Love Never Gives Up

The scriptures referred to are Isaiah 65:1-9.

You never know where a good idea will come from. It's one of the reasons that I often refer to pop culture. Plus I am a big geek. But ever so often you will find a big truth embedded in something that was made to be merely entertaining. There is a great line at the end of the Tina Fey film Whiskey Tango Foxtrot that I can never accurately quote in a sermon but which memorably encapsulates the way to confront a major setback and move on. (“Sometimes you just have to embrace the suck and move the #%$& forward.”) There was a very shrewd insight into one of the key problems of our legal system that I found in a Spiderman comic. And not the comic book but the abysmal daily newspaper strip. Spiderman tells a lawyer that we need to stop treating our justice system like a game where rules and technicalities and one side winning count more than finding the truth and doing justice. Doctor Who diagnosed the abiding problem of computers way back in the 1970s. Namely that computers are just “sophisticated idiots.” I love these throwaway insights dropped inconspicuously into media products that never pretended to be great literature.

It's much the same way that kids and drunks will occasionally utter the truth offhandedly, or a supposedly uneducated man will put his finger on a major problem the experts can't see. Sometimes it is a crucial question that comes from a surprising source. Last week I was standing and gathering my cane and clear plastic bag, containing my Bible and communion kit, when an inmate came up and asked me a question. (Some people always wait until I am obviously getting ready to leave for another unit in the jail before approaching me and asking for something, no matter how long I was sitting and talking to and praying with anyone who came over.) Anyway he wanted to ask me about Noah and the ark. Usually I love getting into these Bible discussions but it was less than 10 minutes till lockdown and I had a rosary to deliver in the adjoining unit before the inmates have to go back to their bunks and I have to leave the secure envelope of the jail proper. But his question made me stop: If God was so upset with all the evil in the world, why did he save Noah and his family? They weren't perfect. Why not just wipe everyone out and start over? I stammered out the best answer I could and then said we'd talk about it next week. But the question has stuck with me. And Lo! And Behold! Today's Old Testament passage touches on something similar.

Even without any background information you can see that God is not happy with his people. They are arrogant and “holier than thou” (v.5) despite the fact that they are engaged in idolatry and occult practices and violating God's laws. Earlier in the book of Isaiah, God speaks to the elders and rulers of his people. “'It is you who have plundered my vineyard; the plunder from the poor is in your houses. What do you mean by crushing my people and grinding the faces of poor?' declares the Lord, the Lord Almighty.” (Isaiah 3:14-15) Elsewhere in Isaiah it says, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight. Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine and champions at mixing drinks, who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deny justice to the innocent.” (Isaiah 5:20-23) And later, “Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless.” (Isaiah 10:1-2) And the problem is not just behavior. It goes deep, right down to their spiritual practices. “The Lord says, 'These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on mere human rules they have been taught.'” (Isaiah 29:13)

This last bit is especially grievous to God. His people seem to think he cares about rituals and symbolic acts above everything else. God's response? “Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers. Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife, and in striking each other with wicked fists. You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high. Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for people to humble themselves? Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed and for lying in sackcloth and ashes? Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I. If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.” (Isaiah 58:3-10)

God really cares about how we treat one another, especially those without power. Trying to serve him without recognizing that reveals that someone doesn't really know who God is. As Jesus says, “Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'” (Matthew 7:22-23) In his parable about the last judgment it is people who care for the poor and despised and disadvantaged who are commended and rewarded. (Matthew 25:34-40) Nary a word is said about the kind of things folks usually associate with being religious.

Therefore God is right to be angry with his people. So he is letting them be taken into exile by the Babylonians. Yet he promises that a remnant shall return. He will work with them. But why doesn't he just wipe them out and start over? Choose another people. Maybe they will do better.

If humans were a lab experiment, maybe God would. The experiment fails, you flush the cultures, euthanize the lab rats and start over. But we are not germs to God. We are not data points or guinea pigs. He created us in his image. What he is doing, as C.S. Lewis put it, is not an experiment but an enterprise. He is trying to get us to grow into our potential, to become not merely creatures of God but children of God.

