One In Alignment 6-1-25
One in Alignment
Acts 16:16-34; John 17:20-26
Acts 16:16-34
One day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.” She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And it came out that very hour. But when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities. When they had brought them before the magistrates, they said, “These men are disturbing our city; they are Jews and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe.” The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates had them stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods. After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely. Following these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet in the stocks. About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were unfastened. When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted in a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” The jailer called for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them outside and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” They answered, “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire family were baptized without delay. He brought them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.
John 17:20-26
”I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. “Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
Prayer - Lord, even though you prayed that all your followers would be unified in our love for and in our service to you, that’s hard for us. We have, even in our fairly unified congregation, many differences of age, income, education, race, nationality, and political points of view. We are fearful that, if we put some things on the table, the congregational unity that we have would be blown to bits in the ensuing arguments! And yet, you prayed to your Heavenly Father that we’d all be one. And we figure that there’s a good likelihood that your prayers will be answered. There’s also a good chance that you will work for the accomplishment of that for which you pray. Therefore, we pray that your prayer for our unity will be answered in our congregational life together. Make us one Lord, unified in heart and mind because that’s the way you want us to be. Amen.
In this Sunday’s gospel, Jesus prepares to leave his disciples. He is on his way to the cross. But he does not leave them on their own. He prays for them. And what does he pray for them? Courage? Theological orthodoxy? Biblical insight? Passionate belief? No. You heard him: Jesus prays that they will be one. Unity, because together, anything is possible.
But church, congregational unity is hard. America is in a time of divisions and contentiousness, political, racial, and economic. Some of that division infects the church as well. It’s hard, amid such divisions, to get it together when we are in the church.
Yet here is my thesis: We have our work cut out for us to be a unified church today, not because close to sixty-percent of young Americans say they can get along fine without connecting with any church, and not because there are deep divisions within our society. The true instigator of our congregation’s challenge for unity is Jesus Christ! Our church is not ours. We are not gathered here this morning because we chose to be. We are here, worshipping God together, because the risen Christ put us here.
Contentiousness in a congregation? Disagreements about the purpose and mission of the church? Otherwise, genteel and decorous congregants showing their fangs to one another? While it’s true we live in a combative, quarrelsome age where political divides also afflict the church, it’s important to see some of this trouble as an expected spinoff of Jesus Christ’s wildly expansive notion of salvation.
A Savior who sets out to seek, find, and save the lost who, when criticized because of the company he kept at table smirked, “If you are well, you don’t need a doctor, I’ve not come for good, respectable, Bible-believing, justice-advocating, hypersensitive-to-other-people’s-wounds church people. I’ve come for sinners, only sinners.” Or as Paul put it to one of his contentious, disagreeing and disagreeable, combative, quarrelsome congregations, “You might be willing to die for a really, really good person but he shows his love for us in that he died only for bad people—us”.
Jesus got into all manner of difficulty, not because of questions about his orthodoxy or biblical interpretation. The chief charge against Jesus was that he saved those whom no one thought could be saved, no one wanted saved. “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them”.
Never once did Jesus pray that we would love the lovely, loveable, and loving. Who needs Jesus’s help to do that? He commanded that we love one another, put up with one another, try to stay in fellowship with one another as his disciples.
Jesus’ determination to save sinners, only sinners, would be challenge enough for us sinners without Jesus’ equally determined insistence to put those being-redeemed sinners in the church and then, in this Sunday’s gospel, to pray that those sinners would “be one.” Because of Jesus’ peculiar definition of salvation, we must be saved as a group. I remind you that his ministry begins with the formation of a band of disciples. Paul didn’t go forth into the world asking Gentiles thoughtfully to consider his message and then come to a verdict upon the truth. Paul went about planting churches, calling them, even with all of their differences, “The Body of Christ,” Christ’s bodily, physical presence in the world. So, if anybody encounters the risen Christ, it will be through the ragtag, contrived gathering otherwise known as church.
This Sunday Christ fervently prays that all of his followers (church) would “be one” and commands us to get along with one another whether you agree with them about everything or not. Yet, from the first, we’ve been unable to live up to his expectations, having so little in common except love for him.
In our congregation, let’s face it: we congregate because we’ve been assembled. Our church, this congregation, these people seated next to you, were Jesus’s idea before yours. When you have no choice in the selection with whom you congregate, when it’s all left up to unity-producing-unity-praying Jesus, little wonder that, from the first days of the church, there was disputation. In fact, I think that this morning’s gospel, with Jesus praying for our unity, was given such prominence because the church of John’s day wasn’t unified. Therefore, John reminded his church that of all the things Jesus could have prayed be given to us, he prayed that we all would be one.
Dispute, division, and differences may not be signs that we have fallen short of church but rather signs that we are actually living out Christ’s wildly expansive corporate salvation. Be honest. The most challenging aspect of being commissioned by Christ is to be gathered by Christ with those with whom we have little in common other than Christ. Whatever work Christ does in the world, he chooses to do it in concert with a choir that he assembles. He comes to us, busting through our locked doors, breathes his Holy Spirit upon us, and commissions us to work with him together. Christ, the great delegator, the relentless congregator. Salvation in Christ is always as a group.
My fear is that at the last judgement, I’ll not be condemned for my bad preaching but rather Christ will say, “Nice to see you but, where are the others I asked you to bring with you?” It is about being one body in alignment, not what you, or I, have accomplished.
Division is easy, a natural propensity in a culture of rugged individualism, consumerism, political factionalism, and self-protectiveness from discomforting truth. Togetherness is hard. Congregating requires empowerment from outside ourselves, not I “but Christ lives in me”. When Jesus interceded for us, he prayed not that we would be orthodox or prophetic or even that we would be right. He begged God to make us one. “This is how everyone will know that you are my disciples, when you love each other”. And when you look across the landscapes of countless institutional churches – unity is all too often the last thing you see; all too often, love is the last thing you see.
Christ’s propensity to congregate his followers, to save and to deploy us together, means that we can expect differences and disagreements, arguments and dissension in our church. Be surprised when we are on the same page about anything other than Jesus. I have found that differences in our congregation can be life-giving. So, if you dare to debate and listen, don’t be surprised to be corrected and thereby brought closer to Jesus by a fellow Christian who may not be your type.
I have sure grown in my faith because of the jostling and insight that I received from pesky preachers, contentious congregants, and quarrelsome colleagues whom God used to say things to me that I didn’t want to hear. Think what you are asking of people when they join a church: to believe that there’s a gathering more important than their nation, political party or even their family, to give money for the needs of perfect strangers, to stay in conversation with those who are put off by their politics, to receive the gospel of God from the hands of another who may not be their type. It’s so much easier to divide, to walk away in a huff than to stay.
But please note this. Jesus doesn’t just command us to love one another, doesn’t just insist that we be unified as a church. Jesus prays for us. As always, Jesus doesn’t command us to follow him, speak up for him, serve him, or be unified in him on our own. He prays for us. He helps us in our weakness, especially when our weakness is the temptation to divide from one another as his disciples.
Every time we gather as a church, we ought to remember this Sunday’s gospel. On one of the few times that Jesus prays for us, in one of his few petitions to his Heavenly Father for us, what did he ask God to do for us: that we, amid our diversity and division, would be one. And at our best, even here in our church, Jesus’s prayers are being answered. Thanks be to God – amen.