5 June 2011

“Love the One you’re with”
John 17:1-11 / 1 Peter 5:6-11
Easter 7A
5 June 2011


If you’ve traveled around the country with any annual regularity over the past twenty or thirty years … one thing you have undoubtedly noticed, is that, as a nation we’re becoming more and more alike. Regional differences are disappearing … quaint dialects and phrases are heard less and less. You can hear people call a can of Sprite “soda” here in Seattle just as readily as in New York. People who live in Atlanta don’t sound that Southern any more. Even Minnesotans are losing that brogue made famous by Garrison Keilor in his “Prairie Home Companion” and in the movie “Fargo.”
It’s probably due to television … the monoculture of the tube … and to us being mobile, moving around the country so easily and readily, in a way that would have been unheard of a hundred years ago.
But it could also be due to … simple economics … it’s easier and more profitable to make mass quantities of one kind of thing rather than several different kinds … to package them in the same kind of package … and to sell them at the same store. So shopping malls all tend to look alike. Whether you’re in St. Cloud, Minnesota … or Boston … Columbia, Maryland … or Amarillo, Texas … you can be pretty sure that the local mall will have a Target, Payless Shoe Source, Hot Topic and Panda Express.
Even around the world … things are becoming more and more the same. If you’ve traveled at all you know that McDonald’s and Burger King are everywhere. But so are other stores. When we were traveling in Germany a decade ago we went in a Best Buy-clone in Cologne … and knew exactly where to look for the headphones Kathleen wanted to buy because the store was set up exactly as they are in this country.
Everything’s becoming the same. Identical. Exactly alike.
And so maybe that’s why … when we hear Jesus’ prayer in the 17th chapter of John’s gospel … every year on this Sunday right before Pentecost … it hits us as a “why can’t all the churches be alike” plea by our Lord.
It does sound that way … “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.” And later, in verse 21 … “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.”
How many times have we heard – or said - these words: “Well, how can we as Christians ever expect the world to live in peace and unity when we can’t even get together among ourselves? What kind of an example are we to the world, so splintered and different from each other?”
But is that what Jesus really prays for here in this 17th chapter of John’s gospel, his words, his prayer right before his Passion, suffering, and death? The unity of all Christians?
And what about that unity anyway? Does unity mean … uniformity … that we all have to be alike?
Actually, Jesus’ words here could well be the words of a parent praying for their children … that God would “protect them.”
That is what parents do, you know. Protect us, and pray for our continued protection.
When we’re just starting out in life, our mothers’ very bodies protect us while we grow and develop. After we’re born, our parents continue to work to keep us safe … providing us with food and clothing and shelter. And then … as we grow up … they let us go … well, more or less … but they continue to pray for us, for our protection.
This is what Jesus prays for here – that the disciples … and those who would come after them in the mission of spreading his Word … which includes us today … he prays that they, and we, would be protected.
Protection against what?
Do we even need to ask?
Sickness. Disaster. Trouble. Bad choices. Evil itself.
Our reading from First Peter puts it in words people of earlier times could easily understand … Faith in Jesus resists our adversary the Devil, who prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.
Now, whether you believe in an actual personal devil named Satan … or instead choose to see evil as a force, perpetrated and perpetuated by people, alive and active in the world today … the good news for us is that we can resist the Devil, resist evil, firm in our faith … through Jesus’ prayers for us.
That’s right … Jesus is praying for us to be so firm in our faith that we would be able to stand up to the Devil, evil, and temptation … and win.
In other words, Jesus is praying that we would grow up, and be spiritually mature.
And the thing about maturity is, maturity recognizes the differences in others, and respects them.
When we’re young and immature, we believe everything needs to be alike. If we don’t get the same bowl of Captain Crunch placed in front of us that we get every single morning … but one day, mom runs out and makes us oatmeal instead … well, it’s different, and therefore, yukky.
If we don’t get to wear the same clothes … or hairstyle … or get our ears pierced … or go to the same places and do the same things as our friends … then we aren’t one with them, and we’ll be afraid that we’ll stick out and “everybody will be staring at us because we’re different.”
But maturity recognizes and accepts differences in things which are not of central importance. I don’t have to wear designer clothes like everyone else. I don’t have to watch “American Idol” like everyone else. I can be OK with who I am.

