“One”

May 16, 2010
Acts 16:16-34; John 17:20-26

Last week, in Acts, we met Lydia, the gentile woman of considerable means who brought herself and her whole household to faith in Jesus Christ, all baptized in the midst of joy and celebration. Paul, Silas, Luke and those traveling with him, must have been feeling pretty good about how things were going after that - except for one thing.

On their daily trips to the place of prayer, Paul and those with him, keeps crossing paths with a woman very different from Lydia. While Lydia was a woman of position and great wealth, with her own household and a business to run, this other woman, a young slave-girl to be precise, was not only a possession of others but was held captive by a spirit that gave her special powers. It isn’t a bad ‘demon’ causing problems per se; it is a beneficial ‘spirit’ giving her a special gift – the ability to “divine” or discern things - to see more deeply into the realities of a person’s life that the rest of us might miss. In the Greek world at that time, people would come to women like her, to ask questions that were answered while in a trance, speaking "in the spirit." In the society of which she was a part, what she did was not only commonplace but, was highly valued and appeared to meet a definite need. For her this is the way life was.

And yet, this young woman was a captive needing to be freed. Sometimes we humans are captive to forces more powerful than we are. The girl was captive to her gift of ‘discerning reality’ – but what about us, what are the ‘gifts’ holding us captive? What do we need to be freed from in how we go about living our lives? Our answers are no doubt varied. We think that slavery is something from a time long ago, at least here in the United States, something from a more unjust culture; but some would suggest today’s text should make us think about the reality of our own captivity and the need for chains to be broken. In other words, like the young woman in this story, we are all in need of God’s liberating grace.

And we know the power of the Gospel to free and transform lives. What happens next – the judgment against Paul and Silas, their being locked up in jail, the earthquake – illustrates this, doesn’t it? Experiencing the power of the Gospel, the jailer’s life is changed and (like Lydia and her household) he and his family are baptized into the faith. These are outsiders coming in, responding to the good news Paul preaches, a gospel of grace that includes everyone – “we are no longer Gentile or Jew, no longer slave or free, no longer male or female; but one in Christ Jesus, our Lord.”

We all have lives that can be transformed. Lawrence Farris observes that everyone in this story needs to be freed from something – it’s not just the slave girl but also the men who used her (who are possessed by greed), the men who judged Paul (who are possessed by fear and a hunger for power), the jailer (who is owned by the empire), and even Paul and Silas, who need to be freed from more than a prison cell as their minds are opened to including all. As a church, what is the surprise that awaits us on our way to ministry, the obstacle that has something important to teach us, or the set back that may offer the opportunity for us to do something really wonderful for the sake of the gospel? Having experienced God’s grace, what will allow us to follow Christ more completely, more faithfully, and more effectively?

At the heart of following Christ is our oneness, our communion together in God’s grace. Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said: “Christian unity is not an ideal which we must realize [understand]; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.” Our oneness is to be lived. In the end, that is what Jesus asked for – that the Father would allow us to experience what he had – to live the life of faith he lived, and that it be something we would all do. He asked that we be one with God.

Jesus’ main concern for his followers, and for us, is oneness, both oneness with God and oneness with each other. Its foundation is that God’s glory is to be seen and shared in him. This unity is rooted in Jesus’ life that opened a window on God’s being. His life is to be seen as an offer of relationship, a relationship of love. William Loader writes concerning the unity found in Christ as, “an invitation to generosity based on a simple and inclusive understanding of faith: in Jesus we identify God’s generous hand stretched out (to all who believe).”

In John 17, Jesus prays that we might all be one (as Jesus and the Father are one). We were to be one for a reason – so that the world (Jew and Gentile alike, slave and free, man and woman) might know of God’s great love for them. He’s not talking about an organizational unity. Jesus knew God to be a God of love and wanted all his followers know God in the same way. Our experience, our relationship, is to be his. That is the oneness he speaks of – that we are one in Christ, and our oneness become a shared witness allowing us to take the gospel of grace to the whole world. It is in that ‘oneness’ others will truly know and understand Jesus was indeed sent by the Father.

Our experience of baptism and sharing of Holy Communion are outward and visible signs of that grace. Through Baptism we are initiated into the body of Christ and through Holy Communion, we are made “one with Christ, one with each other, and one in ministry to all the world.” In this act the Church is united across time and space. It is – there and then, here and now – “a communion of the saints” one with its Lord. It is that promise of oneness that gives us hope today – two thousand years later, in a world still captive, and a world still hungry for the good news that will set us free.