I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. John 17:20-21 NIV

I wonder if the concept, the gift of oneness in the church is a prayer that Jesus is still praying. Or has he sighed, shaken his head and gone off to look at a more promising project? Maybe world peace…

Our western culture is peppered with the desire for many truths, many ways, many understandings, many many ideas of what constitutes right and wrong. One person’s right is another’s wrong, one person’s truth is another’s lie…From politics to preachers, we are marked by these differences. How do we reach each another with the oneness of Jesus’ prayers to be unified with our sisters from other denominations, political persuasion, those who are hard to love, hard to reconcile with… How is this oneness which Jesus prayer for ever going to be possible?

Ecumenical Unity

At a recent retreat gathering with Christians from across the many UK traditions and denominations, we spent time in worship. Hearts, minds and hands were open as we reached into the heart of God to discover the love in which each and every one of us is held and oh, how we worshipped… Heaven was open and love poured down… It was a moment of utter oneness.

And then we shared communion. And around the Lord’s Table, the cracks of this world began to fracture our oneness. We became, by conscience and calling, divided in the faith we share. Then we shed tears and were aghast because the wine which was the ‘blood of Christ’ to some was not so for others. We could not share in the ‘one bread’. In heaven, we are one, yet on earth our hearts are achingly broken.

Singular Love

Yet the one thing is the promise of Jesus that ‘he is in us’. He doesn’t leave us to the brokenness and loneliness of the fracture. The heart of Father God is beating with His one love for me and for you. Whatever your personality-type or your politics, your background, education or church; it is the one heart of Father God which gifts one life into each of us. It is the one place of Jesus’ person in which we find our life. By the one baptism that we find our entry into the church. It is the one prayer for all believers which Jesus prays. And he does so not for our benefit but for the Glory of God.

What if we trusted that the Lord God who is One would enable the hearts of his people to be truly one in our loving, our hoping and so bring the world to belief through our one witness to His goodness? 

My heart of love for my sisters, whom I may never meet this side of Glory, grows with love for you as I catch a holy glimpse of you each at worship and prayer. 

One, in Christ, to the Glory of God The Father.