There is a theological misconception that we are all born children of God. But in reality we are his creatures. Updating an analogy from Lewis, humans are like action figures made by a toy maker. I remember when you were lucky if the action figures of, say, Captain Kirk or Doctor Who looked even vaguely like the person playing the part. Today they often do 3-D scanning of the actor and the likenesses achieved are remarkable. I have seen pictures made by fans of the Avengers that you have to look at closely to determine that they are not the actors but the action figures posed in a very convincing manner. But they aren't really alive, the Toy Story movies notwithstanding. There is a difference between something made in someone's image and their actual child.

In the movie A.I., Steven Spielberg examines what would happen if you actually could create an android that is self-aware and could act like a real child. Given how close we are getting to making uncannily realistic-looking humanoid robots, the idea strikes us as creepy. On the other hand, the concept of Pinocchio, a wooden puppet come to life, doesn't strike us as creepy, probably because of Disney's beautiful animation. But the premise of that film is that a toy wants to become a real boy. And in the end, he does so by seeking out his father, impelled by love.

The film also shows us what happens even to real boys when they simply follow their selfish desires: they become jackasses. Like the witch in Snow White scared me as a child, the scene in which the boys on Pleasure Island were turning into donkeys filled me with horror. Pinocchio, who wanted to be more than a puppet, realized that the process could go the other way. People could become less than human. Indulging indiscriminately in every craving reduces people to their basest animal nature, driven by fear, desire and need. The spiritual part of such a person withers. As someone once said, a person wrapped up in himself makes a very small package.

I saw this in nursing homes. Among those who retained their mental faculties, there were two types of people: those who continued to grow and those who shriveled up. Some people could not reconcile themselves to the present nor see any kind of future and so they lived in the past, rehashing bygone dreams and old grievances. They shrank into miserable balls of bitterness and regrets. They collapsed in on themselves, like black holes, which suck in everything, including light and give nothing back.

Others made friends, took interest in the activities, got out of their rooms and out of themselves. When I was in college, I was part of a nursing home ministry. We went on Sundays to provide a worship service and visit the residents. We saw much human suffering, such as a young woman with severe MS, who lived for visits from her husband and young children and cried when they left, and it affected us young idealistic people greatly. Eventually we began to end our times there by all visiting this one old lady. She was a brittle diabetic who had lost her vision and one leg to complications of the disease. While I was there they had to amputate the other leg. Yet she tooled around in her wheelchair, radiating a contagious joy and faith. She had a lot of loss to live with. But she didn't slink away and brood over what she no longer had. She rejoiced in what she did have and in doing so, bolstered our spirits. If through her faith she could rise above her very real disabilities, how could we let our mundane, much less serious problems stop us from living boldly for God?

As it says in the Good News Translation of 1 Corinthians 13:7, “Love never gives up.” And God is love. God does not give up on us. He doesn't want us to devolve into being less than human but grow into being more. He wants us to go from being mere images of him into being his children, who love and take after him.

That's what we see in Jesus. As the exact image of God (Hebrews 1:3), Jesus reveals what God is like. And as the perfect human being, Jesus reveals what we can become. To paraphrase Lewis, the Son of God became a human to enable humans to become children of God.

God did not give up on humanity and so he saved Noah and his family. He did not give up on his people Israel and so saved a remnant from the Babylonians. Jesus did not give up on Peter, even when he denied Jesus 3 times. After his resurrection, Jesus gives Peter 3 chances to affirm that he loves him and restores their relationship. (John 21:15-17)

It is human beings who tend to give up on others and write off whole races and classes of people and say, “They are no good.” But, as it says of the nation of Judah in our passage from Isaiah, “Don't destroy it, for there is a blessing in it.” Or as the NIV translates it, “There is yet some good in it.” To deny that there is any good in people is to ignore the fact that since we are created in the image of God, there has to be some good in everyone, however hard it is to see, however much it is obscured or distorted by our sinful use of his good gifts. And that means there is hope. As God says to Ezekiel, the prophet he called to speak to his people while they were in exile in Babylon, “As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather than they turn from their ways and live.” (Ezekiel 33:11)

