Illusive unity

This message is on the topic of unity, perhaps this message is in the search of unity, but I will let you be the judge of that. Unity if you we not completely aware, is sort of a big deal as it relates to the people of God. It is such a big deal that Jesus prayed for all believers to be united as Jesus and the Father were one, so that we may also be one. (John 17:6-19) Why is this so illusive, perhaps our lack of unity is simply a notion that we should be aware of so that humility remains part of our vocation. Though, this is an essential notion, that we should be humble I mean, our lack of unity cannot simply be a tool to point us toward our lack of humility either. But there is a time to focus upon what we do poorly and another to focus upon what we do well, however, neither of those times is the current one we face. The time we face is beyond a transitional time, it is beyond the swing of the pendulum, we face a time of contemplative reflection, what sort of a church are we building and what sort of a church is Jesus building, though these are not mutually exclusive, in the real world the majority of the time this is how reality is cashed out in the church. Bonhoeffer once said that the church has lost its ability to speak to the world, that it needs to disappear from the world for a while. I agree this can be time for us to reflect and so that we can be known by our love again and not simply by our theology, whether orthodox of not, than by our love.
The people of God in this world have a lot of rethinking to do, we cannot take our contextualization for granted, in our world we have to rethink the way we exist as the church. This can be clearly seen in the American church, for at many turns the American church doesn’t look very much like Jesus, and maybe the church in America never looked like Jesus, on such matters I have no reference point, but the reference point that I do have is one who is within the American church and I often struggle to see Jesus. While we flock from the suburbs to our mega-churches and then quickly back, Jesus is flocking to the places that we have abandoned, to the flint Michigan’s of the world. To the towns that the American empire has abandoned, the places that the Auto industries have abandoned are an example. As our cities grow we have wild animals living amongst domesticated souls, people who are barely alive, and this is not because they have died to themselves, it is because they have died to the world and to the suffering of God. We have so thoroughly boxed God out of the world that the spirit of God is forced to break into our world and into our lives. Which is another thing we need to rethink, how do we open our lives more to the work of God, God can and will work in spite of us, however, it seems to be the case that God would rather work with us than against us.
This is my call, this is my prayers, perhaps you can make it your prayer as well, that we would become the church that Jesus always dreamed of, and leave behind the church that we have always dreamed of. That we would become the body of Christ in this world embracing the suffering of the world, being present in the world together united in our following Jesus together. Now, I am not going to pretend to know exactly what sort of Church Jesus dreamed of, but I think that a good starting point is a church that looks like Jesus. So let us learn from one another, let us attempt to mend the things that can be mended through the power of the Spirit, improve the things that can be improved, keep the things that help us to look more like Jesus, the things that feel more like Jesus, and put the things that don’t seem to be working so well on the back burner. The journey to unity for the church does not start in any particular denomination; Jesus stretches beyond the artificial boundaries of denominations and nations unity starts with each individual heart in community each heart open to the transformative nature of the incarnate Jesus Christ is where the bonds of unity are stored. So let us together take up the cross in our own contexts so that we can humbly come together as the body of Christ in this world to follow Jesus more closely, may you and I be covered in the dust of our rabbi.