Fine. So Jesus wants us to be mature in our faith. And part of maturity means accepting that everything doesn’t have to be the same identical way for everybody.
But why spend so much time on this one little verse of John’s gospel; one, two little bits of Jesus’ final prayer?
Because, for Lutheran Christians, unity was one of the hot button issues of the Reformation.
Good old Philip Melancthon … the scribe of the Lutheran movement … Martin Luther’s Thomas Jefferson … and the author of the central Lutheran document, the Augsburg Confession … Philip put it so well that I’ll just read his words, Article 7 of the Confession –
“It is enough for the true unity of the church to agree concerning the teaching of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments. It is not necessary that human traditions, rites, or ceremonies instituted by human beings be alike everywhere.”

It is enough. So what was going on here to cause that kind of a reaction?
Well, the Roman church’s big argument with the Lutherans was that unity meant uniformity … “we walk alike, we talk alike, we sing alike, we dress alike.”
Except … the Lutherans weren’t doing things exactly like their Roman brothers and sisters anymore.
The Lutherans were different. Their worship services looked different. Their priests began to marry. They didn’t wear fancy Roman robes. They sang different songs. They received communion differently.
So, to the Romans, that meant that the Lutherans “weren’t being Christian,” since they were different in these ways.
But good old Philip here said NO … and he came up with a great word that I need you to repeat. ADIAPHORA.
ADIAPHORA.
Adiaphora is Latin for “things of secondary or tertiary importance about which we don’t need to agree.” In other words, they aren’t central to what we’re about, so we can be different.
So it can still be “pop” in Seattle or Minneapolis, “soda” in New York, “tonic” in Boston and “coke” in Atlanta … and be nothing else but a can of Sprite.
And it can be round or square … carpeted or wooden floored … have an organ, a piano, or a band with guitars and drums … be led by a pastor (male or female) or youth or a rocket scientist … singing “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” or “Shout to the Lord, All the Earth” … reading song lyrics off of a Power Point projection with hands up in the air… or hands on pews or chairs, on red hymnals or bulletins with everything necessary printed inside … and be faithful Lutheran worship.
Being spiritually mature means we can be comfortable with and unapologetic of our own expression of faith … without being critical of others.
And as for the wider Church … it can have the traditions and practices and piety of the Roman Catholics … or Methodists … or Presbyterians … or Episcopalians … Assembly of God … Baptist … or no denomination at all … and still be Christian.
How?
Again, go back to good old Philip’s words …
“It is enough for the true unity of the church to agree concerning the teaching of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments. It is not necessary that human traditions, rites, or ceremonies instituted by human beings be alike everywhere.”

We don’t have to be clones, one of another, to be one.
Our one-ness is not found in being identical, exactly alike liturgies or hymns, popes, bishops, or pastors, denominations or institutions, or political statements … no … our unity is found only in the One who prayed for us to be protected from the evil one, the One who came and lived our live, and suffered and died for us so that we might have life. We can be different in so many different ways because we are united in Jesus … and receiving his gift of forgiveness and new life through his Cross.
Our one-ness is found in the prayers of Jesus, praying for us, so that we would be mature, resisting the Devil as he prowls around looking for someone to devour … or just looking to start a good old church-dividing fight over things that are not of central importance.
And that will be enough for us, as we go about living out what that means in a world of many cultures and tastes … as we work with other believers and share our gifts with each other and the world. Together we add color to the light of Christ shining through us, like light through a prism breaks into a wide array of colors and hues … so we, through our differences, will enrich each other, our faith, the faith of others … and the entire world.
For our salvation depends on Jesus Christ alone … not on how we pray or praise or organize and govern ourselves as Church. The Church’s One Foundation is Jesus Christ, our Lord, our Beautiful Savior, the One we are called and gathered and sent to love with all our heart.
Amen.