The same cannot be said for human beings. We do like watching the death of the wicked. And so our entertainments usually end with the deaths of the bad guys, the more awful the better. Our solution to the problem of people we don't want is to get rid of them: lock em up in jails and prisons and camps or else kill them. You know how the God who is love likes to get rid of bad guys? Turn them into good guys. So Jesus calls Matthew, the tax collector. He dines with Zacchaeus, the corrupt tax collector. He saves the life of the woman taken in adultery. He frees the man living in the tombs from the legion of demons who haunt him. He promises the thief on the cross that he will be with him in paradise. Even after his ascension, he appears to Saul, the persecutor of the church. And in each case he changes their life. He heals their spiritual sickness. He makes them better.

God doesn't give up on us. What happens is we give up on God. We give up on ourselves. In the end, we become our own judge, jury and executioner. As C.S. Lewis said, the gates of hell are locked from the inside. There are people who say to God, “Your will be done,” and those to whom God, respecting their choice, will one day say, “Very well, your will be done. You don't want any part of me? So be it.” But if we reject him, we reject the source of all goodness. We choose not to grow but to shrivel up into black holes of rage and bitterness and despair.

The choice is ours. As God says in Isaiah, “I held out my hands all day long.” As the Jewish Study Bible notes, “Normally, humans pray to God by spreading out their hands (Exod. 9.29, 33; 1 Kings 8.22, 38; Isa. 1.15), but here, in an extraordinary gesture, the Lord stretches hands out to human beings.” He expects us to reach out to him in return. As it says elsewhere in Isaiah, “Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!” (Isaiah 30:18) If his arms are open to us, what is this talk about waiting? This is not speaking of God's acceptance, which is there waiting for us and is ours as soon as we come to him. Rather as it says in 2 Peter, “The Lord is not slow, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9) God will not ring down the curtain until everyone who will turn to him does. And only he knows when that will be.

We do not need to wait until our world is ending to turn to God. As Paul wrote, “Behold, now is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation.” (2 Corinthians 6:2) Every second of our life is a second chance. No one's past needs to determine their future. Our God is a God of life and love and resurrection. He never gives up.

All Together Now

The scriptures referred to are 1 John 4:7-12.

The typical hero in our movies, TV and popular literature is the lone male. This figure cannot be better described than by Raymond Chandler, creator of private eye Philip Marlowe. He wrote, “Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him.”

Sam Spade, James Bond, Batman, Rambo, Indiana Jones, the Lone Ranger, Superman, Marshall Will Kane in High Noon, Dirty Harry or just about anyone else played by Clint Eastwood...all heroes who can take on entire criminal conspiracies and defeat them. In a Mad magazine parody, a woman tells James Bomb that he is up against hundreds of bad guys. “It's so unfair!” she protests. “I know,” says the hero. “But they'll just have to take their chances.”

It's fantasy, of course. But we want so hard to believe that one man can do it all. However it's not even true in those fantasies. The hero has a secretary, a quartermaster, a sidekick, a love interest and/or allies who help him out. But people forget that. And this stereotype is toxic, especially to men. 

Why do the perpetrators of these mass shootings turn out to be men who are single, divorced or separated? The same is true of most men who commit suicide. Men who are divorced or separated are more than twice as likely to kill themselves as married men and 8 times more likely to commit suicide than divorced women. The suicide rate for men in general is 3 ½ times as high as that for women, despite the fact that women have a higher rate of depression. The highest suicide rate is for middle aged white males, who have grown up with the ideal of the self-sufficient man.

