May 20, 2007
The Seventh Sunday of Easter (Year C)
Acts 16:16-34; Psalm 97; Revelation 22:12-14,16-17,20-21; John 17:20-26
What is it like to be ONE with God? For me, sometimes, being ONE with God is like being one of two tree trunks standing next to each other that have grown up together so closely that the trunks have grown together. Yet there are two distinct trees.
Or sometimes it feels to me that being ONE with God is like a drop of rain returning to the ocean; at other times it is to be part of a community so faithful, giving and forgiving, loving and serving, that one cannot tell where God begins and the community ends. Or maybe being ONE with God is to be lost in the depths of prayer as the sun rises and/or sets and that Oneness extends to the chair in which I sit, the panorama outside my window, and finally, to all of creation.
Oneness with God is not a thing to be described perhaps, as much as it is a thing to live.
Jesus wanted the followers to know that same connection he had with God, not so that each one might then go off and declare their own salvation or goodness or chosen-ness compared to others, but that they might together BE ones who did God’s healing, redeeming, loving, life giving work on earth.
It’s easy to get lulled into thinking about one’s own Oneness with God, of being that intertwined tree, and forget that Jesus spoke to a group of people about this oneness. And not only are we bound to God in a self redemptive way, but we are bound to each other in that same way. My salvation is entwined with yours, and your salvation is entwined with mine. For together we are God’s own – and not just you and me, but everyone else too.
And that is where the ONE-ness with God gets sticky.
For if we are to truly be ONE with God then we truly need to practice by being ONE with each other. And frankly my observation of the world, the church, even this parish, is that we are not so great at that kind of ONE-ness. It’s not easy to be ONE with people who are not like us. It is not easy to be entwined like two trunks of a tree with folks who are the epitome of what we don’t want to be. It’s not even easy to be ONE with people we love and have chosen to spend our lives with!
So this reading from John – typical of John in its circular and sometimes obtuse language – is part of the discourse where John has Jesus mouthing to the followers as he is about to ascend to where he came from. So, it is filled with challenges that are completely contrary to our human nature, self serving, narrowly focused, and self interested as we humans tend to be. Be One with One another completely, as God and Christ are ONE. And don’t forget not even they are an exclusive duo, the Trinity is also ONE with them. And we are One with them. All this ONE-ness gets to be a bit confusing. Where does ONE begin and another ONE begin? Or is that the point? There is no separation ONE from another. None.
We are all ONE in God. And if ONE in God, how can we niggle and bicker and cast out one another?
Yet that is precisely what is being done, in our church, in our nation, in the world. We are declaring – or some are declaring – that they cannot be ONE with this group or that because this group or that does not or does do that which is not acceptable to the ONE-ness.
Confusing? I sound sort of like John’s circular and obtuse way of explaining things, don’t I?
And that is what happens when church folk, or truthfully any folk, from any community, try to set rules around what makes for proper ONE-ness in the group, and delineates who is ONE and who is not ONE.
Good People! ONE means ONE, not two, not some in and some out, not ONE and then some other ONES over here someplace. ONE means ONE. God’s intention for human beings is that they get along. That they think of pastoral images that metaphorically describe what it means to be ONE with each other and then live into them sacrificially, self sacrificially, giving up all their previously clung to idiosyncrasies and self defining folderol! Trade all that selfness in for ONE-ness!
And that is the not so sweet part of being ONE with God.
For to be One with God means we have to give up looking out for “number one” – ourselves, and think of ourselves not each as an individual, but as part of a collective, not one person to be saved, but part of a world to be saved, one with, interconnected to! And we have to extend that oneness to all the collectives in our lives, from simple family collective (that is a fairly simple leap) to work mates and schoolmates, to parish, to the whole church, to the universal church, to other faiths, to country, to the western world, to the whole, great, big world, even perhaps to the universe. We are ONE!
So that we may begin to have some concept of the vastness of the ONE-ness that Jesus shared with God, and the vastness into which we are invited, we have to get out of ourselves, out of this culturally, time encased, gender specific, age ridden human form that God adopted so that we might begin to have a clue of the vastness of God’s love and ability to interconnect all things. We may even need to let go of the image of God made manifest in Jesus. No, I am not saying we stop being Christians. What I am saying is that we need to remember that Jesus’ foray into human form was very temporary – as God, the Word; God, the Wisdom; God, Co-creator and Co-being with the Maker of all things. Oneness with the human Jesus was a simple slam-dunk. We have to let go of the human form of Jesus to begin to grasp the vastness and the responsibility of that ONE-ness he pleaded for in this gospel lesson this morning. We must let go of our anthropomorphic thinking and replace it with ONE-ness thinking. Let God be God, always in relationship with All things, All beings, all creation. That is the ONE-ness to which we are called.
Whew!
It’s a little daunting to me to think in such terms. The vastness is hard to grasp, and yet I think John in his own way was trying to do just that, to not let us get bogged down in the temporary humanity of Jesus, rather we are to get outside the limitations of our humanity and his into the ONE-ness with God and each other that God intends. That was what Jesus was speaking of in the gospel this morning.
And what does this mean really, day to day, day after day, when we are worried about floods in the basement, kids’ education, the new boss, the house that needs painting, the pink slips that await us? How then does being ONE with God matter in such circumstances?
Is it possible that when placed in the context of ONE-ness with God and each other, these day-to-day things take on a different hue, a different meaning? Could it be that if we are truly ONE with each other and God, and we know it in the depths of our souls, then we will focus on things differently? The need for paint or for caring for our children’s education will not go away, and the basement will still get flooded, but the angst and importance of such events will be measured by a different standard.
The standard is ONE. Part of the collective! ONE-ness with! Not differentiation from!
May we go from this place today with a new set of eyes, seeing all people and things, all of creation, as ONE with us and ONE with God. And may that new measure lead us to places we cannot even imagine, but for which our souls are longing – like a drop of water returning to the ocean, or trees grown so close together they are intertwined, so much stronger, more interesting, so much more than they ever could be alone. It’s a marvelous invitation Jesus gave to us. Let us accept this new way of seeing things and make it our way of being.
Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Gale Davis Morris
Church of the Good Shepherd