SERMON Una Sancta

Easter 7(C) (07): Acts 16:16-34; Psalm 197; Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21; John 17:20-26

When ever I hear the beautiful prayer of today's gospel, I think back to being a second soprano in the First Lutheran Chapel Choir my junior year of high school. A good portion of that year was spent learning the chorus parts of a very modern cantata -- maybe not as difficult as some our choir does, but close. The name of the cantata was Una Sancta which means "One Holy" and is Lutheran shorthand for "one holy church." The cantata had first been performed the year before at the service merging three Lutheran Church bodies, a large Norwegian synod, and two much smaller synods, one Danish and one German. The new synod became the American Lutheran Church, or the ALC.

The occasion for the First Lutheran Chapel Choir's learning Una Sancta was an invitation to be part of a massed choir composed of high school choirs from around the country. This massed choir would sing the choruses and lead the assembly in the chorale portions of the cantata at the first Luther League convention for the merged church at Miami Beach the following summer.

The chorale portions of Una Sancta were hymns from each of the three traditions. In addition to the soloists, there were spoken scripture readings. And the reading that was always the most moving and that I never tired of hearing was the prayer that we just heard Jesus pray.

"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."

After a year of practice, we went to Miami Beach that summer (great trip by the way), and celebrated the unity of the new Luther League. Una Sancta was beautifully performed. Our choir director beamed when we had finished our parts. And there we were, one; united; right there on Miami Beach. One church where there had been three. A unified Luther League. And we prayed that we could be completely one. Una Sancta. One holy church.

And how easy it was to be one! I honestly don't believe there was one person of color at the entire convention. Certainly, no one other than Bishop Hans Lille from East Germany, the invited speaker, spoke anything other than English as a first language. Everyone looked pretty much like everyone else no matter what part of the country they were from. Unity was not only easy but fun! And ideally, it reflected God's love for us in Christ.

So simple. Merge and unite into oneness.

The former bishop of this synod once reflected on the satisfactions of his years as bishop. Number four in a list of seven satisfactions was how congregations "in the city" with dwindling memberships "have taken long, hard looks at how they do ministry" and have "merged, consolidated, or yoked with other congregations" -- merged, consolidated, or yoked into unity and oneness. So simple. So biblical. (Even simpler, but decidedly not biblical, was the solution of other urban congregations praised by the bishop -- urban congregations that decided "It's time to conclude ministry in this place [and disband].")

In the prayer we just heard, Jesus is not praying for disbanded congregations (or for congregations to disband!). But is he praying for the merger, consolidation, or yoking of congregations? Or for the unity of Lutheran church bodies (which incredibly is still a long way off)? Or for full communion with the Episcopalians and Reformed (which has happened)?

Well, we know that the Jesus of John's gospel is not praying for the oneness of institutions and the unity of the whole church because the first century church was not yet an institution. And, interestingly, the shorthand use of Una Sancta in the Lutheran tradition refers to the one holy but invisible church that only God can see or number. That church is always and only one.

So if Jesus isn't praying that congregations merge, consolidate, or yoke into oneness or that Lutherans and other Christians unite, for whom and for what is he praying?

The whom and the what can only be seen in light of the prayer's context. This prayer concludes Jesus' discourse at the Last Supper. Two weeks ago we heard Jesus give his disciples a new commandment to love one another. "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples," he told them, "if you have love for one another." Today Jesus prays not for the disciples but for those who will come after the disciples. He prays for those who will believe because of their word. Today he prays for us. And he prays for us to be one in community.

And because Jesus is praying for us at Wicker Park Lutheran Church, here and now, what he is praying for is not only relevant but critical.

What Jesus prays is that we may be one as the Father is in him and he in the Father. Does that mean that we all become one and the same? That we strive to loose identity and self in this community of faith? That we merge, consolidate, and yoke our personalities and desires? Become Stepford Wives? Even if such a thing were possible, it would not mean that.

It is the love, the agaph,, that the Father has for us even as he had for Jesus that unifies us and makes us one. This is not a love that annihilates differences but celebrates them. Agape is about esteem. Esteem and respect for the other. In the words New Testament scholar Krister Stendahl, agaph "is not just tolerance but a positive embracing of the other in the awareness that it those who have different gifts and visions who can enrich me and our common community." And we know about that here.

In so many ways. The different gifts in this congregation are breathtaking. Musical and artistic gifts a form, inform, and enliven our worship and worship space. For the last five years, architectural, manual, and business gifts have come together to wrestle with, and -- incredibly -- meet the physical challenges of the faulty towers and imploding windows and now the narthex. Organizational gifts, culinary skills, and gardening abilities continue to enrich our common life.

And, in all this, there can be, and frequently are, differing solutions and different visions, all of which are welcomed, considered, and weighed. I think of our original visioning process six years ago and the council's retreat this past March. At the retreat, the council considered a wide range of differing solutions and different visions for the next three years. And from that, came goals for the next three years. There was not agreement. People were held accountable. But that, too, is agaph in action. Something that can only happen in a community where God's Spirit is a reality and moving among us.

But the agaph that we know in this community, a love from God in Jesus Christ, a love nourished in Word and sacrament, doesn't stop at the church doors. Jesus prays that we may be one so that the world can see and believe. As one commentator has written, "the life and love of the believing community must be visible to others." (Pilch 86) Visible to, in Jesus' words in John, the world.

And that is our call. To be the Una Sancta's visible and active witness of God's presence and love in Christ in the world through our many welcoming, creative, and diverse ministries. For that we can only thank God. Amen

May 20, 2007

Ruth VanDemark, pastor

Wicker Park Lutheran Church