No one can do it all alone. God says so in Genesis 2:18. Women tend to make and have many friends. They go to church more frequently. They have social support. Many men do not. I just saw a Facebook meme that says, “Nobody talks about Jesus' miracle of having 12 close friends in his 30s.” And sure enough, a study shows that we have the most friends at age 25. And at that time, men have more friends than women. But it goes down from there, and by age 39 women have more friends than men and that continues to be true right through their 90s!

We are social animals. After God says it is not good for man to be alone, he makes another person who is, in Richard Elliott Friedman's translation, a “corresponding strength,” an ally. And the two become one flesh, one organism, so to speak.

What does this have to do with Trinity Sunday? Just this: In 1 John 4:8, it says, “God is love.” Not “God is loving” but “God is love.” God is the original and eternal love relationship. Love is something that requires at least 2 people. I think this is how we can reconcile the fact that the Bible tells us the Father is God (Deuteronomy 32:6; Matthew 6:9), the Son is God (Philippians 2:6; Colossians 2:9), the Spirit is God (2 Corinthians 3:17-18; Acts 5:3-4) and yet there is one God (Deuteronomy 6:4; John 10:30; Romans 8:9). If human beings are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), and God is three persons so united that they are essentially one, then it makes sense that the primary imperative is to love (Matthew 22:37-40). We seek each other out because we are most like God, and therefore most like who we were created to be, when we are in a love relationship. It needn't be a romantic relationship because there are other loves, such as for family and for friends.

And it makes sense that when we get too isolated, when we are separated from our family or our community, we become less like ourselves and we get spiritually, physically and mentally ill. 20 years ago doctors were researching the personal histories of their chronically ill patients and found that most had suffered from many adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). They found out that if, before the age of 18, a parent or other adult in a child's family often verbally, physically or sexually abused them, or neglected them, or were themselves victims of domestic abuse, or abused drugs or alcohol, or were mentally ill, or divorced or went to prison, that had a very great impact on the child's mental, physical and social development. 67% of us have experienced at least one of these things but the more of these adverse experiences a child had, the greater their risk of experiencing chronic disease, depression, suicide, of exhibiting violent behavior, and/or becoming a victim of violence, as well as other health, social and emotional problems lasting even into adulthood. They often become loners and have a hard time trusting and bonding with others.

We are created to love and be loved because we are created in the image of the God who is love. And everything flows from that love.

Justice flows from love. If you have more than 1 child, or multiple family members you love, you come to realize that if you don't treat them all fairly, there will be trouble. And if you love them equally, you don't want them fighting with or mistreating each other. By the same token, injustice comes from either imperfect love, like obsessive or possessive loves, or from non-love, like hatred or indifference. If you love people you want them to be treated fairly and you want them to treat each other fairly.

Peace flows from love. Peace, which in the Bible means wellbeing, comes from loving and being loved. Surprisingly they have found that neglect does more harm to a child than abuse. But it makes sense. To be neglected means that you don't even merit being noticed or being taken into consideration negatively. In Romanian state-run orphanages, children were given basic physical care but not shown affection. Many died from what is called “failure to thrive” and those who survived were psychologically damaged. Love is so central to what we are that to be deprived of it is to be deprived of wellbeing and peace.

Wisdom flows from love. If you are focused on the wellbeing of another, you wish to learn how better to treat them or take care of them. You observe what works and what doesn't work. You use your own life experience and if you are truly wise, you seek the wisdom of others, whether they are family or friends or experts or simply folks who have gone through the same thing. You read and absorb the wisdom to be found in books, old and new. Love may make us act foolishly at first but it should impel us to gain wisdom.

Self-control flows from love. Though we talk of “falling in love” to describe how out of control it makes us feel at the time, self-control is what you need to succeed at anything, including a relationship. Just as a car needs both a gas pedal and a brake pedal, and a steering wheel to boot, a wise person needs to control his or her impulses if they are to make love last. You need to know when to say something and what to say as well as when not to say certain things that are not going to help matters at all. In the same way you need to know when to do something and when to just be there for the other person. Love is not just letting go; sometimes it is restraining yourself and doing what is good rather than what just feels good.

