Scripture: John 17:20-26; Acts 16:16-18; Acts 15 Series: Easter
True Christian unity is not administrative, denominational, or institutional but eschatological: oneness gathered around the risen Lord Jesus Christ, who receives sinners at his table in the new creation.
Illustrations: computer-i-cant-fix, prom-movie-vs-star-wars, moving-vs-still-water-baptism, professor-property-reunion, umc-disaffiliation-property, great-divorce-researching-ghost, scripture-swaddling-not-sword
June 1, 2025
We are One
Acts 16:16-18
John 17:20-26
One day as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a female slave 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 the 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. - Acts 16:16-18
“I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who 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.” - John 17:20-26
The most uncontroversial claim anyone can make about Christians is that they are not united. There are a lot of different kinds of Christians all over the world and they disagree about a lot of stuff. Most people have no idea why one church says Church of Christ and another says Presbyterian and another says Methodist? What does any of that mean? Sometimes it feels like understanding different denominations is like understanding how a computer works. I mean, I use a computer, but, I don’t know how it works. And if it breaks down, don’t look at me to fix it.
Yeah, I go to church. But if it breaks down or something happens, I’ll probably just go to a different one.
Jesus talked about oneness a lot. So did Paul. This was an important concept for the early church. Oneness. Unity. Unity is another term for oneness. Togetherness. Jesus says, “I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one.”
Why are Christians so bad at listening to the words of Jesus here? I think this is important to state that question. One reason, and a generous interpretation, is that the reason why there’s so many disagreements and so many different groups of Christians in the world is because what we’re talking about matters tremendously. We’re talking about life and death. We’re talking about the creation of the universe, who the ultimate being is, and how we are to live based on what that ultimate being has revealed to us through various ways; the stakes were very high. This isn’t the kind of movie where it’s just like set in a small town and it’s about whether, you know, the prom queen and prom king end up together, or if, you know, the cute loner is going to end up with the prom king or something like that. Right? Like, the stakes for that kind of movie, very low. The stakes for this is, you know, Star Wars, the universe is in the balance based on the decisions we make.
Now, this may be true on a theoretical level, the reality on the ground is that the reason why different people are in different denominations and are in different churches has much more to do with, you know, the happenstance of personal experience, then with the intentional study of the creed and theologies of these different traditions No one can ever stand outside a tradition or a community. You can pretend to, but it’s not possible. You’re always in the community. You’re always being shaped by a community and a tradition, whether explicitly or implicitly. And it shapes your understanding. of what is worthwhile in life. It shapes your understanding of what is worthwhile in a church. Christ said, we should all be one. The disagreements of the earlier church had to do with who could be a Christian. Could it just be Jews, or could Gentiles be Christians? Did men have to get circumcised before they were baptized? This was a deep and serious debate. The books of Acts digs deeply into this. Acts 15 shows an amazing experience at the Council of Jerusalem where Apostles had their minds changed by the experience and evidence of others.
Other debates had to do with the nature of Jesus Christ, whether Jesus Christ was all God, or partially God, whether Jesus Christ was a demig God. debates around the Holy Spirit, whether the Holy Spirit came from the Father and the Son, or from the Father alone. When we say the Apostles’ Creed together, it is a way to assert an answer to the questions asked during these debates.
As we get later, debates around the papacy and the Pope, and whether or not the Bishop of Rome had ultimate authority. debates around communion, whether communion could just be bread or could bread and wine be offered to all people? Was the Bible just for scholars, or was it for everybody? Was holiness just for monks and nuns, or was it possible for everybody? All these debates have taken place throughout the history of the christian faith.
In the modern period, churches have split over slavery. over women in ministry, over how to understand sexuality and gender.
The funniest split I know was in a brethren church in Pennsylvania that had a schism over baptism. There were two different churches in the same tradition. One church said that you had to be baptized in moving water and the other church said you could be baptized in still water. Coincidentally, the church said, moving water was next to a river and the church that said still water was okay, happened to be miles from a river. So if they were going to baptize in a river, if that was the only valid baptism, they’d have to travel nearly six miles every time to do it.
