As We Are One (Easter 7B)

 

“As We Are One”

 

Easter 7B 
16 May 2021; 8:00 a.m. Said Mass on the Labyrinth, 10:00 a.m. Said Mass with music live-streamed from the Chancel  
Homily Delivered by the Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D. 
at Trinity Episcopal Church
Ashland, Oregon 
Acts 1:15-17, 21-26; Psalm 1; 1 John 5:9-13; John 17:6-19

 

 

 

God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh.  Amen

 

 

We live in a scary world: pandemic threat here and the horrors it is bringing to India right now, evolving mutant viruses that might outstrip the immunity bestowed by vaccines developed a year ago, threat of war in the Ukraine, North Korean nukes, and increased tensions in the Taiwan Strait, aerial bombing in Gaza, a divided body politic in the U.S. where we seem to live in alternate universes from each other, all in addition to the normal threats of aging, degenerative illness, and death.   It is a scary world. 

 

The world’s scariness is the constant background noise we must hear behind the Gospel reading today, part of the last supper story told by the Gospel of John.    Here, the night on which Jesus is betrayed, he prays.  And what does he pray for?  For us.  He prays for his disciples and for those who will come to believe because they hear their words.  He prays for us: “I am asking on their behalf; … on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them.   … Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”   

 

 

He doesn’t ask that we escape the scary world.  He doesn’t ask that everything go easily for us.  Facing his last trial and torment, he sends us on the road ahead, knowing that we will end up facing the same kind of trial and torment. 

 

 

And he prays:  Protect them, father.  Make them holy.  Make them one.  May they be comfort and support for each other just as you are my comfort and support.  May they love each other as we love each other.  May they be one as we are one. 

 

 

I think that is why this passage, which rightfully should be a Maundy Thursday reading, is chosen for today’s lectionary, the Sunday after the Ascension and before Pentecost.  It is about us getting on in the world where Jesus seems to have left us alone,  facing the scary world that he faced.  It is about how we get by, how we find faith and confidence, how we don’t lose hope.  How we overcome our hatreds and tribalism, and even our petty differences and power struggles, and actually help each other, love each other, and comfort, comfort, comfort. 

 

 

In Luke’s telling in the Gospel and Acts, we are so empowered because of the Spirit that Jesus sends us on Pentecost ten days after he finally leaves us at Ascension, flying up on a cloud to a heaven we cannot see.  In John’s telling, Jesus breathes this spirit on us the evening of Easter when he first appears to us.   How we find faith and comfort and strength, how we find God present is told differently in these different stories.

 

 

But in today’s story, it is because Jesus prays for us.  Prays for our safety, for our good, that we not be twisted and distorted by the ugly things we see or do.  That we be one with each other and one with him and his Father. 

 

 

Church unity is a nice slogan and a beautiful ideal.  But how it often has played out in our history has been like this: one group or faction uses force to make the others conform to their ideals of the good and orthodox.  It might be brutal and ugly, like the inquisition or the religious wars between various sects, or it might be tarted up and prettified, like when Methodists, Mennonites, or Mormons talk about “laboring with” a disaffected brother or sister, “counseling in love,” that is, browbeating them until they submit.  But it is the same:  force and bullying to achieve the appearance of unity, a simulacrum of consent.   In the Episcopal Church, with our democratic forms of governance and decision-making, we pass resolutions in General Convention, winners take all and losers be damned.  We might not browbeat, but the invitation to walk out the door if you can’t get along with us is implicit in our ever polite, procedure-bound seeking of the same ersatz imitation of union and one-heartedness.  Sometimes I think we might be better off by drawing lots or throwing dice, like the eleven in today’s reading from Acts. 

 

 

I believe that one of the great ways to avoid such imitations is to wipe away in our minds the division between us and them, between the righteous and what John’s Jesus calls the ‘world.’  Curiously, unity is possible when we stop insisting on having things our way.  Remember, in Gethsemane:  "Thy will, not mine, be done." 

 

 

False unity is not what Jesus is praying for.  This is not what he hopes for us.  Rather, “May they be one as you and I, father, are one.”    Unconstrained sharing.  Heartfelt agreement.  Common ground, common life.  A great harmony of song, not a unison monotone.  A perichoresis, or delicately balanced dance of submitting and asserting, cooperating, and loving every minute of it.  “One as we are one.” 

 

 

We live in a scary world, one where charity has limits, compassion gets fatigued, and everybody at one time or another is on the make.  One where living the truth of God’s gentle love can get you hurt, and speaking truth to power can get you killed.    Through it all, Jesus prays for us.  He still prays for us, just as his Mother prays for us.  And so we must pray for each other, and for all. 

 

 

In the name of God, Amen.