Being One

"BEING ONE"

a message by Rev. Dr. Bruce Havens

Coral Isles Church, U.C.C.

June 22, 2025

JOHN 17:10-18  NRSV

10 All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. 11 And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. 12 While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. 13 But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. 14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. 15 I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. 16 They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.

Being one?  Well, one what? We might think of our wedding vows and the thought of “being one,” with our spouse. Or we might think various ways we are “one of” many others in a group – gay or straight, GOP or Dem, - in other words a group we are part of.  We might even think of being fans of a sports team… Eagles or Dolphins, or Jets, or Jaguars. Being one with others can be an important part of our lives.

This morning I wanted to call attention to “being one” of over 4,000 churches by our connection with the wider church, the United Church of Christ.  The 25th of June is the 68th anniversary of the official vote to become the United Church of Christ.  As many of us come from different backgrounds let me give a short history lesson on this.

The United Church of Christ was the name chosen when 4 historic denominations united as one.  The Congregational Church had merged with the Christian Church in the 1920s and the Evangelical and Reformed Churches had also merged in the 1920s.  The two newer denominations merged in 1957 and took the name United Church of Christ.  There are a lot of reasons to be proud of our denominational heritage.  This morning I want to focus on the first motto the denomination chose.

The original motto, placed on its logo was, “that they may all be one.”  It is the phrase we read a short time ago from John 17.11.  At that time it was expressing a desire that all Christian churches might one day unite and become one.  It was a theological concept called “ecumenism.”  The word comes from the Greek word Oikoumene meaning “the whole inhabited world.”  All that might seem ridiculous, or hopeless in our world today.  We are constantly told how divided we are, how rigid our debates about faith have become.  The fact is these debates have always been there, have always been difficult to overcome.  The Scripture we read was Jesus’ prayer for his disciples – including us.  The question is, is it relevant to us more than on a personal, spiritual level?  Is it even desirable that the church work at “being one?” with other churches, other Christians?

The question calls us to delve deeply into what we think “being one” means.  For some it would mean everyone believes the same, accepts the same rules, honors the same structures – such as bishops, cardinals, and popes.  That would be a non-starter for most of us in our UCC churches.  But before I dismiss Jesus’ prayer for us as nothing more than individual spiritual joining with God, let me call our attention to the Apostle Paul who defined unity quite differently.

Phiwa Langeni is the “Minister for Innovation & Strategic Collaboration,” for the United Church of Christ.  I think that is a great job title, isn’t it? Whatever his job title entails, he describes his life’s work as, “creatively (inviting) others into transformational liminal spaces between what has been and what is yet to be. A lifelong outsider, [Phiwa is] passionate about helping people see that different doesn’t have to be dangerous.”  I’m not sure I fully understand what that means but I love the way it sounds. He wrote about this business of being one and yet being diverse recently. [ “Whose Body? Our Body,” dailydevotional@ucc.org, June 14, 2025 ].

He quotes the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians where Paul wrote:

“But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love. - Ephesians 4:15-16 (NRSV)

Phiwa writes, “In an effort to unite people, Paul likens differences to different parts of a body. I love how he doesn’t tell arms to be legs, or hands to be ears, or teeth to be toes. We cannot erase the differences between veins and arteries, even though they’re similar. And if we require a heart to be a brain, we put ourselves in grave danger. Likewise, if we erase the HIV+ parts or the disabled parts or the homeless parts of Christ’s Body, we cause trauma to the whole Body.

“If it’s true that we’re one Body, then we’re called not only to acknowledge the Body’s many parts but also to honor the unique expressions of those Body parts. What if the Body of Christ unapologetically cared for its [dealing with mental health issues] parts and its youthful parts and its kinky parts and its rural parts and its non-binary parts and its parts of every language (spoken or signed)?

“Whatever your color, race, ethnicity, and tribe may be, every ligament, bone, organ, and cell of your being is important to the Body’s existence—to our shared existence. We cannot be whole and healthy if you are not whole and well and included as an indispensable part of this, Our One Body.”

I absolutely agree with Phiwa’s words about Paul, and Paul’s words about the body.  I believe that is what these words of Jesus’ about “being one” truly mean.  But what would it mean today?  On the other hand, are things really so different today?

Don’t ever forget that Jesus was crucified because he did not “go along” with the demands of the politically and religiously powerful.  The religious authorities were threatened by the way Jesus differed from the way they found acceptable.  Like the other Gospels, John had to proclaim the image of Jesus as one with God, not someone whose words or actions were blasphemy.  John shows us that Jesus was and is, in fact, God’s beloved, and was one with God, even in suffering the crucifixion and dying. John and the other Gospels all were writing to people to reassure them their faith was good and approved by God even when others believed them wrong or evil.

Sound familiar?  We are “that church,” called blasphemers and worse because we believe in an Open and Affirming God.  Many people of different Christian churches and many who have no faith believe we are not “one” with them because we don’t accept their rules and regulations about who is in and who is out. Our United Church of Christ was the first mainstream primarily white church to ordain a black man to ministry. We were the first mainline church to ordain a woman to ministry, and the first to ordain an openly gay man to ministry. We have stood for issues of justice in the name of Jesus for hundreds of years. Our spiritual ancestors fought to end the slavery of Africans kidnapped and held in bondage in the southern states. We’ve worked for the rights of those who have diverse abilities and differing mental, physical and spiritual strengths and challenges. We believe in a unity that is faithful to what we believe is God’s true vision for the world.  I am proud to be part of a church that knows what it means to be, and seeks to be, One Body.

When it comes down to it, John was telling his people, who were being persecuted for their beliefs by others who believed differently, that Jesus had their back.  Jesus was praying for them and for us.  We are his, and we are God’s people.  God is protecting us from those who misunderstand our faith, who deny our faithfulness, and who reject us as their siblings in faith.  At the same time he is telling us the “world” – that is everyone out there – cannot take our joy.  And he does not ask us to turn from the world.  He does not ask us to come out of the world or to hate the world.  He wants us to engage this tired, confused, anxious, angry, scared world and show them our truth.  Because our truth is God’s truth.  And Jesus has sent us into the world to share that truth just as God sent Jesus out into the world.

And the promise Jesus makes is that he will be one with us in this.  So in a time that seems dark and difficult to us, Christ will be our lighthouse.  With that love and that light we can see the vision that God has for us all to be one – and the truth is, in God’s vision we already are “being one.”  AMEN.