It seems absurd when I retell it in this way, but for the people involved in those debates, it was the most important thing in the world. Was there baptism valid or invalid? Was Christ accepting that person or not?
What all these schisms and divisions come down to, though, are administrative splits. They are splits based on who is in authority and who is not in authority. Not what documents are authoritative, as people like to proclaim, but who are the people who are given authority to read the documents authoritatively?
Who can make decisions for you and who can’t? Who is in control?
A lot of divisions come down to property. I had a professor once who told me this is why he thought the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Churches would never come together: they would never agree to who controlled the property. A lot of churches left the United Methodist Church over the last few years explicitly not because of any issue of human sexuality, but about property. People who left told me this explicitly. It was about who has control over the property and whether the local church can do whatever it wants. But Jesus wanted us all to be one?
Now, I’ve spent a good portion of this message talking about the ways we are separate and apart. And I think this is important, because if I’m gonna talk about unity, we need to understand what we’re talking about. That is, what is the unity that Jesus Christ is talking about.
I don’t think it’s administrative unity. I don’t think Jesus is seeking for every Christian pastor in the world to be paid in the same way, to have the same name on the check or the direct deposit, to have a unified bureaucracy or administration or denomination. All of this stuff has nothing to do with our life to come in Jesus Christ in the new creation. There are no pay checks or insurance or pensions or bylaws or mortgages in the new creation. All of these are marks of our fallen world.
We’re often deceived into imagining our life, our future life with God as continuous with our life now, and continuous with our relationships now. The Bible never says this.
Our relationships matter, though. This is clear. I’m not saying our relationships are going to be dissolved in the life to come. They are going to be transformed as our bodies are transformed, as are the world is transformed.
And our denominations aren’t going to make it. Our individual churches aren’t going to make it. They are going to be dissolved. Who paid whom is not a question of eternity. What name is on the sign is not a question of eternity.
Who are you serving? Who are you worshiping? Who are you feeding? Who is feeding you? These are questions of eternity. Where are you building up your treasure? These are questions of eternity. These are questions of unity.
My brothers and sisters, I think this is what Jesus is getting at. This is the prayer that Jesus says.
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.
This is it. It’s about being with Jesus in the new creation eternally.
CS Lewis, in his wonderful book, the Great Divorce, offers this allegory of the life to come. It’s nice and short, it’s beautiful. I highly recommend it as a provocative, very scriptural understanding of what our future can look like. And one of the characters in it is this preacher who decides he doesn’t really want to go to heaven yet, because there are too many questions that need to be answered. He’s doing too much research. He’s got a lot of research he has to get to.
This is a very relatable figure for me. Focusing on the question instead of the one whom we are seeking. The one who is the path and the gate. The shepherd who is the gateway. The one who is the answer to every question, to everything worth seeking. The alpha and the omega, the beginning, and the end.
Now, I am a proud Methodist. I’m proud of our tradition, of what this church is doing, where we come from, where we are going. I think these things are important. But they’re not the most important, these are not the aspects of unity. Unity is around the risen Lord, Jesus Christ, who calls his sheep and his sheep hear his voice, who calls you. To come and be one, worship around the throne. This is Unity, not in organization, in government ID, in EID, in tax system, in liturgy, unity around the one Lord Jesus Christ, who is and who was and who is to come. Unity around where Christ is found in the Scriptures. The scriptures are not swords to beat people with, but the swaddling clothes in which hold the baby Jesus offered for us. Unity is not a finished thing. It is something we must seek continually.
We don’t come here to this table perfect. We don’t come here with it all together. There are many differences to be found between us gathered here today. Many sins we have all committed. God doesn’t call the qualified. God qualifies the called. God doesn’t seek the righteous but sinners. We come to this table as sinners and we are welcomed by our one Lord in unity around him. Around his Gospel word for us. Around the Good News that Jesus is Lord.
And that is what the church is. Sinners drawing near to hear Jesus speak to us in his Word. Jesus receiving sinners in baptism and eating with us in his Supper. The Spirit of life giving once unloved people to dance for joy in the feast. The Father himself, great of heart, singing over his children, pleased as punch in the obedience, victory, and grace of their brother his Son.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.