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Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the text for this morning comes from the Gospel reading where Jesus is praying that prayer for us and for his apostles at that time in the Garden of Gethsemane. You may be seated.
So what is really unity? Is unity defined by your parents, that you all came from the same mother and father? No. Well, that’s kind of discriminatory, isn’t it? Because there are some people who do not know their parents, or their parents died, or they have no siblings. Maybe this is unity. Everybody who hails this sign. Yeah, sure. Because there are also people who do this or do this. I think Baylor’s is this, maybe. All of those are forms of unity, but the unity around which all of those are built are fairly narrow, even family. Because families differ, don’t they? Decidedly so.
So then what defines unity? Jesus in this morning’s text, when he was praying that evening in the garden, defines unity in a very unique way. And it centers completely and totally on him. It is not defined because you come from the same culture. It is not defined because you have similar colored eyes, hair, or skin. No. It is not defined because you grew up with a silver spoon or without such a spoon. It is not defined because you have a spouse and others do not. You are a widow or a widower and others are not. It is not defined by any of those things that you and I love to use as definitions of unity.
It’s defined by Christ. Jesus himself talks about it. That the Father uses Jesus. That the Holy Spirit reveals to you and to me to be that which binds us together in unity. Jesus himself said, “I in them as you are in me.” Your unity began at that water, that font, when you became a baptized child of God. You believe the words that he who is baptized shall be saved. He who believes and is baptized shall be saved. That binds you together. But it binds you with a whole bunch of people that speak different languages than you, that live in a different kind of house than you, that are even supportive of different forms of government than you. Their unity, of which you are a part and they are a part, is different than the world.
In fact, if you think about how the world has always garnered unity, they have always decided to do unity around a specific subject, idea, or structure, but then not really define it because then it can be defined by anybody who’s a part of it. And the thing about the unity that Jesus does with you as a baptized child of God is that the unity of which you and I are part, by the world standard, is not seen as unity.
You can find a far greater number of people who are unified around this sign in this state than you can fellow Lutherans, and for that matter, conservative Christians. Whose authority is it that unifies them? Their own concept or God’s concept? Jesus said that the world does not know you. He makes it very clear. The world does not know him. And he is willing to show you that our unity is bound up not because of you, but because of him who has been revealed to you.
And crazy enough, the purpose is so that the world would know him to be revealed through you. That is probably the most bizarre form of unity. Think about how quickly unity can be garnered by this symbol and not about the symbol of Christ. Outward adornment, wearing the orange as opposed to the maroon, as opposed to the red, as opposed to the green. What is the heart?
You see, when we heard about Matthias being chosen as the apostle in the second reading, it says that there were only about 120 of them. 120 believers? Jesus, what have you been doing? For three years you’ve been preaching? What have you been doing? If you follow that logic, then we need to dock Jesus’ pay for being an ineffective unifier of people.
Oh, but let’s not forget, Pastor, because next week’s Pentecost. And you’re right, on Pentecost, 5,000 were added, or 3,000 were added that day, I should say. Wow, it went from 120 to 3,000. Oh, yeah, but every day that followed that day, beginning with Stephen, of that 3,000, they were murdered regularly. Not too much of a unifier, is it, if being a part of that group gets you murdered. The unity that these people died in was not because they shared anything in common with someone else, but Jesus and Him alone.
But the Father revealed to the world of His love toward all of us, continually shown to us by that Holy Spirit who works through these means to bring you to that realization. Better yet said, to bring you to faith. This is Jesus’ desire to unite his people that they would be a witness to the world. What did Jesus say in the prayer? “I pray for those who will believe through their word.”
Amen. He’s been praying for the people in your life ever since you were conceived and before. He has been praying for the people in your life to believe upon the one whom he has sent before you ever were thought of in this world. And he wishes to use your word to them. Not your personality, not your way with people, but his word spoken through you to do so.
But not just any word, his word about himself that he himself has revealed to you here in his word. But he goes on and says, “I pray for those who believe in me through their word that they may become one or perfectly one.” There is this idea of becoming. We are one and yet he says that they would become one. That they may be one, that they may become perfectly one.
Because the problem with you and me is that we see unity and we think, if they’re unified outwardly, then they must have something right about them. And if they’re disunified by outward appearance, there must be something wrong with them. Tell that to Jesus. 120? Really? Really? How about the Roman Empire, when around 300 years after these apostles were losing their lives, all of them except John, and the disciples were losing their life? Why all of a sudden, when Constantine said, by divine fiat, the whole empire of the Romans is now Christian, now the numbers of the people who are a part of the Christian church is this number. Is it really? Is it really unified?
