When Julie sent me this passage the first thought that came to my mind was ecumenical partnership, and indeed when we speak of church unity nowadays, we tend to focus more on ecumenism. I must say, of all the models I’ve seen, yours is unique. But even with this passage at the back of my mind, I am particularly aware of Jesus’ prayer the night before he died: I ask not only on behalf of these, he prayed, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one as you, Father, and I are one. You and I, and indeed all the families of the earth, are the ones Jesus prayed for that night. We are the ones who have come to faith through the messages of the gospel passed to us through the generations. But more than 2,000 years down the line, church unity is still a dream and the church has taken little note of the prayer of our Lord in John 17.
Granted, the excesses of the Catholic Church led to the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, but still this produced further divisions rather than unity. Christian unity is God’s gift to humanity and it is our duty to uphold it. To belong to Christ means to belong to the Body of Christ we call the Church. When we are granted by God a relationship to Christ through our baptism in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, we are also given a connection to all others who are in the same relationship. The question, then, is how do we go about maintaining the unity for which Jesus prayed and Paul pleaded? Mind you, Paul was in jail when he wrote this letter, and not for the first time — imprisoned for his faith in Christ but unafraid to speak: to speak truth to a multicultural church in Ephesus just like this one of yours, exhorting them to remain united. There’s something powerful about a person in jail who is not afraid of stirring up the hornet’s nest. This reminds me of Meriam Ibrahim, the woman from Sudan who was sentenced to die but refused to denounce Christianity earlier this year. Do you all remember that? The pictures of a pregnant mother lying in hospital about to give birth and yet chained to the bed gave a very powerful testimony. And it challenged me immensely. I got thinking: when my days on this earth are finally over and I get to meet Jesus and he looks at me from his throne and asks, So, George: what did you suffer for my sake? I wonder what my response will be. I wonder what your response will be.
And similarly Paul’s status as he wrote this letter in prison and in chains is a powerful lesson for us as a church. There are many things which are wrong with the church and our world today and if we passionately believe in the desire of our Lord for unity we should not be afraid of speaking up. Being in the body of Christ is not a licence to be passive; being part of the body of Christ means being engaged in a process which aims to bring hope and unity in a broken world. We should not be afraid of campaigning against the evils in society and the barriers which bring disunity, whether spiritual, economic or political. Those who belong to the body of Christ are one: whether black, white or yellow; whether rich or poor, women or men, young or elderly, gay or straight. What unites us is the knowledge that we are all fallen and it is by sheer grace we have been called. My mind wants to jump quickly to the obvious inconsistency between this vision of oneness Paul and Jesus pray for and the reality of the church today. The church of Christ is indeed a divided body. It often seems that we who call ourselves Christians do not even share the same hope and faith. This is indeed a problem and one I can’t begin to address here. And the church just seems to mirror the fracture and disunity in the secular world. The world is dangerously divided between haves and have-nots, between the superpowers and the weaker nations, between the poor global South and the rich North, between black and white and in between all shades of grey. When the genocide started in Rwanda in 1994, the church actively participated in this heinous crime instead of seeking unity and reconciliation between the Hutus and Tutsis. Today, rarely do we find anything to unite us though currently we all seem to be in agreement about the urgency of finding a cure for Ebola. Our divisions are so deep that it takes something so life-threatening like Ebola to unite us. Although Paul was speaking to a particular congregation, what he said to the church in Ephesus is relevant to us in Cambourne in the 21st century. He asked that church and this church today to walk in ways worthy of its calling: to walk maturely and with integrity.
A church that is mature will listen to all the conflicting voices and will not easily judge. It will strive to work with all gifts and talents that members bring, and it will embrace diversity and cherish it while finding new growth. It will find new and radical ways of doing church and engaging the community within which it operates if it hopes to unite those in the church and those outside the church. Friends, God has called us to live in peace and unity with each other as much as possible in this fallen world. And while there is room for disagreement within the church on non-essential matters, the gospel truth of Christ’s reconciliation is the only basis for church and society’s unity. Our unity as the body of Christ breaks down when we forget that walking righteously begins with a call from God that we are to live in a particular way. That particular way includes gentleness, humility and patience, bearing with one another in love, and giving ourselves fully to maintaining the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Amen.