Indwelling Unity

Before he died on the cross, Jesus prayed for you and for me. Just that’s enough to make you stop in your tracks. My grandmother prayed for me – especially during my college years! - and even though she died some time ago, her prayers continue to reverberate in my heart. Knowing that Jesus prayed for me and for you – for all the believers that would come to believe – knowing that Jesus prayed for us before he died – that rocks! And his prayer continues to reverberate in the life of the church. It guides the life of the church. Jesus prayed for the Indwelling Christ to sustain us and guide us. He prayed that we would know unity – with each other, with people who are very different from us, with God.

Now it’s easy for us to confuse unity with uniformity. But they are not the same thing. Unity doesn’t mean voting the same way, or having the same opinions. It does not even mean that we all like each other – although not actively disliking each other certainly helps. The unity that Jesus prayed for, and that the Holy Spirit gives, does not depend upon agreement.

The unity Jesus prayed for is a gift from God into which we are born. Because the baptismal waters – whether they are the actual waters of baptism in a church – or the waters of baptism through crisis - either way, these are our spiritual birth waters. Baptism begins a life time journey that begins in that big word – Change. It is a journey in which we pass out of the world’s ways that are centered in self-gain and self-protection, into a new life in Christ that is centered and grounded in the security of God’s creative and eternal love. Our unity is born in the unfathomable grace of God and it is nurtured through our attentiveness to God’s still, small voice.

But where do we actually experience unity? Here’s three stories of unity that I’ve seen recently:

First story takes place right here in this Diocese. We are a living experiment in unity that does not depend upon uniformity. Just ten miles away at Mission House in Seaside is a thriving Latino congregation, San Pablo Apostol, that does not look, in any way, like Good Shepherd – from the overflowing numbers of children, to the language spoken, to the issues in which people are engaged – and yet we gather around the same Table and the same Bishop. We began to build visible bridges of unity when Juana, an officer and long time member of San Pablo Apostol, catered the Good Shepherd Vestry retreat dinner with the most delicious chicken mole, and it is my hope that some of the children of San Pablo Apostol will join us for our Vacation Bible School.

Second story takes place right here through Bishop Mary. Through her and with her, we share humor, affection, worship and service with a conservative African Bishop and Diocese in Western Tangyanika and a high Catholic leaning English Bishop and Diocese in Gloucester, England. In these deepening relationships, we know the unity of the indwelling Spirit of Christ, rather than a more superficial uniformity of theological interpretation.

The third story is not a wow! kind of story – but an everyday, right under our noses, kind of story – it’s the Meals that Heal for those undergoing illness or emergencies, the I-Help Dinners for the homeless, the Prayer Shawls, the Women for Women project in Afghanistan, and a hundred other examples that take place right in our own lives – these are all testimony to the Indwelling Spirit of Christ that creates natural bonds of unity that simply flow out of our hearts. It is a unity that ceases to appear remarkable but it is second nature – or really, what becomes first nature – as we live into Christ.

But we have also, all of us, experienced disunity – in our own lives and among our brothers and sisters in Christ. Disunity is a kind of prison in which we are locked away from warmth and love and each other and God. What locks us into the prisons of disunity? And what unlocks us – frees us - into unity?

Three stories from the gospels point us towards the freedom of the unity which Jesus so deeply desired for us, the unity that arises from the Indwelling of His Spirit in us.

First story. Jesus was surrounded by people eager to hear him, eager to touch him. A gaggle of children arrived, their faces and clothes dirty from a hard day of play. They zeroed in on Jesus immediately, with that instantaneous knowing that kids have about who’s safe. So they jumped up and down, tugged on his robes, hugged him, and he hugged them back, tousled their hair, stopped what he was doing to play with them. But the disciples were more than annoyed. Jesus was important. Their relationship with him was precious. And so they shooed Jesus’ young friends away. They worked so hard to understand Jesus and to protect their relationship with him, and they completely misunderstood and locked themselves away from laughter and joy.

Sometimes, we do the same thing ourselves. When we think that we’ve got the real message and that others don’t, we misunderstand Jesus. When we think we need to protect God from how others relate to the Divine, we lock ourselves into the prison of alienation and disunity.

What unlocks us into unity? Jesus pointed the disciples to the openness and wisdom of a child’s heart. “Unless you become as little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven,” he told them. Children don’t try to make everyone think alike and act alike – they just know they need a third baseman! They know the unity that arises out of the wonderful astonishment of simply playing together.

Second story. Jesus and the disciples were headed towards Jerusalem. The disciples lagged behind Jesus, arguing. Later, Jesus asked them about it. Turned out they’d been arguing about who would sit at his right and left hand in the coming kingdom. They were locked into the prison of power – arguing about who was the greatest, who was the most important.

It’s an argument as old as Cain and Abel. It’s an argument we know. It happens between people, between races, between nations, between religions. Who’s closest to God? Who’s got the power to make things happen their way? Whenever we are under the illusion that our safety and our identity depend upon having power over others, we are locked into the prisons of false power. But Jesus showed the way to freedom.

Jesus unlocked the prison doors of the disciples’ arguing by getting down on his knees with a servant’s towel and washing their crusty feet. He didn’t argue. He didn’t try to make them different. He stepped out of the way, and did something different. He attended to their need.

Paying attention to others is a way to freedom. A way to unity. When we cease to compete for control and cease to insist upon our own way, we open the way for Love. Love, St. Paul writes to the Corinthians, is patient and kind. It is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It is slow to take offense and it is always ready to excuse. It hopes. It hopes and endures. We find unity on our knees, in loving service to one another.

Third story. Jesus was arrested, tortured and killed. The disciples scattered to the four winds, terrified that the same thing would happen to them, blind with grief and fury, ashamed at their lack of courage and loyalty. The disciples were spiritually crucified on the cross of fear, fury, and shame just as surely as Jesus was physically crucified on the wooden cross. And just as Jesus’ body was buried in the tomb cut into rock, so the disciples’ spirits were buried in the prison of disunity within themselves, disunity from each other, and disunity with God.

Certainly, you must know from your own life that fear and shame and fury can bury you alive. I do.

But the Wisdom - the Christ, that existed from before the beginning; the Wisdom – the Christ, by which all things have their being; this Wisdom – this Word – this Christ - cannot be silenced. And so beyond the torture, beyond the cross, beyond the grave, beyond the betrayals and the shame and the fear and the fury, God resurrected Jesus. And Jesus found the disciples again, one by one, out where they had scattered, and gathered them together and breathed freedom and forgiveness and eternal life into them. He promised the Holy Spirit to live within them, to inspire them, to guide them, and to bring unity.

And that’s what happened. The Spirit came upon the disciples as they prayed together. And when the Spirit descended on them – they exploded out into the streets with the great good news of God’s Love – a Love that no power on heaven or on earth can end. Unity in the Spirit was experienced as unity in a common mission to spread the good newsThe church was born.

How do we experience unity? In the same ways that Jesus showed the disciples – through wondering and playful imagination; through paying attention to the needs of others and serving them; through joining in mission to tell about the good news of God’s eternal and abiding love.

Play. Service. Mission.

Or as the poet Mary Oliver so succinctly put it: “Pay Attention. Be Astonished. Tell about it.”