Voices: Unity: The church’s unfinished task

Several nights ago, I stood at my kitchen sink, reflecting on two entries from a Ukranian theologian’s war diary as I washed the dishes. More properly, I was grieving the pain captured by Taras Dyatlik’s poignant descriptions of life in his war-torn country.

Before I knew what was happening, my senses were transported to another world—the world for which our Lord prayed in John 17:11, 20-23.

I heard the opening chords of City Alight’s magnificent hymn “Yet Not I But Through Christ in Me” played by orchestras from New York, Vienna, Tokyo and Sydney. Choirs from across Africa began to sing the first verse as ballet companies from Kyiv and Moscow sent out their best dancers to translate the words into beautiful motion.

Then came the second verse—the one that speaks so powerfully about the travails that are our common experience and the joy of having Christ as our shepherd as we walk through those valleys of impenetrable darkness.

An Arab man and an Israeli woman stepped to the center of the stage, singing alternating lines in their heart languages as children from Nigeria, Myanmar, Sudan and other places torn by violence, depravity and poverty processed into the auditorium waving palm branches in worship of the only true King.

I wept. It was the only thing I could do when confronted with the contrast between how things are and how Christ prayed they would be.

Indeed, more recent events in the political life of my own country have only highlighted that contrast. The toxicity that produces political violence is not just ubiquitous in our society. It has seeped into the church, too, altering the way we arbitrate disagreements and rendering us incapable of recognizing and addressing genuine threats to the church’s health and witness.

Lost and found

Jesus did not simply pray for those who would follow him. He modeled for them the disposition that would be necessary if they were to be what he wanted them to be (John 13:1-17), and he called them into a life whose foundational virtue—love—would enable them to live out his vision (John 13:34-35).

Likewise, the Apostle Paul constantly referenced the need for unity in his letters, and he pleaded with those he pastored to love and serve one another (Galatians 5:13-15; Romans 12:9-20; 13:11-15:13; 1 Corinthians 12:1-13:13; Philippians 1:27-2:11; Ephesians 4:1-16).

And yet, the vision of Christ and his earliest followers for the church can seem so far removed from us, buried as it is under millennia of ecclesiastical infighting and years of personal trauma.

Our despair over the brokenness of Christ’s church can produce in us an apathy toward his work or even a doubt as to his truthfulness. After all, if Jesus was who he claimed to be, and if he indeed has left God’s Spirit with us as our comforter and guide, then why are we so hostile toward one another and so inept at addressing the brokenness of our world?

Sometimes, though, heaven grants us a glimpse into what Christ prayed for, into what the apostles pleaded for. It isn’t always an imaginative, even visionary, experience like the one I had. For some, it is a real-world experience of the love about which Jesus and his apostles spoke.

Some of Christ’s disciples find their vision renewed in a pile of theology books stored in a library, while others see it played out in the restoration of broken relationships in a church, a community or a nation.

Engaging the task

These experiences do not answer all our questions, nor do they quell all our doubts. But they do remind us of the goodness and the necessity of Christ’s vision for his church. In so doing, they give us the strength to re-engage the task given to us.

I hope to challenge us to lay aside our captivity to the conflicts of the moment and to re-examine our part in creating those conflicts.

I also hope to challenge some of the traditional wisdom surrounding unity, asserting we never can lose sight of truth even as we scrutinize our rhetoric and humble our hearts. We might even learn some division is necessary if we are going to be faithful to our Lord and Savior (See Matthew 10:34-36).

My prayer is we will learn there is hope yet for the church; it is not a lost cause. Truth, gentleness and humility are not simply nice add-ons to our religious discourse. They stand at the heart of what it means to follow Jesus.

When we commit ourselves once again to the task of seeking truth and love in the power of the Spirit, we not only open a pathway for God’s love to heal our hearts and our churches, but also we model a different way of being human for a world in desperate need of a different response to its grievances than violence, self-promotion and unholy ambition.

Wade Berry is pastor of Second Baptist Church in Ranger and resident fellow in New Testament and Greek at B.H. Carroll Theological Seminary. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.