Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Easter, Year B
at Trinity in Clanton, Alabama
Acts 1:15-17, 21-26 Psalm 1 1 John 5:9-13 John 17:6-19

Beloved sisters and brothers, let us look to the Lord.
May only God’s word be spoken,
May God’s word be heard.
In the name of Jesus, I pray. Amen.

"If we receive human testimony, the testimony of God is greater; for this is the testimony of God that he has testified to his Son." That's what we hear in the reading from the First Epistle of John. And a friend has reminded me that thanks be to God that the testimony of God is greater – because we certainly have some pretty odd ways of discerning and trying to testify to God's will.

I think that the passage from the book of Acts makes for a pretty good case in point. The role of the Twelve is on one hand so very, very important that it just can't be left to eleven or thirteen; and on the other hand, the person to fill the seat left vacant by Judas Iscariot is chosen by lot. The judgment of Israel left to a couple of thrown rocks or bones. Sometimes, reading things like this, one has to say to oneself what might be the ultimate question in life… "Just what is God thinking??!"

It's a question that I've asked myself more than once, and I'm glad to say that it's a question that God fears no more than I might have the capacity to answer it for myself.

What I believe is that God is calling us to abundant life in a world that welcomes, facilitates, and spreads abundant life; and yet I pick up a newspaper that tells me about deaths in battle, in traffic accidents, in inexplicable illnesses. It's all well and good for John Lennon to encourage us to imagine a world of peace, compassion, and responsibility to further these qualities, but imagining it will only get us so far… "so", in this case, being a synonym for "not." Imagine all the dreamers, yes – but imagine what would have happened to their work if they had only stuck with what seemed realistic. And if we're really going to take Jesus seriously, we might want to ask what's realistic anyway.

… and speaking of where our dreams bump up against reality… church unity is a highly desirable goal and will undoubtedly be a topic of continuing conversation and likely some debate at our church’s General Convention in Anaheim this summer. Actually, it's more than a goal; it's a description, a word we say when we see people living as God intends, as sisters and brothers with any who will break bread and share resources with them. It's an appealing goal, and so a lot of people get on board with it without pausing to think about how they want to actually build a world, a network of people and resources, to help the Church move toward being what God truly intends for it to be.

Now, I know that this might be starting to sound like some kind of a "get back to work" speech, but it isn't. The reason rests in Jesus' prayer that we hear in the Gospel: “that we all might be one, as he is one with God.” The unity of the church isn't just a goal toward which we strive; it is a reality that we live into more deeply as we explore, with others in community, just what it might mean that we are children of God.

That's not just a fancy theological way of saying "Get back to work" either. What might it mean to us – to you and me – if we really took Jesus' prayer in, really believed that God's children are one because God is one, that the unity of Christ's Body is a consequence of Christ, rather than the end goal toward which we strive, but most often fail?

One of the main consequences of taking that leap of faith, I think, would be the dismantling of a lot of our excuses. Without it, we might convince ourselves that we can treat those around us anyway we want to until such a time as they ‘toe the line’ and thereby effect the unity for which Jesus prays in this Sunday's gospel. In other words, I'll wait and treat that person as a brother or sister the moment that he or she behaves!

And, of course, that path is one of madness. As long as we're waiting for everyone, but us, to meet some standard before we'll declare ourselves to be of the same Body as them, we're choosing the thankless and joyless task of monitoring those around us, and perhaps the world itself, for signs of dysfunction and misery.

It's a destructive way to live, in the way that our mind's “background processes” work. We are constantly on the lookout, making judgments and reevaluating them. The “search requests” we make on our brain most frequently become “wired” into the brain and the life of our psyche. If we call upon our brains several times a week, or a day, to figure out what's wrong with those around us and the world in which they work and live, it's natural for our minds to start performing these tasks in the “background,” constantly creating categories and placing people in them. A theology based on that is going to dwell on what's wrong with the world in ways that is going to use up energy that we could devote to participating in God's work of making things – all things – right.

In other words, we don't have to struggle to become a member of the Body of Christ; Meister Eckhart reminds us that we can't find God shouting and chasing after him in the wilderness, we have only to open the door and let him in, it is a free gift Christ offers, and what we do in response to that gift is up to us. The hard part of that oftentimes is that it places us in the company of people who aren't much like us, and the more differences arise, the more we stress about whether the relationship will fracture. And the more we stress about whether the relationship will fracture, the more likely we are to avoid a sense of loss both of relationship and of control by coming up with reasons why fracture and decay are inevitable. It gets in the way of our becoming close with one another and with God.

A friend is fond of saying that we waste too much time in church “building community.” Community, oneness already exists. We may not see it, may not act like it, but it pre-exists our recognition of it. This is the hope I take away from today’s Gospel, the hope I preach.

Me and my worst enemy are one. Jesus asked it of the Father. It’s done. Now, what shall I, what shall we, do about it?

So, what if we took as our starting point that we are members of the Body of Christ, not because we achieved a goal but because of who Christ is and what Christ has done?

It just might give us courage to be honest about our differences, since our connectedness with others is based not on what we think or what we do, but on who and whose we are.

It just might challenge us to search for avenues of compassion toward others; if we are by action of the Creator of the universe one with our sisters and brothers around us, we ought to get used to it, since our fellow members of the Body of Christ will depart from us only when Christ departs (that is to say, sometime between "never" and "later than never"), and our central task shifts from trying to find ways to figure out who should matter to us, to one of learning to live as joyfully and lovingly with those with whom we are, one way or another, journeying.

And it just might give us what we need to change the world, bring healing to the sick, sufficiency to the destitute, freedom to the captives, because as members of one Body we are called to witness to Christ's presence everywhere it is, and that's throughout a world being made new by grace, and called to respond in extending grace.

Thanks be to God!
Amen. Alleluia.