Courage flows from love. My wife and I knew our kids loved one another, despite all the fighting and squabbling, because they would nevertheless come to the defense of each other whenever one was bullied. Parents, whether animal or human, will similarly face fearlessly any sized foe should their offspring be threatened. People will run into burning buildings or jump into treacherous waters to rescue those they love. Love makes us disregard our own comfort and safety to protect or save the beloved.

Patience and perseverance flow from love. People try our patience at times, even people we love. (Make that: especially the people we love!) We have to learn their pace is not ours and their timing is not ours. We forget how long it took us to learn the things we expect them to pick up right away. And we have to learn not to give up just because things don't happen on our timetable. Anything worthwhile, such as relationships, take time to develop and mature. Out of love, we stay patient and persevere.

And it is easy to see how qualities like kindness and generosity and trust and faithfulness all flow from love. They come from our being created in the image of the God who is a love relationship, where all the persons act with one will, albeit in different ways.

We know God the Father as creator, lawgiver, protector. We know God the Son as the Word, the expression of who God is in the medium of a human life, the one who reveals God's self-sacrificial love for us and his forgiveness and his power over disease and death. We know God the Spirit as the one who animates and empowers all life, the behind-the-scenes person who speaks and acts through those who are open to him. We experience God above us, God beside us, God within us, all acting in love and wisdom to heal, repair and restore all that is broken in our lives.

Usually all of this talk about the Trinity ends up being so abstract most people don't know what to do with it. They figure it is about something obscure which we are just supposed to believe. But, as Paul said in a different context, “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” (Galatians 5:6) In 1 John it says, “Little children, let us love, not in word and speech but in truth and action.” (1 John 3:18) How can the doctrine of the Trinity help us in practical ways?

Dorothy L. Sayers had a unique take on the Trinity. She compared it to the creative process. The analogue for the Father is a person's original idea. The analogue for the Son is the incarnation or realization of that idea in some concrete form. The analogue for the Spirit is the communication of the idea. And that is a really good way of not only understanding the Trinity but of turning our faith from something that we merely believe into something that makes an impact in the world.

Say you are encountering a problem that needs be solved or a situation that needs to be dealt with. You get an idea how to do it. The next step is to put it into practice or turn it into something that exists in this world and not just in your head. You may be hesitant to act so boldly. That's where courage comes in. It may take a lot of thought as to how to achieve it. That's where wisdom comes in. You may not get it quite right at first but that's all part of creating. It took Edison hundreds of trials till he found the right filament for the light bulb. That's where patience and perseverance come in.

Once you get something that is a good practical solution, you need to get the word out so it can help others. Their feedback may include ways to improve it. Don't get offended or proprietary about it. In fact, a really big idea will require a lot of people to achieve it properly. That's where self-control comes in. And keeping the peace, to ensure the wellbeing of all.

And we must never forget that the point of the message is about love. People focus on the times God's message doesn't get perfectly realized or communicated. They don't notice that not everything recorded in the Bible is meant to prescribe how we should behave. Some passages in scripture are precautionary tales. They describe people's imperfect attempts to follow God as well as the instances when they abandon his message altogether. And some people miss the point entirely, thinking it's all about punishing those who don't agree on the message. Those who think it's all about doing something to people they consider evil have the same mindset as those who shoot up schools and theaters and churches and synagogues and mosques. In their minds they are that lonely and proud hero Raymond Chandler described, the man of honor who punishes others' insolence with what they think is a “due and dispassionate revenge.” But they are not motivated by love for all and so they cannot dispense justice but only injustice.

Not only is the lone hero a fiction in the world, it is not something for Christians to imitate. Some think they can be Lone Ranger Christians, not needing the church and its resources and people. But how are we to incarnate and communicate the good news of God's love apart from others who are also committed to showing God's love? As it says in 1 John, “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world that we might live through him...No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.” (1 John 4:7-9, 12)

It is not so important that people grasp the theology of the Trinity as it is that they see that divine love embodied in us. That's a tall order. So we must listen to and digest the words of God the Father. We must watch and imitate the actions of God the Son. We must open ourselves to and be filled with God the Spirit. We need to do everything in harmony with the God who is love, and from whom all blessings, like justice, peace, wisdom, self-control, courage, patience, perseverance and every good thing, flow.

