16 May 2010
When I was in high school, there was song that we sang with great enthusiasm at church camps and conferences called, “We Are One in the Spirit.” It’s been out of vogue for quite a few years now, but those of a certain age have likely sung it or heard it many times: “We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord, and we pray that all unity will one day be restored, and they’ll know we are Christians by our love.” At that time I was not theologically sophisticated enough to know that this rather simple chorus echoes the beautiful seventeenth chapter of John’s gospel, where Jesus himself prays that his people might be one.
The unity of God’s people is one of those concepts that is both already true, and still not yet realized. We are one in the Lord, and yet we Christians are sadly divided about so many things. Here, in the upper room, at the last meal Jesus shared with his disciples, he prayed for this unity. That should be evidence that it is very important! One aspect of this unity, of course, is how different churches related to one another, and when we think of Christian unity we often think of our ecumenical relationships. But Christian unity is deeper than that. It has to do with how we are connected to one another because of Jesus Christ.
I’d like to suggest three different ideas about what Jesus means when he prays that we might be “completely one”—that we might be one, he says, even as he and the Father are one. The first is this: Our unity in Christ actually defines who we are. When Jesus says, “I and the Father are one,” you see, he is telling us something very important about his own identity. And in the same way, when we say that we, as Christians, are one in Christ, we are saying something about who we are.
Twenty-five years ago now University of California sociologist Robert Bellah wrote a very important book entitled Habits of the Heart in which he discussed the troubling ways that individualism is played out in American society. Perhaps more than any other society in human history, we have made individualism a moral value. We admire those who “pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.” We praise those who accomplish things by their own ingenuity or strength or perseverance.
But in many ways, Bellah suggested, this is a tendency quite contrary to the teachings of Christianity. Christ prays that his people might be one, and certainly this implies that our connectedness to Christ and to one another is part and parcel of what it means to be a Christian.
Craig Anderson, formerly the Episcopal Bishop of South Dakota, tells of a Lakota Indian woman named Zona Fills the Pipe. She was at a conference with a number of non-Indian Christians who asked her to share her story. She proceeded to tell them about her family and her congregation. One of this listeners finally interrupted impatiently: “But Zona, when are you going to tell us about yourself?” With eyes cast to the ground, Zona replied, “You have not bee listening. I have been telling you about myself.”
If we are truly one in Christ, who we are together is absolutely inseparable from who we are as individuals. Of course this is an image that St. Paul uses when he talks about the body of Christ. The ear, the eye, the hands, the feet—all are different and unique, and yet all are part of the body. One cannot even understand the individual part without seeing the whole. You and I, as different as we may be, are nonetheless so closely connected that our very identity is tied up with one another. When we are part of the church, we are not just members of a social club; we are members, one of another—and members also of Christ. It is who we are.
The second thing I want to say about this unity is that it is completely and wholly a gift. It comes from Christ. It is beyond human understanding or human construction.
Sally Field won an Oscar in 1984 for her role in the film Places in the Heart—one of my all time favorite movies. It is about a young widow, Edna Spaulding, and her many trials and tribulations in a small Texas town during the Depression. She is assisted by some very unlikely people. The film is a bit melodramatic, in that there are clear good guys and bad guys, and it is pretty predictable as to who they are. But the last scene is incredible. It takes place in the little church in the village. The preacher reads from First Corinthians on love, and then the congregation receives the Lord’s Supper—bread and wine passed up and down the pews, each person serving his or her neighbor and speaking the words, “The peace of God.” Incredibly, we begin to realize that all the characters of the movie are sitting here: the young widow and her children, all those who have helped her, but also those who have taken advantage of her, those who have terrorized her and her family. And there is more: also sitting is her dead husband, and right beside him the young black man who accidentally shot him and was lynched by the mob. All are sitting there quietly, sharing the body and blood of Christ as the choir sings, “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine, Oh what a foretaste of glory divine.”
There is a unity, you see, which could never be achieved by human effort or human desire. Yet it is the gift of Christ, the promise of Christ, the foretaste of glory divine. And isn’t that the way it is with us? We are different. We have different ideas, different ways of doing things. Sometimes we have friction with one another. Sometimes we don’t like each other very much. Well, we’re in bondage to sin, and that friction and difference is just part of the mix. But beyond it, there is a kind of unity that we can scarcely comprehend. Sometimes we can glimpse it, and that has to be enough.
But there is one thing that is certain, and it is the third point I wish to make. This unity comes from the presence of Christ. Where Christ is, there all Christ’s people are one family. And it is no accident that Places in the Heart uses the celebration of Holy Communion as a symbol for this unity, for that is precisely where it takes place for us. Where Christ is, there all Christ’s people are one. And we know that Christ is here, at his Table.
During this Easter season, we’ve been coming in a line to receive Holy Communion. A couple of people have mentioned to me that they kind of like it—and I’m not just talking about the altar guild! Others, I am sure, prefer to kneel. I think there’s something to be said for each, personally, but this week I was contemplating the question. I remember a conversation in an adult forum here, oh, many years ago now. We were talking about communion practices. One person had recently been to a wedding or funeral in a church where communion was served in this way, in a line, and this was the first time this person had ever seen it. “I didn’t think I’d like it,” he said, “but turns out I really did like it. I felt, more than ever, like I was part of a community, not just an isolated individual kneeling at the altar rail.”
A few months ago a man name James Parker wrote a reflection on standing in line in the Boston Globe. It had nothing to do with communion or church—or maybe it did. He wrote about how much most of us hate to stand in line, but he wanted to argue for a different perspective. In the first place, he said, consider this: standing in line is among the most human of activities, because human beings are the only creatures that think enough about one another to be able to wait their turn. “Other animals will cooperate sporadically,” he writes, “ . . . but only man will stand there meekly with a bunch of total strangers and wait his turn.”
Furthermore, Parker goes on, standing in line is a wonderful exercise in combatting “all that we deplore in contemporary life”—“entitlement, lack of manners, everyday violence, and now-now-nowness.” It’s an exercise, in other words, in remembering that we are not the center of the universe, that all of us are one before God, one community, one body, as Paul puts it. We don’t need to put ourselves first. Indeed, if we are truly “one body” than the whole notion of self is rather dramatically changed.
Christ’s prayer that we might be one was prayed in the upper room, the place where he first gave bread and wine to his disciples and said, “Take and eat, take and drink, this is my body, my blood.” He prayed for unity, and then he gave himself to them, to bind them together with him. And he does that still. “The bread which we break,” Paul writes, “is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” When we gather here, around the Table, we are made one—one with Christ, one with each other. And all, he says, for one very important purpose: “That the love with which the Father has loved me might be in them, and I in them.” The Father’s love in us, and Christ in us. Yes, it is indeed a foretaste of glory divine and of the feast to come!
Pr. Richard O. Johnson
Peace Lutheran Church, Grass Valley, CA
©2010 All rights reseserved.
Sources:
Robert Bellah, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (University of California Press, 1985)
Places in the Heart, 1984, written and directed by Robert Benton.
Story told by Craig Anderson, recounted by Bryan E. Shafer in a sermon entitled “An Easter People” accessed 5/14/2010 at http://www.rutgerschurch.com/Sermons/sermon050700.html.
James Parker “Standing in Line,” Boston Globe, 7 Feb. 2010, accessed 5/14/2010 at http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/02/07/standing_in_line/.