The promise of unity - and the problem of disunity

John 17:20-26

20 “I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who 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.”

The entirety of John chapter 17 is Jesus praying.   It’s often called the “high priestly prayer” because here Jesus acts as our priest, interceding to the Father on behalf of the believers.   The passage we just heard is the conclusion of this prayer where Jesus prays for those who would believe in the future -  that is, for people like us - that all Christians would be one.  And Jesus tell us why he prays for unity: because the unity of the beliebers in Christ will demonstrate to the world the unity of Jesus with the Father.   People will behold the oneness of Christians and believe that Jesus is one with God.  

This is a passage which rarely gets the attention it deserves.  The fact that this prayer, in John, essentially concludes Jesus’ ministry before he is arrested, tried, and crucified, probably ought to indicate its importance to Jesus, and consequently its importance to us.  But is Christian unity actually any kind of priority for us?  And when we consider why fewer and fewer people seem to believe - when we consider why we struggle to believe - do we ever consider that among the obstacles to belief is Christian disunity?  

I assume that the answer to both of these questions is essentially, “No”.  But this passage urges us to reconsider.  

The implicit claim embedded in this prayer - a claim consistent with the rest of the NT - is that to be be a believer, to be a Christian, to be “in Christ” is to experience a relationship to Christ which, while variously described, always entails a kind of identification or unification with Christ himself, and so necessarily all those who have been united with Christ must all be united with one another.    

In a recent sermon I spoke about how the way Scripture describes the experience of being Christian often seem to greatly surpasses our actual experience of being Christian, and here is just such an example.  I have to confess that I’ve often felt mystified by Christians who speak as if they have some kind of intrinsic connection to other Christians, that whenever a Christian refers to me as “brother” I don’t receive it as a description of a spiritual reality but as king of affectation, an insistence on applying Scriptural language even when it does seem to be true.  And since you’re already probably thinking that I’m perhaps too cynical for a pastor, I’ll go on to say that, I often don’t feel any particular affinity toward someone else who identifies as Christian, that - while my very best friends in the world are Christians (and those with a theological education similar to mine!) - the people I feel most connected to, the people who I feel understand me best, are often not Christian.  

I share all this because I’m confident that this experience is not unique to me.  Scripture teaches us that we should experience a unity with other believers that we do not with nonbelievers, and yet this is often not the case; in fact, the truth can seem closer to the opposite.  

This is much more theologically significant than we realize.  For if being Christian does not result in any kind of affinity toward other Christians, if the descriptions in Scripture don’t seem to apply, then it calls into question whether or not all this stuff we claim is actually true.  I think at some level many of us know this.  Isn’t it all just meant to mean more than it actually does?  What kind of transformation has actually taken place?  

The temptation when faced with these questions - at least for those of us who insist that Scripture is indeed somehow true - is to say that the difference Christ makes is real, but that all the action happens in our hearts and heads, that the realm of Christ’s lordship is interior, invisible.  If we can’t see it with our own eyes then at least we can tell ourselves that it’s happening beyond the observable world. 

Likewise, if we come across Jesus’ prayer in John 17 and feel compelled to take it seriously, we soon encounter the inescapable conclusion that the global church does not enjoy obvious visible unity - and faced with that reality the attractive option is to declare that Christians worldwide must nevertheless share an invisible unity.  This option is attractive exactly because it rescues of us from the implications of disunity and therefore requires us to do nothing.   But it’s very difficult to imagine how it could be that invisible unity is going to fulfill Jesus’ words and convince the world of anything.    

I think we we need to accept that Jesus’ prayer for much of history and certainly currently has not been answered, that the church is disunited, and that this is actually quite a big problem for Christians.  The question then is what to do about it?  How might unity be achieved?  What would unity even look like?  

One response is the modern ecumenical movement which seeks to find common ground with regard to doctrine.  On our website, in the section about baptism, we have linked a statement produced by the World Council of Churches in 1982.  We want to be a church that identifies broadly with the Christian tradition, and it’s encouraging that so many different churches could agree to such a substantive statement on a divisive subject.  But does endorsing the same statements and establishing formal communion, as important as that might be, really move the needle?  Is this really the kind of unity that might convince the nations that Christ is God?  Jesus’ prayer compels us to something greater.  

I’m aware that this little church might be part of the problem even as I hope it might be part of the solution.  All of us here were formerly (or even currently) part of another church, and yet we left to start a new church.  Now, obviously I think there were good reasons for doing this, but I (and maybe you too) should recognize that part of the motivation was to be free from others, to be able to do things our own way, and - maybe more to the point - free to be with the kind of Christians we want to associate with.   Rather than doing the hard work of being in relationship with Christians who think and believe differently than me, it was easier just to decamp and start afresh.  Whatever the merits of starting this community, it’s clear that maintaining unity was not the highest priority.  

But then that leads to the question, Was there some unity we previously shared which has now been broken?  And do we here now enjoy true unity amongst ourselves?  I’ve got many more questions than answers this evening, but a few things seem clear.  First of all, I hope that this will be a community that actively seeks to be in relationship with other churches.  Even that is easier said than done.  You probably feel like you’ve barely got time for this church, much less establishing relationship with others.  And I’m not going to lie and pretend like it’s fun or easy.  I’ve been part of pastors groups that I found extremely tedious.  It’s easy to feel like the effort simply isn’t worth it.  Fortunately, the current iteration is more enjoyable and, I hope, more fruitful.  

I also hope that we will be people - that I will be a person - who are charitable toward other Christians with whom we disagree, that we never think ourselves superior.  It is often easiest to be most critical of those with whom you’re most familiar, to set yourself over and against the other.  There may be times when we need to speak the truth about the claims of other Christians, but - as always - the truth must be spoken in love. 

But the most audacious hope is the one Jesus himself prayed for, that somehow the unity shared amongst us might actually witness to the unity of the Father and the Son, that the faith claims we make here might be substantiated, embodied - that we might be an incarnation of the truth we wish to be true.  While we should long for a global unity of Christians, and while there are things we can do, if seemingly token, to gesture toward our shared communion in Christ, really the oneness for which Jesus prayed and the oneness for which we ought to long is, in the first place, going to be realized - or not - right here.  And this means that perhaps our highest priority, if we take any of this seriously, is to seek unity with one another - not just an absence of division or conflict - but true oneness, communion, fellowship.  And rather than something that just happens to us by virtue of being Christian and showing up in the same place, it might be something that we have to work for.  And we might do that work in the hope that, the more unity we experience the more the world will believe - and the more we will too.