One

The scriptures referred to are John 17:20-26.

If you've ever led any kind of group—a club, a study group, an amateur theatre troupe, a fraternal organization, a choir, a volunteer group—you know that the worst thing that can happen is disunity. The disunity may arise from controversy about a person, about an event, about procedures or about the ultimate purpose of the group. If it doesn't get resolved, it will split the group, which will either weaken it or kill it. 

There are many historians who feel that what laid the foundation for the successful Protestant Reformation in the 16^th century was the incredible disunity of the Roman Catholic church in the 14^th and 15^th centuries. It started when the Pope got into a conflict with the French King about the power of the papacy in temporal and specifically political matters. It culminated in Pope Boniface VIII stating pointedly “It is necessary to salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman pontiff.” By which he especially meant King Philip IV. Philip replied, “Your venerable conceitedness may know that we are nobody's vassal in temporal matters.” In 1303 the Pope, to assert his God-given powers over “kings and kingdoms,” was going to excommunicate the king of France when a delegation of the king's allies attempted to arrest the Pope and beat him so severely that he died days later. (Remember that when uniformed critics say that during the Middle and so-called “Dark” Ages the church held absolute power.) The next 7 popes were, unsurprisingly, French. They eventually moved the papacy from Rome to Avignon in southern France, where the king's power over the popes and the cardinals grew. Nearly 70 years later a pope dared return to Rome. So the French cardinals in Avignon elected a new pope. Both popes excommunicated each other and their rival's followers. Eventually cardinals tried to rectify the situation by electing a third pope, but the other 2 popes neither stepped down nor recognized him. So now there were 3 popes. Which meant no Christian in Europe could be sure if they were saved or if the sacraments administered at their local church were valid. This mess went on for 40 years until a church council declared the Avignon popes illegitimate and elected another pope in 1417. But claimants to be Avignon popes continued for another 20 years. By the end of it all, the direct political power of the papacy was greatly diminished, as well as its moral authority and its ability to preach the gospel. So when 100 years later Martin Luther began speaking out against the theology of the Roman Catholic church and its corruption, and when the church refused even to debate him, the idea of breaking away and starting over with a different church, one closer to the ideals set out in the Bible, was not considered all that unthinkable. It hadn't been that long ago that, thanks to the Western Schism, everyone in Europe found themselves having to decide which version of the church to follow.

When I tried to look up how many Christian denominations there are now, I kept running into the number 33,000, which, if true, would mean there are 2000 more denominations than there are verses of the Bible. This number comes from the World Christian Encyclopedia and they define a denomination as an organized Christian group within a specific country. So groups that transcend national boundaries are cut up into smaller units. And there is also the problem of how small a group qualifies as a denomination in this book. The WCE lists 22,000 independent groups, some as small as a single autonomous congregation. And it lists 1600 “marginal” groups, like the Latter Day Saints and Jehovah's Witnesses, which are not generally considered mainstream Christian groups. But even if you consider only those the WCE labels as Protestant you still get 6000 denominations.

However you slice it, that number is nowhere near what Jesus wanted, which is, to quote today's gospel, “one.” Our passage comes from Jesus' prayer for the church after the last supper. In the 17^th chapter of John, Jesus prays for his followers: their protection, their joy, their sanctification and especially their unity.

Why would Jesus be thinking of disunity at this time? The gospels mention the disciples periodically arguing over who was the greatest (Mark 9:33-37; Matthew 18:1-5; Luke 9:46-48). According to Luke, one such dispute even broke out at the last supper. (Luke 22:24-27) Perhaps that is why Jesus stripped and washed the disciples' feet in the manner of a slave, to teach them that humble service is the mark of the Christian leader. (John 13:3-17) Plus he saw how the Judaism of his day was divided into groups such as the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Zealots and the Essenes. Groups can split over the smallest differences. That's why Jesus didn't say that the world would know who his disciples were by the fact that they agreed on everything, nor that they did everything the same, but by their love for one another. (John 13:35)

But is that realistic? Can groups be one if they don't agree on everything or do everything the same way?

