The Church Unified

Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21

John17:20-26

As today is Mother’s Day, as I was reading the scripture in John I was struck by the love between God and Jesus and realized this is a love that a mother may understand better than most. 

This is not to take anything away from the awesome fathers that are in the congregation today, but there is a bond between mother and child that reminds me very much of what Jesus is praying for in the Book of John. Jesus prays that all may be as one the way Jesus and the Father are one. When parents find out that they are expecting a child, both of them are equally excited by this blessing, and I know all the fathers begin to think about how to protect the child when they are born and what you will teach them as they grow up. For a mother, it is a little different. Everything she does now affects her unborn child. The food she puts into her body. The way she moves around during the day and night. The thoughts she thinks that can make her either happy or anxious. All of these things affect the baby growing inside of her.

Mother and child are one. What she eats, the baby eats. What air she breathes, the baby breathes. If she is anxious, the baby will become agitated. If she is sick, her child may be in danger. So when Jesus prays that we Christians may be one as He and God are one, it begins to take on a new significance to me.

It means that what affects you now affects me too. It means that what worries the person beside you should also be your worry. Christians talk about working together and that is very important. Without many voices raised up in chorus, not many will hear what we are trying to say. However, Jesus is talking about more than just working together on making the world a better place. Jesus has more in mind than all of us working to keep this church going from year to year. As important as it is for us to work together to accomplish our missions and goals every year, Jesus has more in mind in this prayer that we often overlook.

Complete unity is what Jesus prayed for all of us to experience. Unity with God and unity with each other was the ultimate goal. The definition of unity is being undivided or unbroken. Considering the way the world works and how each of us is broken it would make unity an impossible accomplishment. Why would Jesus pray for something so impossible? It can only lead to frustration and anger on our part as we try to achieve it. 

But the truth is that there are many instances in the history of the world where humans have been one in their purpose and goals. A perfect example was how we were unified when the twin towers fell and every person in this country stopped their lives to say a prayer, to send money, to donate blood, and offered their time to help look for survivors and clean up the rubble. It didn’t matter what church you went to or didn’t. It didn’t matter if you were poor or rich. It didn’t matter if you were black or white or spoke with an accent. Every person in this country was horrified and shocked. The whole world was horrified and shocked by what happened. 

Jesus knows that we cannot stay in complete unity all the time. That is something that will come with the grace and glory of God when Jesus raises us all from the dead. But just as we know that we cannot be perfectly loving all the time, it does not mean we do not try for unity. We strive to work together, we sometimes fail rather fantastically, but we get up and brush ourselves off and begin again. This world needs to remember what it is like to work together. It can begin here. In this church. With this congregation. 

What affects one of you, affects all of us. If one of us has a dream, it is everyone’s dream. We have young adults here that have fantastic dreams they are trying to realize. We have older adults who have ideas about what they want to do next in their life. We have children whose only wish is to know that they are accepted as they play while we sing our hymns. We have shut-ins whose only wish is to know that they have not been forgotten by the church they have loved so long. Each of us has dreams. The church’s job is to recognize and validate each of them. Your thoughts are important to me. My thoughts should be important to you, and together we work to make things happen according to God’s will.

We work together to realize each other’s potential. We work together. We love each other. We care what happens to the people around us. Jesus’ idea of complete unity was all of this and more. Complete unity may be impossible for us to attain every single day, but it is possible to come together in perfect accord during certain moments in life.

 The next moment of unity for the church could be this Amos Project, which is the idea of becoming a vital part of the community where both churched and unchurched people will know who we are and that we are there for them. This project isn’t just about helping our church add members because church should never be about something as cold as numbers. Church is the realization of Jesus’ prayer in John; a unity that is manifested through caring and love. No one is unimportant. Everyone has something to offer. There is no weak link for we are all broken in some way, but like these stained glass windows, we create a beautiful picture. We create a family, and this project will help us to become stronger and more unified in our mission as a church of Jesus Christ. 

God has brought us all here together for a purpose. It is our job to ask what that is and to be as one in our determination to fulfill God’s will for us. We are a family, and we will fight and we will laugh and we will sometimes like each other and sometimes we will dislike each other, but at the root of this family is the love of Jesus Christ and that is what keeps us as one. Jesus is the foundation of our church. Jesus’ love is the love that keeps our family strong despite what the world would throw at us. The Amos Project is another tool to help us grow our family and help our community in more ways. Jesus asked us to spread his message to the world so that His love may bring us all together in perfect harmony. 

May we work together to accomplish the goals Jesus Christ has for this church, this family. May we strengthen our bonds and grow in Christian love for one another. 

Amen.