(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Do What You Will”,
originally shared on May 28, 2025. It was the 361st video for our YouTube Channel, Streams
of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my
wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
What is the path to Christian unity? It’s the path less taken. Today,
we’re going to find out what it is.
James and Nicole took us on
paths that were either new or unknown to us, sometimes requiring us to walk
single file, but giving us a greater sense of the garden’s native and natural
beauty than the broader roads and the paved paths that we had walked for many
years and which had given us another view of the garden that we had begun to
associate with all it had to offer.
The bulk of the Gospel reading
that will be shared in the vast majority of churches throughout the world this
coming Sunday, John 17:20-26, takes us on a broad and familiar path that
gives a common view of Christian unity.
That is the broad path where people
routinely quote this text as being about visible Church unity, where Jesus
prays for all denominations to be one church, that we are to work for
this unity as a visible expression of the Body of Christ, and they are wrong.
There is another path in this
text, a narrow one where we sometimes walk single-file on a narrower path, but
one where we are shown the same native and natural beauty of a common
relationship with the one true living God together.
I saw a story on the news the
other day about a group of 6th grade boarding school students who were
asked to video-record questions for their future selves, and then those recordings
were played back to them when they were in 12th grade and about to
graduate. It was time traveling, but it took place in real time. 😊
It made me wonder what
questions we might invite our 6th graders, or even our Confirmation
Class students, to ask of their future selves? Have you grown in your Christian
faith? Do you think about it at all? Who have you told that you are a Christian?
How has faith changed you? What have you done with the faith that was given to
you?
How would we answer
those questions? What questions would you ask of your future self?
Would one be “What is the path
to Christian unity?” Maybe. Maybe not. But it was one that Jesus answered on the
day we call Maundy Thursday, during the Last Supper. Jesus thought that it was
important enough that he talks about it at the end of what is called Jesus’ “High Priestly Prayer” within his
“Fairwell Discourse”.
It
begins in this week’s Gospel reading, in John 17:20-21,
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.
Jesus, in his
final hours, prays for us. He prays for those who believe in him through
the witness of his first disciples. Those people are us!
And what does
he pray for? He prays for more than cooperation. He prays that we may all be
one. How can this happen?
Jesus says
that unity is given to us by recognizing the common relationship that we have
as a result of our common experience of the presence and power of the Holy
Spirit. Christian unity is a unity of a transformational relationship. It
comes by a relationship of presence within us, in all of us, just as God the
Father is in Jesus the Son, and as Jesus the Son is in God the Father.
Why does Jesus
pray that this might happen? It is so that our witness is credible, so
that the world may believe that Jesus is God.
The world sees
our disunity and conflict and it diminishes our credibility. Nowhere is this
seen more plainly today than in Ukraine, where the Russian Orthodox patriarch
declared the Russian invasion to be a holy war against unwanted Western
influence, bringing disaster to the Russian Orthodox people living in Ukraine,
and driving them into another denomination, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. How
can we overcome this?
Jesus
continues in John 17:22-23.
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.
This unity
among Christians of which Jesus speaks is not something that we can achieve
by ourselves. It’s something that we can only receive from God. We have
been given everything we need to be completely one.
The irony
of these words of Jesus is that they were the last words said to his disciples
before they went to the Mount of Olives and Judas betrayed him.
Yet, Jesus has
given us the same glory that he first received from God the Father. Why? Again,
a pragmatic reason: so that the world may know that God the Father has sent God
the Son, God’s self, and has loved us even as Jesus Christ, the Son, has loved
us. Selflessly. Sacrificially. For us, unity is a means, not an end.
No love can be
purer. Jesus explains this in verse 24,
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.
The glory of
God has been known in the world since its foundation. Jesus is God and Jesus
has revealed his glory to us and we are to reveal it to the world. How does
this happen? We see how it happens in verses 25-26,
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 “name”, in Bible times, was believed to carry the true self of the
person or thing that is named. When Jesus speaks of making the name of God
known, he is speaking of having made God’s true self known. He adds that
he also will make it known in his coming torture and death on the cross.
Why? So that the love with which God the Father has loved Jesus, the
Son, may be in us.
That
is the nature of our unity. God’s true self is seen in God’s essence: in his sacrificial
love seen most clearly at the cross.
That’s why Augustine of Hippo,
aka St. Augustine, could say, “Love God, and do what you will.”
If we love God, we will
naturally want to do what God wants. We know that it is what’s best for
us and for the world and, together, God has made us into The Church through our
common, God-given, relationship with God and with one another.
All who believe and are
baptised have received all the gifts necessary to be member of the one true
Christian Church. We are the Body of Christ. The name on the door matters, but
it is secondary to being The Christian Church, the creation of God.
It is that transformational love of God at work in all of us. Roman
Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants. It doesn’t require visible unity for this
unity to exist. It is essential to who we are.
“The Body of Christ” is the
Bible’s main metaphor for the Church. Christ is the head of the Church and each
member contributes to the whole. Paul writes, in 1 Corinthians 12:12-14,
12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members
of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For in the one
Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we
were all made to drink of one Spirit.