Consider nursing. When I became a nurse back in 1981, my license was basically only good in Missouri, where I was trained and took my state board exams. There were a few states that would issue you a license in their state by reciprocity. So when I came to Florida I had to get a license here as well. But now the Nurse Licensure Compact lets a nurse have a multi-state license that allows her to practice in her home state and in the 32 other states that are part of the compact. To be sure this is possible because now rather than taking individual state boards there is a national licensure test, the NCLEX. But I am sure that not all nursing programs are exactly the same in each detail, though they agree in the essentials. And to renew my license there are still certain mandatory courses in Florida I have to take as part of the 24 continuing education units I have to get every 2 years. Currently I have to take Florida approved courses on Human Trafficking, Domestic Violence, Florida Nursing Laws and Rules, Preventing Medical Errors and Recognizing Impairment in the Workplace. The first time you renew your license in this state you also have to take a course on HIV/AIDS. Thank God we no longer have to take the Alzheimer's Disease course every time we renew. And only the official 4 hour Florida course would do. When I was the floating office manager for a home health care company out of Louisiana, they had their own online CEU program. So everyone took their Alzheimer's course. Unfortunately, it was only worth 3 ½ hours of instruction. At the insistence of the state I had to call all the nurses working out of the office I was at to come back in and take the official Florida version. Which consisted of a specially trained person who simply played a 4 hour DVD on the subject and gave us a 10 question multiple choice test. Apparently we had missed the crucial half-hour of information on a disease for which we don't know the cause and don't have a cure or even an effective treatment!

I'm pretty sure that the same way any rational person would feel about the ridiculousness of that story, Jesus feels about some of the differences we see between Christians who otherwise agree on all the essential beliefs and behaviors he taught us. Jesus never said, “This is precisely how you baptize someone.” He said, “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit...” (Matthew 28:19) He didn't say, “This is the official recipe for the communion bread.” He said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” He didn't say, “This is the vintage or color of wine or grape juice you must use for the Eucharist.” He said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” He also didn't say, “I mean this literally” or “This is just a metaphor,” much to the disappointment of some and the continued employment of theologians.

Scripture tells us that the Word that was with God and that was God became flesh. It doesn't tell us exactly how Jesus could be both fully divine and fully human. It tells us Jesus died for our sins. Nowhere does it tell us precisely how that worked. It tells us that Jesus rose again and that he could be touched and eat and yet locked doors could not keep him out. His post-resurrection body seems to act like a sub-atomic particle but the Bible doesn't tell us how he could do that. Like the female anaconda at the New England Aquarium who just gave birth to 2 baby snakes without any male contact or contribution, effecting a virgin birth, Jesus just does things and we are left to scramble for possible explanations.

You would think that would make us humble when we develop theologies. You would think that we would admit that the specific ways we interpret the main events in Jesus' life are our attempts to explain them to ourselves and not on the same level as the events. You would think that we would acknowledge that others might have different interpretations which, should they not contradict what Scripture says, are equally legitimate attempts to work out the why and how of the events being considered. But weirdly we tend to assign the same certainty to our interpretations of the Bible that we do to the things the Bible explicitly says. And we use that certainty to divide ourselves from our brothers and sisters in Christ.

And the unity that Jesus prays for us to embody is not mere lip service but an organic unity, a deep unity. In fact it should be godlike, literally. Referring not only to the Eleven but to those who believe through their word, Jesus prays, “...that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one...” We are to embody the unity which we find in the God who is love, love so thoroughgoing that 3 divine persons are one God. We should be as close in heart and mind and spirit to each other as the Father and the Son are.

