CENTRAL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH (USA)

Rev. Dr. Thomas Boone

May 20, 2007

SERMON TITLE: ‘”Jesus’ Last Word: Unity”

“The glory you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one”.

Jeremiah 31: 31 – 34, John 17: 20 - 26

I know you’ve grown weary of hearing it, but I’ve made a lot of this season of interim ministry that we’re in with each other because of how special a time it can be. Just like it’s necessary for each of us to see a physician every now and then to make sure everything checks out. Interim ministry is a time for the church to tighten some bolts, tie up some loose ends, tidy up, refocus, and ask itself some hard but important questions. Today’s question is about as hard as it comes! When you examine the range of your behaviors, attitudes, and actions in and out of church, would you say that you contribute more to life, or to death? This question isn’t an easy one to answer, yet it’s the one that God’s Word prompts us to ponder over today. So, I did some googling (that’s ‘research’ in modern language) and found some interesting trivia to get us started.

The longest reported living animal is an invertebrate known as a bivalve mollusk, which lives for about 374 years. The longest living vertebrate on record is a bowhead whale living 210 years. Followed by the Galapagos tortoise at 193 years; lives that far outlive us, but still they die. On the other side of the spectrum we have mice that live an average of 4 years. The midge fly, a favorite bait among fly fishermen, seems to average about 4 days. And the shortest lifespan of all is a microscopic marine animal called a gastrotrich, living a whopping 3 days!

By now you may be wondering what all this has to do with John 17 and Jeremiah 33. I’ve heard the Bible summed up in a few different ways, but here’s my take on it; it’s about God’s love for His creation to live. God created us perfectly, but we messed up, so life turned into death. God gave us ways to choose life over death, and after generations of failed attempts to get it right, God decided to rewrite the rules of death and life, and smashed death into oblivion. But that wasn’t all. In addition to wiping death off the map, He did something else fantastic. He created new life, and we have the ability to live in this new life if we accept the simple fact that God has rewritten the rules through the death and resurrection of Jesus. The first Adam turned life into death, to which every living being will succumb whether that be in 3 days or 374 years. In Jesus, we have the second Adam through whom we can obtain a life that is eternally impervious to the death that came from the first Adam. Today we’re being asked to think about if we’re living according to the rules of death that Adam brought, or of life, which Jesus brought.

God detests death. It’s a virus into the system of life that He created to be very good. When someone longs to die as an answer to life’s problems no one is more grieved than the Author of life. When cancer assumes control of a cell system, there is no joy about it in God’s eyes. When a drug dealer’s gun exterminates a young person’s life for lack of payment, God grieves beyond my capacity to describe. But, there’s more to it than physical death.

What’s even more grievous to God is when humans behave in ways that lead to death. Abuse destroys trust. Bitterness and anger drown hope in a sea of depression. Greed ravages the innocent. Death does not require the exhaustion of breath in order to be palpable. Since Easter we’ve been pondering scriptures that talk about how Jesus died that we may experience resurrection and hope, not just in eternity, but while we have life here. It shouldn’t be news to any of you, then, when I proclaim that God detests death and He didn’t send His Son to die so that people who believe in him would continue dying.

Just listen to the words strewn throughout scripture on this subject. In John, Jesus says, ‘the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly’ (John 10:10). In Isaiah, God promises a wayward people that if they but confess, repent, and turn from doing evil, God will pardon them abundantly and they will live (Is 55:7). When God’s children out of their own disobedience were wandering in the desert for forty years, God provided manna, quail, and water so they could live rather than die agonizing deaths from the desert. When Adam and Eve had committed the initiating act of disobedience of which we are all heirs, God did not kill them and start over again. What does Genesis say? Whereas they made fig leaves and loin clothes for themselves, Genesis 3:21 says, “The Lord God made garments of skins for the man and for his wife, and clothed them.”

God wants us to live. Period!

This is the heart of the matter with the Jeremiah passage today. Israel had turned from God time and time again. You may find this amazing, but there was even a point in its history that Israel had lost the scriptures! The temple was in such complete disrepair and disuse that people had no idea what God’s Word was. One king named Josiah decided that the temple should be cleaned up because it didn’t seem right to him that God’s house had gone the way of dust and mice. During the clean up someone found the book of the law and read it to Josiah. Josiah was crushed, because no one had read it for years. God’s people had lost touch with God so much that they had even forgotten about this book called the Law, the heart of Israel’s faith. He began a series of reforms to bring people back to God, and this worked for a while. But, the heart is slow to change and before long God’s people resorted once again to choosing other gods and making other nations their security rather than leaning fully on the Lord. The consequences were grim.

