Alleluia! Christ is risen!
Have any of you ever – either in work or a school environment – had to do one of those retreats where they do team building exercises? You know, trust falls, and the like? When I worked at a church camp many years ago, we did a lot of teambuilding exercises as a staff and with the kids we worked with. One of the most frustrating – for adult and kid alike – teambuilding exercises was the land skis. Land skis were essentially long boards with ropes strung through holes in the middle of the board. The goal of the land ski was to have several people with a foot on each board, and together, the group had to “ski” to a given point. Of course, it wasn’t as easy as it looked, because everybody had to time their steps just right for the land ski to move at all, otherwise the team was liable to stumble. It was easy to get frustrated when a team couldn’t get on the same page. They had to work as one.
I think most of us have had that one boss or supervisor who wasn’t really good for much, but in order to make people see them as “in control,” they’d offer some sort of pithy line about teamwork whenever they hadn’t really done much themselves, but needed to feel like they were included in a project. It’s also a bit of a TV trope as well. But when I think about these bosses, I think about how they often say something like, “teamwork makes the dream work,” or “let’s make sure we’re all pulling on the same end of the rope” when there’s a little potential confusion. Anybody identify with having that type of boss? Anybody else have any good phrases they have heard on teamwork? My fifth grade basketball coach would occasionally remind us, “there is no “I” in team.” Of course, there’s a “me,” but…
The reason I bring this up today is Jesus is praying to God as he is anticipating his betrayal and arrest today. And his prayer includes praying for safety and understanding among his disciples as well as this portion that we hear today in our gospel, where Jesus prays to the Father, asking God, “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.” And I’ll be honest, that hope matters. That prayer matters. And I’ve spent a lot of time and energy in sermons on this text lamenting the fact that we as people of faith have definitely fallen short of Jesus’ desire that we be one. After all, there’s several different denominations of Lutheran churches in this nation, let alone more diverse denominations. But this problem with unity began far before even the Reformation. We couldn’t even get through a generation of Christianity before disagreements popped up. Paul argued with the Apostles regarding the need of Gentile converts to observe Jewish faith practices long before our church began to organize into the type of hierarchy that established the institutional church generations later.
But there’s a reason that Jesus prays this prayer, and there’s a reason we are asked to pay attention to what Jesus is saying, regardless of how far apart our institutions are from one another on the unity front. Because I think it’s good for us to remember from time to time that we aren’t an institution. What I mean is you and I are Esperanza, yes. We are Lutherans, yes. But we are also children of God first and foremost, and each of us uniquely called, which means we don’t have to ask permission before doing the right thing. We don’t have to ask permission to live into God’s call for our lives. When there is a person in need right in front of me, I don’t have to go back and do a focus group on whether or not that person actually needs help.
And I think this is where we can find the “one-ness” that Jesus desires for us is still a possibility. It’s not so much about being a monolith. It’s about a mutual desire for what God wills for our world – which means a mutual desire to serve the least and lowly in Jesus’ name. And at the core of all of this is the fact that Jesus’ desire for us to be less concerned for ourselves and more concerned for our neighbors. And that helps the central things remain the central things.
And this is the central thing in our reading from the book of the Acts of the Apostles this morning. We hear the story of Paul and Silas – beaten and thrown in jail for daring to proclaim the gospel of Christ crucified and risen. And when given an opportunity to escape – a literal “get out of jail free” card courtesy of an earthquake – Paul and Silas don’t take the bait. They don’t escape. It appears that none of the prisoners leave their jail cells. Because Paul and Silas know that even though the jailer was not at fault for the potential escape, the jailer will still take the brunt of the punishment for so many prisoners going free. And so Paul and Silas view their own self-interest for freedom as secondary to the needs of their jailer. And because of their willingness to put themselves at risk for the sake of this stranger and potential oppressor, the jailer’s life, and that of his family, is changed forever.
And this brings us back to our own calling from God to serve our neighbor. Sometimes the neighbor in need isn’t obvious. Sometimes it’s a need for a moment, not for an extended period of time. But we are called to live our lives with compassion, setting our own self-interest aside, which brings us back to the dilemma of the day, which is how we all are one, even when our denominations aren’t, or can’t.
People of hope, one of the greatest challenges for the Church – big C church – is the fact that all churches ultimately become institutionalized. And the goal of most institutions becomes self-perpetuation – that is, institutions exist to preserve themselves. And when an institution is most interested in self-preservation, the neighbor in need sometimes comes second to the need of the institution. That is the great struggle of the Church today; how does the Church stay true to the teachings of Jesus when sometimes that puts the Church at risk? And the question that all churches have to ask themselves is whether or not they feel it is more important to follow God than to maintain who they are. All churches deal with this struggle, and not all of them handle the struggle as well. Esperanza is not immune to this fact. But still, I believe the call to serve the gospel as individual and as community rings true. And it is a call I believe that we as Esperanza – both as individuals and as a community – usually live into pretty well. We are still the ones who feed the hungry. We are still the ones who offer shelter to those who need it. And with God’s grace, this reality will never change, and we know that the good work of the gospel is present in churches and individuals far outside the walls of this place.
The good news is it doesn’t take full agreement in all things to do the good work of God. None of us has a monopoly on the gospel. It’s meant to be shared. It’s meant to be lived. And as we live the gospel that God has shown us in Jesus Christ, we are living into the one spirit of grace and hope that Jesus has longed for for all of us. May we all find unity in the common purpose that comes through Christ’s love, and may we fulfill the desire of Christ’s servanthood by living daily as servants to all our neighbors. And by living daily as servants of the most high God, we daily proclaim the one great truth – Alleluia! Christ is risen!
And if we can declare with boldness together this one truth, then we are all truly one in the one thing that matters most regardless of our memberships – that Christ has set all of us free to live as people of God.