Oneness
a sermon by John W. Wimberly, Jr.
Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
May 4, 2008

Text: John 17:6-11

In the Gospel of John, Jesus describes a triangular relationship between God, himself, and his disciples.  We hear it described in Chapter 17 when Jesus prays to God, “They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.... protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”

Such relational language led John Calvin to view Jesus primarily as a mediator between God and humanity.  It is a very practical, functional understanding of who Jesus is.  As a mediator, Jesus directs humanity to God, explaining God’s sometimes mysterious ways to us.  At other times, Jesus is our advocate, making humanity’s frequently tenuous case to God.

Such a theology creates a Sacred Triangle between God, Jesus and Jesus’ disciples.  Family systems therapists rightly warn us about triangles in relationships.  By creating indirect rather than direct communication, they can complicate rather than clarify things

I once worked with a family where the mother rarely spoke to her youngest son or vice versa.  Instead, they spoke to each other through the eldest son—a classic triangle. When the eldest son went to college, the mother and youngest son couldn’t figure out why their relationship was struggling.  In fact, because they had been talking to each other through a third party, they had rarely spoken directly to each other about important issues.

One of the challenges of working on a staff with multiple clergy results when church members go to one clergy person with complaints about another clergy person.  It creates an unhealthy triangle in which the lay person expects negative feedback to be communicated through a third party.  This can lead to all kinds of trouble.  Gratefully, Carol and I are pretty good at staying out of those types of triangles.

However, the Sacred Triangle as described by Jesus in John isn’t really about communication or mediation.  It is about a sense of oneness.  Obviously, Jesus felt incredibly close to God, so close the church decided to call God and Jesus One and the same.  It was Jesus’ prayer that his followers would experience a similar sense of oneness with God.  Jesus believed that spiritual closeness with God is a goal within our reach.

I love the progressive church.  We have a magnificent, inspiring vision of faith that helps us to create a just, peaceful and environmentally sustainable world.  Where would we be as a global community without progressive Christians pouring their lives into making that dream a reality?

We seek to follow the Spirit to new understandings of God’s eternal Truth.  Therefore, we have disowned some teachings held dear by earlier Christians in favor of new teachings which seem more appropriate and faithful for our time and place.  There is so much of which we can be proud in our tradition.

However, the progressive church has a less inspiring vision of our personal relationship with God.  Too often, we fail to stress Jesus’ emphasis on connecting with God.  We do not focus enough time and energy on becoming personally connected to God, to becoming one with God.  As a result, many of us feel less than fulfilled on a personal, spiritual level. 

Of course, recent surveys of evangelical and fundamentalist Christian churches are showing significant levels of dissatisfaction with their personal spiritual journeys as well.  But, frankly, that is their problem to solve.  I am worried about our problem.  We need to do a better job helping our members connect with God—uniting human hearts to God’s heart.

I think there are two key spiritual missteps leading to our sometimes less than satisfactory connection to God.  First, we think a spiritual connection is the result of human effort.  Second, we are so busy making and maintaining familial and vocational connections, there is sometimes little energy left over for our connection with God.

A relationship with God is not the product of human effort.  We can’t work harder, study harder, pray harder, get more involved at church to get connected to God.  In fact, I think all of that can be very counterproductive to a healthy spiritual life.  Because as we do more and still feel disconnected, our sense of frustration increases.  We experience spiritual alienation, not spiritual harmony. 

We have created a new web page here at Western.  To do so, we set up a new address where the website could be created.  When it came time to switch the new site to our permanent address, the tech warned me that it would take about 24 hours for the site to get connected through all the various hubs out there.  He said, “So don’t worry when it doesn’t come up in the next few hours.”

This fellow obviously knows me.  Because, even knowing that it wouldn’t come up, I got increasingly frustrated as I neurotically checked it a couple times every hour and nothing appeared.

So it is with God.  We get frustrated when we can’t instantly connect with God.  And the more we work at it, the more frustrated we feel if the connection doesn’t occur.  Upset, we start blaming ourselves (“I’m not worthy of God’s love”), God (“God doesn’t care”), our church (“they aren’t giving me what I need”) and anybody else available.

A key to faith is simply believing the God connection exists.  We are connected to God whether we feel it or not.  We need to trust that the feeling will come.  In my experience, it arrives when we stop stressing out about it.  The solution is relaxing and waiting.

Second, we are not going to build a strong relationship with God if we expect to fit God into our incredibly busy schedules.  We can’t schedule in God for one hour on Sunday morning and/or a devotional time before we go to sleep and expect to have a great relationship.  God’s Way doesn’t work our way. 

Now, God knows, I’m not knocking penciling God in at 11:00 a.m. on Sundays!  Please continue to do so.  But connecting with God, becoming One with God, requires an ongoing, lifelong openness to God.  God is relentlessly, continually calling us into relationship with God.  However, our hectic lives produce a lot of static and interference when it comes to hearing God.  As a result, we may not hear God’s voice, even as God is speaking to us.  We can’t put God in our blackberry and expect God to appear at our appointed time.

Paul was riding a horse down a road to Damascus, spaced out, thinking about nothing in particular, when he met God.  Mary was living an incredibly ordinary life when she got the word that she would mother the Messiah.  Dr. King was sitting at his kitchen table late one night, when God changed the direction of his life and the life of this nation.

As different as these three people were, each of them was absolutely and totally God-oriented.  They didn’t schedule God in at certain times of the day or week.  But they were constantly open to God speaking to them.  As a result, when God spoke to them in unlikely places, they heard God’s voice.

This week I was talking with a couple who are going through a marital split-up.  The pain and alienation produced by divorce can be unbearable.  Hearing God above the deafening noise of our heart breaking is not easy. 

But at such moments, the answer isn’t to work harder to connect with God. The answer isn’t to dump ourselves into our jobs or families or community work.  In one of those paradoxes upon which spiritual lives are built, we have to work less.  We have to relax, be quiet, settle down.  Not easy.  But it is absolutely essential if we are to get in touch with the only One who can truly heal our broken heart. 

When I was going through a divorce 23 years ago, I went to Mexico and just cried.  Mexico has an empathetic culture that embraces rather than denies sadness.  As I cried, I felt God in ways that healed me and prepared me for a new, healthy marriage. 

For me personally, Sunday morning worship is not the cause of my connection with God.  It is the effect of my connection.  I worship because I am so grateful for the connection with God that is built and strengthened as I watch the sun set, a cactus bloom in the desert, my grandchildren play, a clinic in Ethiopia take shape, a couple pull their marriage back together, long-standing enemies in Northern Ireland put down their weapons and live in peace, a woman and African American battle for the Democratic presidential nomination, a family grieve the loss of a loved one, Jesus put his arm around a leper, God lead the people of Israel out of Egypt, Miriam be reunited with her people.  My connection is the result of watching and feeling, not doing—watching God at work in the world; feeling God at work in me.

As we come to the Lord’s Table, I invite each of us to stop trying to make something happen in our spiritual lives.  Instead, let us take a deep breath, relax and open ourselves to God.  If we can do that, I can just about guarantee that we will feel something happen, deep in a place where only God can touch us. 

Let us pray: Gracious God, teach us the patience of the spiritual masters.  Help us to wait on you with open hearts and minds.  As we do so, may we grow ever closer to You.  All this we ask in Jesus’ name.  Amen.