14 Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many.
Have you ever thought about the
fact that we don’t confess our belief in our churches or even our denominations
in our creeds?
That’s why the Apostles’ Creed
and the Nicene Creed that we confess during worship services are called the
Ecumenical Creeds. They are a statement of the core beliefs of the Christian
Church, the one we refer to as the “one holy catholic and apostolic church” in
the Nicene Creed and “the holy catholic church” in the Apostles’ Creed.
I did a funeral once where the
director told me afterward that he thought I had picked up the wrong hymnal
when he heard me lead the word “catholic” during the service.
The word “catholic” means
“universal”. Some versions of the creeds offer the word “Christian” as an
alternative. The Roman Catholic church is a denomination, named when there was
only one Christian church on earth.
But now, there are lots of different kinds of
visible churches. The visible Christian Church is divided, but that could be a good
thing.
Look at countries where they have one national state church. The only
option is “Take it or leave it”. And guess what? Many people have left it. In
some places, it means they get a tax break! 😊
Your choice in the United
States is take it or go to another church. Or start your own church. This has
provided a rich diversity of Christian life here.
In fact, having many Christian
denominations has produced a religious vitality in the United States that is
rarely duplicated anywhere else in the world. It takes all kinds of churches to reach all kinds of people.
How do we live as the Body of
Christ from the inside out?
One of the exercises I had my
confirmation students to do is to imagine that they had a computer monitor on
the top of their head and that everything they thought, all day, would be shown
there. Would they mind?
Everyone minded! 😊
We are sinners. Being a
Christian doesn’t mean that we are now free from sin. Even the Church needs
reformation every once and awhile.
But, as 16th century
Church reformer Martin Luther said, “You can't stop the birds from flying over
your head, but you can stop them from building a nest in your hair.”
Luther said that we are at the
same time saints and sinners. We sin, but we are made saints by God’s grace
through faith and the forgiveness of sin. We are transformed as we grow closer
to Jesus. All of us.
We aren’t the light but we are made
new daily, and we strive each day to be better reflectors of the light.
We are like spokes on a wheel
with Jesus as its hub. The closer we get to Jesus, the closer we get to each
other. The farther we get from Jesus, the farther we get from each other.
I imagine that you pass lots of other churches on your way to the one
where you worship. There’s a Presbyterian one, and a Baptist one, and a
Methodist one, and a generic one, and a Pentecostal one, and a Roman Catholic
one, and another Lutheran one, and a Christian Church (Disciples of
Christ)/United Church of Christ one, and a Nazarene one, and lots of different
kinds of Orthodox ones and lots and lots of other ones.
We may know members of other churches. Our friends, family members,
co-workers and neighbors may be members of other churches.
But we who are Christians have many more things in common than things
that divide us. Sally and I found this in each other when we met after being
assigned from our two denominations (My American Lutheran and her Christian
Church (Disciples of Christ)/United Church of Christ) to an ecumenical group
helping churches work together in common ministries.
Have you ever worshipped in a church other than your own, in another
country than your own, or in another language than your own? The presence of
the Holy Spirit is manifest, even if everything else about the service is
unfamiliar. Sometimes it even overcomes our resistance to what is not our own
but is part of the Body of Christ.
How does that happen?
Christians believe that Christianity is not so much a religion as a
living relationship with the one true living God.
The key to understanding these words comes in the very first verse of
this week’s Gospel reading, in John 17:20,
20 “I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf
of those who believe in me through their word,
Our common purpose
is to make Christians and point them to a common unity in Jesus Christ through
the Holy Spirit.
How does that
happen?
By far, most
people come to faith through the testimony of a friend or a relative, a
credible witness, those who believe in Christ through the word of his faithful
people. Our testimony can be, “Why I became a Christian”, or “Why I remain a
Christian”. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy or dramatic.
A very high
percentage of Christians come to Christ before their 18th birthday,
because of a credible witness from those who believe in Christ through the word
of his faithful people, the Body of Christ.
The Body of
Christ has many members, but Christ is the head of the Body. There is a
diversity of demographics and denominations in that body, and we’re all going
to be together in heaven, so now it the time to embody what has already begun
in our baptism. We are a new creation. We have been born again. Our eternal
life has already started. Let’s live that unity now!
It is tempting, during periods of stress such as the world is living in
right now, for various social and political groups to pull back, throw up
barriers, and defend who they are.
We in the Church should be
doing the opposite of pulling back. Now is the time to reach out, to
recognize the faith that draws us together and to share the hope that is in us
with one voice.
Jesus prayed for us at
the beginning of this week’s Gospel reading, in John 17:20-21a,
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.
We are Christians because of an
unbroken string of witnesses beginning from that moment and continuing to
today. That is how unity happens. We listen to the voice of the Spirit within
us all and we are the Body of Christ through a living common relationship
with the one true living God, fully praising God for what we have been given
and then being something visible, by the grace of God, sharing our own witness for
the sake of those who don’t know.
The path to Christian unity isn’t in the things that we do, but in being who we have been made to be in Jesus Christ.
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