By the time Jeremiah was a prophet to Israel they were in the midst of an exile. Exile under Babylonian rule wasn’t a pleasant thing; all men of fighting age had been killed thus wiping out an entire generation or two. Removed from their homeland and scattered throughout the Babylonian empire, God’s people were as good as dead in their own eyes. Years passed and then out of the silence of exile God promises to restore His people to life. This time, however, there would be a new covenant, a new set of rules. ‘“I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God and they shall be my people.” The God of life spoke in a season of death, a time of consequence for centuries of unfaithfulness to God. Death is not the final answer for God’s people, nor is it the path upon which His people are to travel.

It would take centuries before God would reveal the depth of this new covenant through His Son Jesus Christ. John, better than any other gospel, lays it out for us. In John 13:34 Jesus, as the bringer of the new covenant, states that there is only one ground rule for the new covenant: “that we love one another as Jesus loved us”, completely self-sacrificially and other-centered. Do this, and we will have life. Do this, and we will bring life to others. You can perhaps see the disciples look at each other and ask under their breath, ‘Gee, is that all?’

In John 14-17 Jesus illustrates what the path of life looks like that this new command of love demands. To live as God’s children means that we will face persecution from the world; choose to follow God anyway. To live as God’s children means that we will be misunderstood by those who aren’t His children: choose to spread the word about Jesus anyway. To live as God’s children means that our true home is not on this earth, so don’t live as if it is. To live as God’s children means that we pray fervently for the desires of our heart and trust that God will supply our needs and what we don’t have, we release. To live as God’s children means following the way of peace even if it doesn’t make sense to those around us. To live as God’s children means submitting ourselves to the guidance of the Holy Spirit and laying aside our own agendas. Life means choosing truth over a lie!

And then comes our passage today. To live as God’s children means resolving to be one. For as anyone who has been through war, divorce, and company splits, without unity, there is no life. Christ’s last recorded words to his disciples before his death in the Gospel of John are written as a prayer to emphasize that Christ was not just instructing, but entreating God that this be done! This is crucial stuff, folks!

Unity. That’s a tricky word, isn’t it? For one thing, we’re children of the reformation, which means that we’re products of schism. Division is in our faith tradition. The history of the protestant church since the 17th century has been a tale of one split after another, so for us, Jesus’ words ‘to remain one’ can seem a bit out of this world. For another thing, we live in a society where divorce is rampant. When the basic unit of society is susceptible to division, then so are all institutions in that society, even the church. Third, we live in a society that’s a fascinating mix of contrasting ideologies and pluralism. This hits our denomination quite hard, which is one reason you’ll begin to see the Presbyterian Church act more and more like a collection of connected, yet regionally focused church bodies, over the next few years. I’m not sure what this will lead to, but I’m not convinced that the unity of the church is one of them.

Fourth, and I’ll make this my final observation, is that people are becoming more alienated from each other in this world of technology and information. It used to be that you had to call a friend for some information, but now you can google it on your own. It used to be that in order to meet someone to date you had to go to church, join a club, or be introduced by mutual friends. Now, anyone can go online and put up a profile, be matched by a search engine, and meet one of a variety of people that might be a good match; emphasis on the might. When video games first came out the trend was for games you could play with others. Now, it’s most common to buy a game where only one person can play at a time and if you have an internet connection you can play your game with thousands of people across the world who have the same game. Our sense of community has changed radically in the twenty-first century.

I’m not suggesting that we turn aside from our differences or stop functioning through computers. Yet, Christ’s prayer for unity stands as a prophetic call to each of us who contribute to disunity in the church. Disunity and alienation are easy these days; your church must remain united. People need a place where community is a priority; your church must remain united. Confrontation, anger, and hostility are commonplace these days and these leave people with scars that run deep; your church must remain united. Why? Because God detests death, and He wants His church to be the place where people who are dying can come find life. The more we can put aside our non-essential differences and strive toward a healthy church community, the more people will sense that this is a place of life. People are tired out there, just like we are, and they need to come to a place where they can feel alive. But, they’re not going to find it here if we choose the path of death. Abandon disunity, and get on board with life! This is your charge from Jesus Christ himself, and I pray that you open yourselves to the guidance of the Holy Spirit whose charge is to achieve Christ’s bidding in our lives. Hallelujah.

Amen.