Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
About 10 years or so ago, before Communism imploded, I saw a comedy special on T.V. that was really unique. A guy named Vladimir Dochenko, literally a Russian-American, was doing a stand up routine on a talk
show. Vladimir literally was a bridge between two worlds. His mother was an American who had married a Russian career diplomat, and Vladimir had grown up in New York and Moscow. He spoke English like an American, which he in fact was, and he spoke Russian like a native too, because he was. He was a communist and a capitalist. A strange amalgam of polar opposites. He had a foot each, in two worlds - and he was interpreter for both. He wanted to bring peace and unity, to reduce tensions, and to bring understanding where there was only distrust and suspicion.
He used humor very effectively. He would joke. For instance, he'd say in flawless, accent less American-English, "Why do you call us Commies?" Then he'd smile and say, "We don't call you Cappies." With this and similar jokes, he'd get behind his American audiences' defenses and then get them to see the humanity of the Russian people. He was honest and sincere and could speak openly about Russia's failings and shortcomings, but he could also speak of their hopes and dreams.
What was so baffling was that he did the same thing in Russian. He explained us and who we were to the Russians. He was a one-man peace broker who had a passion to bring his two worlds together.
He was a mediator.
Today's lesson from John's Gospel talks about Jesus' unique role as a person of two worlds too. Over and over again, Jesus asserts his unity with God, "As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, or again, “So that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me.”
With these, and similar words, Jesus tries to communicate his unity with God and his unity with us. Because through him we are united with God. We are God's and, through Jesus, God is in us. We share the divine life, and the divine will of God
Jesus calls us to unity – to true oneness.
Jesus’ words are a prayer. He prays for the unity of his church and his disciple. It is interesting because today I am Lutheran and preaching in a Presbyterian congregation. The state of our unity, or disunity, always worries us as Christian people. We look back in church history and long for the good old days when all the church was one – unified.
If the truth is told, there has never been such a day and age. The church has always been riddled with controversy and disagreement. It is a humanity community, a family. All families have arguments about important things. Mine does; I’m sure yours has too.
The great creeds of the church arose to restore unity. The Nicene Creed was the result of about 10 years of hot debate and discussion. It took years to come to an agreement.
In the 19th century, my denomination and yours, the Presbyterians, were divided over slavery. Families broke apart – church unity was asundered. If you read the minutes of meetings from that period, each side of the slavery controversy used highly nuanced theological reasoning and abundant Biblical quotations to shore up their arguments and prove their respective points.
Debate rages now among the Episcopalians about how to respond to the reality of gay people. The unity of the world wide Anglican communion is threatened and the American Episcopalians church is threatened with expulsion and censure because of it openness. They are in danger too because some African Anglican churches would like to see polygamy reintroduced because of local conditions in Africa created by the reality of many men working and living far from their homelands and the ravages of AIDS. It is really hard to achieve unity. No wonder Jesus prayed for it.
Churches left my Lutheran denomination because we started to ordain women 40 years ago. Debate and controversy is no stranger to the church, we should not be surprised when it happens. Sometimes it takes the Holy Spirit years, centuries, to restore unity. What is the bottom line, how much do we have to agree upon in order to call one another brothers and sisters?
This past week Jerry Falwell died. I disagreed with many of the things Jerry Falwell said and wrote, but I never doubted the sincerity of his belief in Christ as his Savior and Lord.
The essence of being a Christian is to be able to “believe in your heart and confess with our lips that Jesus Christ is Lord, you will be saved.” Paul says in Romans 10. The content of our belief about Jesus Christ is going to vary wildly. We human beings can’t treat our unity casually nor should we obsess and worry about it as though it is all upon us. The unity of the church is ultimately God’s responsibility.
Jesus says in today’s gospel: “The glory you have given me, I have given them”. Glory plays a very prominent part in the gospel of John. From the beginning the word says “The word become flesh and dwelled among us. We saw his glory, the glory of the only Son of the Father.” Then again when Jesus turns water into wine at the Canan wedding St John says there Jesus revealed his glory.
Ordinarily we think of glory as triumph as a great and marvelous gift, as a sign of great achievement, unique fame and dignity. Yet the ultimate glory of Christ is his willing acceptance of the cross for our sakes and on our behalf, as the old hymn puts it “in the cross of Christ I glory.” The cross doesn’t seem, at first glance, to have anything to do with glory. It is an instrument of torture and death. Yet we become people of the Christ as we are baptized and put on Christ. We, too, are to reveal the glory, justice, love and truth of God.
William Williamson, Methodist Bishop of Alabama, tells the story of a bank employee who discovered that the bank was silently, quietly denying bank loans to single or divorced women. Obviously, this was long time ago. But a true story. When he was certain and had accumulated enough evidence, he confronted the Bank President with his concerns. A month later he was fired for “other reasons” and spent six months looking for work. His friends offered him sympathy, but no one noticed that in this cross carrying he revealed the glory of God.
At our house, we recently watched the movie “Freedom Writers” about a great teacher who worked with 9th graders from some of the worst violence torn, gang infested sectors of LA. She introduced them to a higher set of values. One story is of a young Latina girl who witnesses a shooting. A young Mexican boy shoots at a rival black gang member and inadvertently kills an innocent bystander. She is the only witness and in the code of her gang, her support group, she knows she is expected to lie to protect him. Yet if she does an innocent man will go to jail. Everyone pressures her, including her mother and father who is in jail himself a victim of injustice, to protect her own, their own. Yet, truth and the power of the cross which she wears around her neck also claims her. She tells the truth and is severely beaten for her disloyalty, yet the glory of the Lord shines all around her.
These are dramatic stories. Few of us face such difficult choices. Yet at a simpler, more mundane level, we are all called to reveal God’s glory and be mediators between the divine world of God and our very human world – God’s glory is revealed in simple things like when the cashier gives us too much change for our twenty, and we return it, or when we defend and come to the aid of the new immigrant girl who comes to school on the first day and is ridiculed. God calls us to mediate love, to become Jesus to whoever needs Christ.
In our baptism, we hear the words “let your light so shine that others may see your good works and give glory to our Father in heaven.”
It is challenge
It is task
It is cross
It is our duty and our response in love, to a cross born for us.
In Jesus’ Name
Amen
Who We Are