Let’s all be honest here, and say right up front that there are probably some hymns we sing all the time here at St. David the King, that you don’t particularly care for. I checked with Carol Sullivan over there and she said it’s OK for me to talk about this — just this once. You know the feeling I’m talking about. When the cantor announces that song of yours, your shoulders slump, you might pick up the hymnal for the sake of appearances, but your heart’s not in it, and you might just be moving your lips.
Here is my embarrassing confession. For me, that song is “They’ll Know We Are Christians by Our Love.” Now I am really, really sorry if it’s one of your favorites, this is all very personal. I do have my reasons. First, I grew up in the 1960s, so I have heard it about a thousand times more than most of you, but maybe the real reason is that I once heard a music director poke a little fun at it by changing the words to something quite amusing and disrespectful, and now every time I hear the song, I can only hear his words. I was going to tell you all what they are, but then I’d ruin the song for everyone here forever, and Carol wouldn’t forgive me. If you really want to know, you can ask me afterwards.
And yet, despite my feelings, today is the day we need to see ourselves singing that song, because this gospel reminds us that it’s true: People do know we are Christians by our love, Jesus says that is how the world will believe. What kind of love does Jesus think is going to be so believable?
Jesus’ answer here in John’s gospel can sound mysterious, or even mystical. We are to be one with one another as Jesus was with the Father: As completely one as it is possible for two to become. Being one in this way has little to do with outward appearances and differences. Jesus and the Father were not identical: Jesus walked among us as a human like us, while the Father did not. They had a relationship that was very much like two individuals, Father and Son. They are not the same person.
And yet, even as different “persons” as our traditional theology puts it, they are not different. Jesus has no hesitation in saying that he and the Father are “one,” he is in me, and I in him. To know one is to know the other. Their desires and their love are the same. That is complex. A mystery, even. It’s even more of a mystery when we hear the real center of today’s gospel, which is that we are to be that way with one another.
Who would you say you feel unity with, or at one with? Being human, it is often people who are very much like we are, who find the same words and music moving, who have the same attitudes towards home and work, who grew up in the same family or the same town, who laugh at the same jokes.
That is friendship, that is love, that is nourishing, we can’t live without it. But sometimes we mistake it for Christian unity and the Christian life. It isn’t the Christian unity we’re being called to today.
The unity we want is not unity with people we like. It’s not about somehow trying to ignore all the differences and disagreements that we have with one another and with people in the larger world who are so fundamentally different from us. The unity we are supposed to have is based on one revelation: that all of humanity shares one nature, as Jesus shares one nature with the Father. Something that touches any one of us touches all of us. We are one body. Not just the people in this church, but out there. A happy parish community is not the full extent of the oneness Jesus is talking about. We want the oneness that comes from living our lives as if there is a great unseen and unnoticed relationship among everyone who walks this earth
Our lives would be turned inside out if that is true. We might see that the poverty that we see near us is not someone else’s. It is ours, and we would feel the same sadness at seeing it and we might apply the same ingenuity to relieving it as if it were the poverty of our closest friend. We may not like those people with whom we are one, we may feel ignored by them and betrayed by them and hated by them, their differences will put us off, but they are us.
We’d make different decisions and find ourselves headed in a different direction if that oneness became clear to us. Being a voice for unity in a very heatedly divided church and a divided world is not the popular thing to do, if it ever was. Talking about unity and oneness and the common good is a good way to get seen as a wimp, or soft-headed. That kind of talk is not popular politically, it’s not even all that popular in our church. Taking this message on for ourselves as a way to talk and a way to live is just as threatening to our general peace and quiet as embracing poverty. And yet, that is how people will know that what we come here each Sunday to say that we believe is actually true.
Jesus says today that when this world sees a church that is one with one another and with the world, they will believe. Without it, they won’t know we are Christians. With it, there is nothing in this world that the people of God cannot do.