with God-in-Christ. As long as we think we must relate separately with everyone else rather than to everyone else through God-in-Christ, we will never hit upon the simplest solution that represents the unity for which Jesus continues to pray. At the risk of placing too much strain on the analogy, let me suggest something more: All those lines that connect us each to God-in-Christ and through God-in-Christ to one another are the very Spirit of God that Jesus had earlier that night promised to his disciples. It is that same Spirit we read about in Acts whom Christ has sent that we might receive power to continue his work in this time of his physical absence. His work, after all, is most fundamentally the reconciliation of all people with God and thereby reconciliation among all people. The Spirit of the God who is love binds us to God and through God to one another. So, apart from geometric proofs and rather esoteric language about spiritual unity, what might this approach to Christian unity look like in our world? As most of you know, this summer I will be serving as a commissioner to the General Assembly. Just this week I received a mailing from the session of a church in Knoxville, Tennessee about an overture they have originated. That session was so concerned about the divisive issues that have confronted our church that for a time they withheld their financial support to the denomination. But they did more than just protest. They engaged the national leadership of our church in dialogue rooted in joint worship. They are convinced that there are issues about which there will continue to be disagreement. Yet their overture asks only that every vote taken by the General Assembly be prefaced by a reminder that we act "as sisters and brothers in Christ, sharing our common faith in, and allegiance to, Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior." It is a reminder that our unity with Christ is what unites us to each other. Our own mission statement, "We seek to know Christ and to make him known as we grow in faith, hope, and love," arises from the same realization. It is time we live out the reality that being a church means that we relate to one another through Christ, not through things that might unite or divide us. As a church, we are each and every one of us bound to God and one another by the Spirit who is love. Copyright © 2008 by Timothy B. Cargal. All rights reserved.
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