(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “How Unity Happens”, originally shared on May 26, 2022. It was the 218th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
It’s pretty obvious that the visible
Christian Church is broken. How can unity happen? Today, we’re going to find
out.
But first, we have an announcement.
I’m Pastor
David Berkedal and my wife, Rev. Sally Welch and I began co-producing these podcasts, blogs, and
videos, Streams of
Living Water, at the beginning of this global
pandemic, now becoming an endemic, and as we began to emerge into the New
Normal to share a sense of connection and encouragement and an opportunity to
reflect about what it means to be a Christian. Sally and I are retired
clergy with over 80 years of ordained ministry between us.
Now the
isolation we all experienced at the height of the pandemic is loosening up.
We are all
living under fewer pandemic restrictions, though rising covid cases in L.A.
County are a concern and we must be vigilant.
Most
churches have now gone back to some provisions for physically present worship
and Christian community life, along with the necessary restrictions in place
for the sake of others.
I’ve been
leading worship and preaching at different churches on Sundays. I will be
preaching every Sunday at the same church, St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in
Monterey Park, plus I will be working there a few hours every week starting
on June 1st. Sally will be taking up a more active schedule as a
docent at the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance in L.A. at the same
time.
Therefore,
we will go from two videos, podcasts, and blogs each week to one starting in
June. The one video will be moving to Wednesdays, still at the same times:
11:15 a.m. on the “Streams of Living Water” Facebook page, at 11:30 a.m. on the
David Berkedal Facebook page, and at 12 noon on our YouTube channel, “Streams
of Living Water”, with the podcast and blog to follow.
We hope
that videos, podcasts and/or blogs have been helpful to you, and we look
forward to continuing our service to you as we move forward into whatever comes.
Now back to how Christian unity happens.
All
Christians are one in the living relationship with the one true living God that
we share. That is something that we receive as a gift, it’s not something we
achieve through our effort.
All
Christians know that our visible disunity is a challenge to our presenting a
credible witness to the world.
How do
we overcome that? Some denominations, like the Christian Church (Disciples of
Christ), my wife Sally’s denomination, came into being as a means to draw
diverse Christian denominations together. It was also a principle organizer of
both the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches. And
they have produced five presidents of the United States!
Our
challenge is how to make the unity that we already have as a gift from God into
something that the world can see.
Have you ever worshiped 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?
Some
have taken the approach that doctrine divides, but service unites. But unless
we have doctrinal integrity, we are just social service agencies using religious
language.
Some say
that everything is religion, that all religions point to the same God, and that
all truth is relative to what a person chooses to believe. But that would make
religion something that is human made and therefore something human beings can
change to fit their perceived needs.
Christians believe that Christianity is not so much a religion, and
certainly not that kind of a religion, but a living relationship with the one
true living God.
That’s
what Jesus points to in the classic Christian Unity text and, I think, is a key
to understanding how unity happens. It’s from Jesus’ prayer at the Last Supper
in 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
key to understanding these words comes in the very first verse:
20 “I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who
believe in me through their word,
That is, unity can only
come if there are things that are not united. Unity comes in the fulfilment of
our common purpose to lead those outside the Body of Christ to receive a living
relationship of faith from God through our word.
Our purpose is to produce
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, those who believe in Christ through the word of his faithful
people.
Our unity comes when we
live the transforming power of the Holy Spirit within us. We are like spokes on
a wheel. Christ is the hub of that wheel. The closer we get to Christ, the
closer we get to one another. The farther we are from Christ, the farther we
are from one another.
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!
I went to seminary after
college at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley. There were seven
other seminaries in the same area, on the north side of the University campus,
an elevated area some referred to as “Holy Hill”. When the seven seminaries
organized into The Graduate Theological Union, to share resources and
world-class professors, it was feared that there would be a loss of
denominational among the students. Just the opposite happened.
If a, say, Lutheran
student is sitting in, say, a class on Wisdom Literature in the Bible at the
Jesuit seminary and the professors asks, “Berkedal, what do Lutherans make of
this text?” how do you think you would feel if you didn’t know? You’d feel
pretty embarrassed! Ahh, answering for a friend. 😊
But it also gave us an
appreciation for the breadth and depth of the faith of our fellow students,
fellow members of the Body of Christ.
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 do the opposite of pulling back. Now is the time to recognize the
faith that draws us together and share the hope that is in us with the same
voice, the voice of the Holy Spirit at work to define us from within, the
Streams of Living Water, gushing up unto eternal life.
That is how
unity happens. We need to listen to the voice of the Spirit within us all and
be the Body of Christ, fully praising God for what we have been given and
building something visible, by the grace of God, for the sake of the world.
