[Sermon Archive] - [Weekly Devotional Guide]

This Week's Sermon The Seventh Sunday of Easter 20 May 2007 "One" John 17:20-26 LSB Series C Vicar Hans W. Fiene Soli Deo Gloria!

One of my biggest pet peeves in life is when couples dance to songs at their wedding receptions that are completely inappropriate. I don't mean inappropriate in a vulgar sense. Rather, I mean that the lyrics of the song are completely contrary to the occasion. Now, the Irish rock band U2, of whom I'm a huge fan, has a song called One. And One is a song that many couples have dance to at their wedding receptions, probably because it seemed so romantic to sway together as man and wife for the first time to a song of that name. To show you why this drives me nuts, let me give you a few lines from the song One: "did I ask too much/more than a lot/you gave me nothing/now that's all I've got". Now, if a couple is willing to dance together to those words, well, I'm forced to draw one of two conclusions. Either their relationship is one that really shouldn't end up in marriage or they're refusing to pay attention to the lyrics and, instead, are dancing to their own idea of what it means to be one.

Now, U2's description of oneness is certainly not identical to the oneness that Christ prays will be given to those who come to faith through the Word preached by the apostles. But what U2's lyrics and Christ's prayer have in common is that both are greatly misunderstood. In the same way that people superimpose their own preconceived notions of romantic oneness on the words of U2, people often do the same thing with their preconceived notions of spiritual oneness to the words of Christ. But this doesn't happen because Christ fails to show us how we should understand what He means by being one. Despite the fact that Christ compares the oneness that Christians have with each other to the oneness that the Father has with the Son, we don't always try to understand Christian unity in that way. Instead, our sinful belief that we can create our own unity with God often causes us to put our own definition of oneness onto the lips of Jesus.

Though there are probably many subdivisions within these categories, there are two major ways in which people misrepresent the oneness for which Christ prays. The first category I would call "unity according to Oprah" and the other I would call "unity according to the Power Rangers".

Now, "unity according to Oprah" is basically the belief that what makes us one isn't the content of what we believe, but the energy with which we believe it. In other words, it doesn't matter what you believe as long as you're really sincere. It's this mentality that makes people think, for example, that the image of Roman Catholics and Baptists and Lutherans communing together as one is more important than those people sharing a unified belief about who Christ is and what He does in the Sacrament. It's this mentality that causes people to think that, in the "Prayer for America" service that was held in Yankee Stadium in the days after 9/11, everybody became as one because they all held hands, wept and sincerely prayed together-despite the fact that many of those very sincere prayers were offered up to false gods.

While this definition of unity may make people feel warm and fuzzy inside, it's not real. And as the recent wars in the Episcopalian Church continue to prove, unity without doctrinal agreement never lasts. Let's look again at Christ's words in today's text: "The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one." Do the Father and the Son believe different things about sin and forgiveness? Do they believe different things about what the Gospel is and how it is given to the world? In all the teachings of Christ, does He ever confess anything about His Father in Heaven that His Father doesn't recognize about Himself? The answer to all of these questions is, of course, a resounding "no". And if we are not one with each other in this way, as are the Father and Son, then we are actually lying about Christ whenever we have plastered the "unity according to Oprah" onto Jesus' words.

Now, "unity according to the Power Rangers" is a little more subtle of an approach, but it's equally wrong. For those of you who have no idea what the Power Rangers are, it's a children's program about a bunch of superhero type people who fight evil with their own skills and abilities. And whenever they can't beat a bad guy on their own, the individual power rangers all agree to join themselves together in order to form the one super duper power ranger who always wins. It's kind of an odd point of comparison, I know, but many people have a similar view of Christian unity. They believe that our oneness as Christians comes about when we have a common will and work toward a common goal.

The problem with this, however, is that as long as sin remains in our earthly lives, we'll never have a pure and unified will. Look, for example, at the idea of growing our congregation. On the outside, we may look very unified if we all get behind some sort of evangelism outreach to the community. But when our enthusiasm is driven not only by the pure desire to see God's kingdom grow but also by the sinful desire to become the flagship congregation in town-bigger and better than everyone else-we're nothing like Christ who shares His Father's will because He shares His Father's sinless nature. As long as sin influences us, we'll never have a common will. And if, like the Power Rangers, we can't become one until that common will unites us, then we're in trouble-because we're never going to have a common will in this earthly life.

Both the Oprah and the Power Rangers approach teach that it's up to us to create spiritual unity. But when the "it's all on us" understanding of oneness is put into the mouth of Christ, His prayer ends up being pretty pointless. Our sinful nature will never let us truly be one. So why is Christ praying for something that's impossible?

What's impossible for man to accomplish is never impossible for God to accomplish. The oneness for which Christ prays isn't created and sustained by us. It's created and sustained by the grace of God through the forgiveness of sins.

"That they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us," Christ prays in today's text. The purest and truest proclamation of Christ's unity with His father is found in the forgiveness of sins through Christ's death and Resurrection. Christ proclaims Himself to be one with His Father by obeying His Father's will that He give up His life for us upon the Cross. The Father proclaims Himself to be one with His Son by raising Him from the dead through the Holy Spirit. And when we receive the forgiveness which the Triune God has provided, when we receive the glory of the Father that was given to us by the Son, that's how we come to be in the Triune God. As St. Paul says in Ephesians 4, "There is one body and one Spirit- just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call- one Lord, one faith, one baptism" Every ounce of our unity is rooted in the unity of God.

So, alright, God is responsible for creating that unity. But what does it mean? Knowing that God has made us one through the work of the Holy Spirit, what comfort should we find in that? Well, to understand the wonderful gift of Christian unity, remember that Christ prayed that we would be one with each other as He is one with His Father.

So, just as nothing could separate Christ from His Father, because of Christ, nothing can separate us from our fellow Christians. The Son has been with the Father from all eternity-it's a unity that lives outside of time and space. And, in a similar way, when we are united to Christ, then we step outside of time and space and live as one with everyone whom the Holy Spirit has ever called, gathered, enlightened and sanctified. We're one with the prophets and the apostles. We're one with the martyrs and confessors of every age. Because we're united in Christ, we as Christians are able to strengthen and support each other in the faith, even when we've never met each other, even when we haven't shared a common language, culture or even a common life span. Because of Christ, we can trust that nothing-not time, not space and not even death-can separate those who have been redeemed and renewed in His blood.

While this true Christian unity may not make for warm and fuzzy photo-ops, for those who know what it means, there's no greater joy than seeing our oneness as Christians shown to us when Christ bestows his unifying grace onto His brothers. When little Noah Schulz was baptized just a few weeks ago, we saw that little boy made one with us when he was made one with His Lord. When our confirmands communed for the first time last week, we saw them joined together with all the saints in Heaven and earth as they were joined to Christ through His flesh and blood. Every time that we hear Pastor Meyer proclaim that we are forgiven through the grace of Christ, we hear Christ himself gather us together through His Word and make us one with each other because He has made us one in Himself.

Even though it's 15 years old now, newly married couples may still dance to the U2 song One And as much as that drives me nuts, the truth is that One isn't any less great of a song simply because people misuse it. In a similar but far more profound way, the Oprahs and Power Rangers of this world will always have the wrong understanding of Christian unity. And they may even chastise us for not doing a good enough job of making ourselves one. But ultimately, no matter how greatly they misrepresent Christ's words, they can't change or corrupt what Christ is really praying for and they can't take away what Christ has given us. This Christian oneness lives and reigns forever because the Triune God lives and reigns forever. And through the Spirit, the Son in us and the Father in the Son-we have been made perfectly one.