Nor is such unity an optional feature. Jesus continues,”...that they may be completely one, so that the world may know you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” So our unity is part of the gospel, the good news of God's love that we are supposed to spread. Ecumenical activity is a form of evangelism. Because the world is divided up into regions and countries and ethnic groups and political parties and those divisions are getting deeper and harsher. They are making our nations and our world unworkable. Our unity should act as a sign of a better way to live, of the kingdom of God being among us and his royal reign being realized in us. (Luke 17:21)

If, as Jesus says, God's will is that we be one as the persons of the Trinity are one, then not even trying to achieve that unity is, by definition, a sin. And we are privileging our understanding of theology, of the proper way to do rituals, of how a church should be structured over that of others. We are saying we are certain we are right and we are certain they are wrong. But, as Paul points out, now we know only in part; when we get to the next life, we will know in full. (1 Corinthians 13:9-10) It follows that we are going to find out that we were all heretics in some area or another. None of us know or understand all the things of God. How could we? So we will find that some things we thought we knew were in fact wrong. We will also see that some of our questions will turn out to be nonsense; they will have no more meaning than “How 5 is blue?”

That being true, we should be modest in our claims of what we know for sure. Even if you say, “I believe what the Bible says,” as Francis Schaeffer pointed out, the Bible may be true but it is not exhaustive. As John says at the end of his gospel, “But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if everyone of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” (John 21:25) So there are not only things about him we know that we do not know (like his eye color, height, etc) but things that we don't even know we do not know. Hence humility is called for.

Mark Twain supposedly said, “It is not the things which I do not understand in the Bible which trouble me, but the things that I do understand.” While he meant that cynically, it is true in another sense. The things we don't understand we can think about and even argue about but we don't have to act on them. They shouldn't trouble us as much as the stuff that is crystal clear. Those things allow us no opportunity for mental or moral confusion. Jesus says, “Love your neighbor.” Jesus says, “Love your enemy.” Jesus says, “Treat others as you would like to be treated.” Jesus says, “What you do or do not do for others in need you do or do not do to me.” Jesus says, “You are to be one as I and the Father are one.” There is no wiggle room. Even if in certain situations the way to carry out those commands may not be immediately obvious, the direction in which we should be going is clear. We may not hate or neglect others. We must do good to others, even our enemies, and never do evil. And we must certainly do good and work together with our fellow Christians, however wrong we think they are in non-essential matters.

And we are in agreement on the essentials. At our baptism, we reaffirm our faith in the words of the Apostles Creed, the most basic summary of what we believe. You know which churches say that creed? The Catholics, the Anglicans, the Lutherans, the Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Moravians and the Congregationalists. The Eastern Orthodox churches use the Nicene Creed, which we also use and which is for all intents and purposes the Apostles Creed expanded. And we all affirm the Bible as God's Word.

Again, all Christians churches base their ethics on the Ten Commandments and the Two Greatest Commandments. They baptize people into the church and share the Lord's Supper, whether they do it weekly, monthly or quarterly.

Both of our denominations are now in full communion with certain other denominations and they are working towards that end with still others. My own position as spiritual leader of our two congregations is a result of that. But, as with all that Jesus asks of us, we cannot simply pat ourselves on the back and rest on our laurels. We are by no means completely one. There is always more work to be done.

Paul frequently wrote about the importance of unity in the church. He wrote, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28) That is radical. Paul is saying that unity in Christ overcomes any differences in race, class and gender. Those are all major differences. In comparison, our differences are trivial. So I'm sure that if he were writing today he would add “There is no Catholic or Protestant, Orthodox or Pentecostal, Baptist or Methodist or Mennonite or Lutheran or Episcopalian for you are all one in Christ.”

On the night he was betrayed Jesus prayed that his followers all may be one. Is that hard? Yes, but no harder than what he was about to face to save us. Jesus never said following him would be easy. He said it was a matter of denying yourself and taking up the cross and going after him. That's incredibly difficult. And so is asking a bunch of Christians to be one. But it is also clear that it's what our Lord wanted.