Putting the Puzzle Together

On Sunday, October 27, three churches and the pastors of six churches in Centralia, Illinois worshiped together under the vision of taking the reunion of the churches seriously. This was the sermon I preached on that occasion:

Imagine Jesus at the Last Supper; in John’s Gospel, he closes with prayer, the prayer recorded in the seventeenth chapter. A part of it was read this morning. Jesus does not pray about himself. He will do so not long afterwards, in the Garden of Gethsemane, for he knows that he will be dead and buried in less than 24 hours. The end of his earthly ministry is at hand. But at the Last Supper, in his prayer he shows that his vision is for the future, and he prays for his disciples and for the believers to come. He prays for us. He prays, “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word.” (verse 20) That is us.

And what does he pray? “That they may all be one, just as you Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” (verse 21) And “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one.” (verse 22)

This kind of oneness is amazing, and beyond our understanding; it is a union like that between the Father and the Son. It’s not a contract or a fellowship, but a loving and inseparable bonding like that in the divine life. And it is brought about by Jesus’ gift to us of glory, the same glory that the Father had given to the Son. 

What if Jesus really meant it? This is Jesus praying for us on the night of his passion. It must have been important to him. He prays that the believers to come might be one, and he prays it three times in that prayer. (verses 11, 21, and 22-23) This is the prayer of a man poised for death, the culmination of his presence on earth. It’s got to be important!

If he prayed for it, he must have seen the need for it, and if he saw the need for it, then the threat of the breakup of the community of believers was real. And evidently for good reason, for now we believers are indeed broken. And therefore we must recognize that we have violated the will of Jesus, whom all of us call Lord and Savior.

But in his mercy, God has blessed us even in our brokenness, for the glory he gave to us has remained, though diminished and disconnected. We might think of a puzzle. A puzzle, whether of twenty or a thousand pieces, begins with a single picture, usually complex, diverse, detailed, and beautiful. When it is cut into pieces, it remains obvious that the pieces are all made to fit together and therefore each piece, by its very shape, bears testimony that it is itself incomplete and finds its true identity in being assembled with the others. And each piece, even when it is alone, still bears a small part of the whole picture, a part that is unique to itself, and vital to all.

Paul had a similar image, but one far more powerful, when he described the Church as a body in 1 Corinthians 12. He did not use the word “family”—in fact, I don’t think the Church is anywhere described in the New Testament as a “family”—he uses the word Body. A family is a number of independent individuals linked by a shared heritage; but a body is a single entity made up of diverse parts—eye, hand, foot—under the head which is Christ. Each is a vital part for the wellbeing of all. “The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you.” (1 Corinthians 12:21a). None of us can look at any other Christian and say, “I have no need of you.” The opposite must be true then: “I need you.”

The New Testament knows nothing of denominations. Where there is even the hint of such a thing, Paul leaps on it fiercely. “Each one of you says, ‘I follow Paul,’ or ‘I follow Apollos’, or ‘I follow Cephas,’ or ‘I follow Christ.’ Is Christ divided?” (1 Corinthians 1:12-13a) Note: he does not say, “Is the Church divided?” He says, “Is Christ divided?” The believers are the body of Christ, Christ himself being the head. Paul takes as a given the unity of believers Jesus prayed for.

When the Church divides, then, it is not a separation of parts, or the breaking of a fellowship; it is the dismemberment of Christ’s Body.

By this teaching, is it not clear that if we accept living with denominations, if we are complacent with how things are, that we are at variance with the teaching of Paul, not to mention the prayer of Jesus? Five hundred years ago, the Church was, without doubt, corrupt and in dire need of correction. The Reformation was needed. But was the breaking of the Church the best or right way to go about it? I don’t know. Did the Reformers do the right thing in the wrong way? I cannot answer that. But it is what happened, it is history, and we are the heirs of a broken Church. By God’s mercy, the gifts were retained, but scattered and divided, and therefore weakened. But they were preserved.

What was the Church like in the New Testament? The things that separate us now were all there, and belonged to all. The Church was structured and hierarchical and it was Spirit-filled; it was intellectual and it was emotional; its people prayed in a way that could shake people up; it knew miracles; and it had Tradition; it was liturgical and it was spontaneous; it baptized (by immersion), and it celebrated the Lord’s Supper often; its preaching was intense and challenging; it taught the Scriptures (it was what we call the Old Testament, but the principle of teaching and knowing Scripture was a given); it was prophetic; it was generous; it changed lives; it impacted its society; it rejected the world’s ways of doing things; it was the first (and still only) organization that anyone, anyone at all, could join—Jews and Gentiles, slaves and free, nobles and impoverished, educated and illiterate, young and old; it produced martyrs; it honored its heroes and heroines; and more.

And it had great variety. Look at it:

The church in Jerusalem was conservative, law-oriented, Jewish.

The church in Antioch was a very busy place, socially-oriented, mission-oriented, Gentile and Jewish, filled with people from different stations in society.

The churches in Galatia were not particularly well educated, most were first-generation pagan converts, they were off the beaten track.

The church in Ephesus was cosmopolitan, business-oriented, powerful and influential, successful, and shaped its individual members well.

The church in Colossae was small, had few resources but was eager to learn.