And around what is it unified? Because we’re all Romans? We all have the same service in Latin? Is that what unifies us? What about before the Reformation? You see, the temptation of all Christian churches, and for that matter, all human families, is to create an idea of unity so that we feel better about it. And feelings are important to us, but feelings will not get you to heaven. Faith gets you to heaven, but feelings can lead you to hell.
It is not the look of it. What about all those people in that 120 that had to be walked away from by their families because they did not agree with them in this faith? What about them? Could they not have just said, “Well, I don’t want to be really different than you because I don’t want to lose our relationship, so I’m really not going to stand on all these matters because I really want to keep this?” What’s unity then? Jesus is praying for unity. And he’s praying for unity in the midst of struggle, death, Paul, Peter, you name them, they all were put to death except John and all the other disciples each passing year.
Persecution brings about a great amount of struggle with keeping unity because persecution asks, you know, we wouldn’t have persecution if we weren’t so stubbornly convinced that this is true. You’re right. You could create unity around almost anything if you decided to overlook the things that matter the most. The temptation for all human relationships is to not struggle and create a peaceful feeling so that no one is offended. Tell that to Jesus.
You have two groups here. Who is God’s church? You’ve got these highly unified and gathered together Pharisees and Sadducees. Not only are they in unity, but they also have Herod and others in unity, all toward this one radical man named Jesus. You’ve got these 120. Who’s more unifying? By outward appearance, it would be them. Whose teaching will lead you to hell? It would be them. But the world doesn’t judge it that way. The world judges that this is disunifying and unloving. That’s how the world judges it.
When you think about the most intimate relationship between any two human beings, it’s marriage. When you think about what is agreed upon in marriage so that marriage works, you’ll never have complete unity on everything. But there better be the key things around which you are unified to weather the storms of trial. Or otherwise, the unity is very easily dissolved and very easily united again without thought.
Man loves to find unity because unity, there is a great amount of gift in it. But the thing around which unity is given is Jesus. He’s the one that did unity. And if you look at the history of the church, it does not mirror success. It does not mirror people who seem to have everything together and can make always the right decisions at the right time.
It’s made up of weak people, people like you and people like me who are very weak. The church is made up of. The church is not perfect, though the world is always crying out, the church is full of hypocrites. Yes, yes it is. That is where Jesus wants all of us hypocrites to be. If you love politics, you know that right now there’s a great amount of discussion about unifying a certain political party, of which I will not tell you. You’re smart enough to figure that out.
What is the unity based upon? It’s a very simplistic understanding, but the bottom line is that it’s got to be pragmatic. Oh, there are philosophical ideas involved, but at the end of the day, it’s got to be pragmatic. It’s got to work together. Jesus never talked about pragmatism in creating unity. In fact, if anything, it’s counter-pragmatic, his desire for unity because he desires unity around himself, and he is as loving as they come. You can’t out-love Jesus for unity, and yet people don’t agree.
The very last part of this text is a very interesting part. It says, making it known, the truth, that is, about Jesus coming and dying and rising. It is a continual making it known. It’s a participle. It’s ongoing. That’s what the church is. It’s a living thing. It’s continually ongoing and making him known what he’s done for us, how he has bound us together, how he has set us apart from this world.
And though we may be, oh you sinner fans, we still shake the hands of those who do this. Trust me, I’m not a sinner fan. But just letting you know. The idea behind Jesus saying this is a continual making it known, it’s also a continual knowing it by faith. And you know it by faith as you and I go through struggle as to what defines unity.
When we see it threatened, when we see it fractured, what is unity? Staying out of the political realm completely and totally because politics do not lead to salvation in heaven, Christ does. He defines it. He creates it. And he holds fast to it in spite of us. He prayed for it in the garden that night. And he’s praying for it right now with you.
And he will continue to pray for it because others who have not yet been brought into this unity, your words will be used by him to bring them in. That’s his way to the very end of days. And regardless of what it looks like to the world, you know and I know it’s a gift, this unity. We treasure it and cherish it. And though families will always disagree, we have to always make sure it is He upon whom we do agree most.
In the name of Jesus, Amen. The peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds on Christ Jesus, a life everlasting. Amen.
