One

I spent much of the day yesterday in a messaging conversation with a friend. Not a close friend, really, but not a mere acquaintance, either. A friend. A fellow church member. We talk often, usually at church, and we exchange thoughts on social media fairly frequently. We both appreciate well-reasoned arguments, and we both have a passion for exploring disagreements to get to the core issue underlying everything. As I said, a friend. He had responded on Facebook to one of my posts and then had followed up with a joke sent through Instant Messenger. I responded to the joke, and that is how the conversation began. By the time it ended, we had experienced what might be called “a moment”. We had delved into our different but similar backgrounds, our mutual difficulties accepting ourselves, our struggles with faith, family, forgiveness, and all the associated accoutrements of the Christian experience—shame, guilt, redemption, renewal, etc. in short, we had taken the tiniest of tentative steps toward that holy grail of the Christian faith: Oneness.

Jesus, when he prayed for his disciples, and for us through them, there in the upper room (John 17), stressed over and over his desire that they and we would “be one.” In fact, he repeats that specific request four times during his short prayer (vs. 11, 21, 22, and 23). And he doesn’t just ask that we become one. No, he wants us to be one the same way he is one with his father. How’s that working for us? Take a moment and think about your church experience. How connected are you with other believers? How comfortable would you be opening up your heart in all its messiness and brokenness to the people with whom you share a pew, a bible study, a communion? That answer seems sadly obvious, doesn’t it?

And in answering that question, we suddenly recognize what it means when we say sin separates. Usually, when we use that phrase, we talk about how sin separates us from God, which is certainly true. But it also separates us from each other, doesn’t it? Sin is by its very nature isolating. We end up alone with our unhappiness, our bitterness, our unfulfilled hopes and expectations. To make things worse, we cover up all of that with a church mask to make it appear we don’t have any unhappiness, bitterness or disappointments. We walk around church and interact with each other in a fog of make-believe. Not only are we not “one” as Jesus prayed for us to be, we are actively working against becoming one because of what it will cost us. This social distancing thing should not feel all that strange to us who’ve practiced spiritual distancing all of our lives.

I had a taste yesterday of what it might feel like to be one with a fellow believer in the sense Christ meant. It was just a bit of flavor on the very tip of my tongue, there for an instant and then gone, subsumed by all the other flavors that overwhelm our spiritual palate. But I tasted enough to know I’d like more. I just don’t know where to start. It takes courage I don’t have, trust I don’t feel, and a commitment I’m not sure I can muster. But then, I have to keep reminding myself this was never about me and what I can bring to the table. It is now, as it has always been and always will be, about Christ in us. Christ. In us. Connecting us each to each. Becoming the answer to his own prayer.

Peace.