The church in Corinth was made up of people who were both wealthy and wanton, who were resistant to authority, and reluctant to leave their old life behind, but rich with spiritual gifts.

The churches in Thessalonica and Philippi were made up of blue-collar workers, eager to know Christ, generous with their limited resources of money and time, loving, and mission-oriented.

The church in Rome was sophisticated, made up of both Jews and Gentiles, and of all levels of society from slaves to members of the Emperor’s household, in constant threat of danger from persecution, but persevering and growing.

Each was unique, with a mix of strengths and weaknesses, but they were one Church. If a believer traveled from Crete to Rome to Galatia to Antioch, he was in that Body which Paul describes as one. The Philippian church was a blessing to Corinth, and all the Gentile churches helped the Jerusalem church during a famine. They were one.

And every Christian denomination today can find itself and its gifts in at least one of those churches of the age of the apostles. We are all, all Bible churches. But now that we are broken, none of us is fully a Bible church, not completely. Each one of us has a gift, but no one has them all.

Consider today: What are our gifts? What are the gifts of others that we need? Who are we in our denominations? I’m simplifying now, but bear with me:

There are churches that have the gift of converting people and families with impressive results—but with little sense of history or contemplative prayer.

There are churches that draw on emotions—but with little sense of intellectual depth. And there are churches with strong intellectual content—but they are often boring.

There are churches that bear prophetic witness to the world—but often without a clear definition of Christian belief and moral standards.

There are churches that manifest the gifts of the Spirit, and where miracles are found, and where prayer is immensely powerful—but with little understanding of the prayers of earlier generations who wrote their prayers into a book as a gift for future believers.

There are churches that have a beautiful, historic liturgy—but often depend too much on written words and repetitive patterns at the cost of direct inspiration, and with an unimpressive record of truly converting their own people.

You get the idea.

And, to speak boldly—we would be foolish if we considered this vision without recognized the place and the gifts of the Roman Catholic Church, without which none of us would be here. They stand firm against the world, they recognize the great heroes and heroines of the Christian generations, they honor the woman whom God himself chose and which the Gospel describes as “full of grace”, whom all generations are to call blessed. And the Pope is the only Christian in the world who can go anywhere and draw hundreds of thousands of people to worship. And yet… they themselves recognize that rarely do they truly convert their own people. They know Christian things, but often do not intimately know Jesus.

What, then? We are puzzle pieces, each with a part of the whole, a part unique to ourselves but needed by all. By putting the pieces together, each part remains its true self with its gift, but the great picture is assembled and each gains the gifts of the others. When a long-time friend of mine, a Roman Catholic priest, and I were talking about this very vision, he swelled up with emotion, envisioning a time when all might be one, and said fervently, “Not one storefront church would have to close!” All would be preserved, and all enriched! And we all, all, proclaim Jesus as Lord, and all claim that salvation is found in him alone, through faith and not by anything that we can do to earn it. The essence, the heart of Christianity, rediscovered and proclaimed by the churches of the Reformation, is now taken by all to be central, vital, and unquestionably true: Jesus first, Jesus always, Jesus only, Jesus all, and for all.

And what of Jesus’ prayer? There was a purpose in it: “…that the world may believe that you have sent me.” The unity of believers is a powerful evangelical witness. When we are broken, our ability to bear effective testimony to the world is compromised. We are hiding our light under a bushel.

Moreover, the unity greatly expands our ability to bear prophetic and effective witness in the world for the sake of the poor and those suffering from injustice. Pastor Johnnie saw this when he and I were planning this event, and he saw the potential for a powerful united force that could effectively address the problem of gun violence in our neighborhoods, of drug addiction, of abuse in families. For the neighborhoods right here are rich soil for the Gospel, but most of us, being separated from one another, are weak when it comes to sowing seed in that soil. And people are perishing. They are perishing in our own neighborhoods, people whom God loves, people for whom Christ died.

Paul wrote with triumph, “There is one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of us all.” And one body of believers. And in his time from the power of that unity there was an eruption of goodness, victory, and the power of God. Within one generation, the Christian Faith spread throughout the entire Roman Empire. “You are the light of the world,” Jesus said, and “You are the salt of the earth.” By our brokenness, we have dimmed that light and diluted that salt. Making these things true again is the clear, uncompromising will of Jesus. So he prayed on the night he was betrayed.

What will come next? There is much that has been done in the past century, praise God, to bring the churches together again. Our authorities and official dialogues have borne much fruit. Recently, a Catholic blogger, a young woman, stated that of the 95 theses posted by Martin Luther just over five centuries ago, Roman Catholics now accept 91 of them. (I don’t know what the four remaining ones are, but still, it’s an amazing statement!)

“How pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity.” (Psalm 133:1) I, for one, think that it is the grass roots where the reality is going to gain its traction. It is essential to this vision of mine that my vision be incomplete; it requires the input of others to fortify and correct it under the Lordship of the Holy Spirit. What will come next? Maybe a meeting of pastors to take seriously what we have begun today, and pray and talk and love and seek to be faithful to the prayer of Jesus, “That they may all be one… so that the world may believe ...” I am convinced that when we do, none of us will lose anything of what is important to our identity or our tradition, but each one of us will provide a blessing to others, and receive blessings back from those others, within the will of God, and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, and in answer to the prayer of Jesus.