A man was stranded alone on a deserted island for years. One day, a boat sails near the island and spots him, and he’s finally rescued. As the sailors come ashore, they notice three huts on the beach. Curious, one of them asks: “You were here all alone, right?”
“Yes—just me” the man answers.
“Well, why are there three huts?”
“The first hut is my house.”
“What about the second one?”
“That’s my church,” he replies.
“And the third?”
“Oh, that’s the church I used to go to.”
Even though this man is alone he still manages to cause church division! As people lament division in the body of Christ today, many often wish: “If only we could go back to the church in Jesus’ time.” Yet to think that way is to see division in the church only as a modern problem. Division in the church has always existed. Just listen to tonight’s text.
As Jesus reclines at the table to eat the Passover with his disciples, he says: “…the hand of him who is going to betray me is with mine on the table.” Imagine their shock! So they began to question among themselves which of them would do this. They run a process of elimination, looking to their past achievements in Jesus’ service to justify themselves. Surely the greatest amongst them wouldn’t do something so despicable! But what quickly unfolds? A dispute amongst them.
Division amongst God’s people goes right back to the beginning. The people who were once in sweet communion with God listened to the devil’s temptation: “Did God really say?” They listened to their own desires, and through one man sin entered the world, bringing division between all people and God.
The first thing Adam and Eve did after this was to hide from God—if that were even possible—and try to put their guilt out of God’s sight. They make coverings for themselves to cover over their sense of shame their way. God asks the rhetorical question: “Where are you?” For the first time, fear intrudes into God’s good and peaceful creation. Adam answers God: “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
The Communion Adam and Eve had enjoyed was shattered—not only with the Holy God, but also with each other. In their desperate scramble of self-justification, they look to put the responsibility on to anyone other than themselves. Adam throws his wife under the bus: “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” It’s Eve’s fault, and God’s fault. According to Eve it was the devil’s fault: “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
God banished Adam and Eve from the Garden. That was his judgment on them for wanting to be God’s themselves and for bringing division and decay into God’s good order. But it also was a gracious action—for God is holy, and sinners simply cannot remain in the presence of a holy God and live—a separation that is now the default experience of all people in our natural state.
Since God created human beings in his image, the desire for relationship and connectedness is one of our most crucial needs. God had made Eve for Adam, and Adam and Eve for each other. But since our fall into sin the desire for self-rule and independence curves our will in on itself, enslaving us to selfishness. Connectedness and independence don’t mix very well. Since the Fall, disunity is a creation of humans: Cain attacked and killed his brother Abel. Joseph’s brothers were so jealous of him that they wanted to kill him, and threw him into a cistern. God’s people grumbled against their leader Moses, and would later stone the prophets. The disciples, on the night Jesus was betrayed, descend into dispute about who among them was the greatest.
Would they stand together with Jesus, about to be crucified? Jesus told them, “This very night you will all fall away on account of me, for it is written: “‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’” (Matthew 26:31).
Unity is at the crossroads.
The main way the devil attacks the church today is acutely subtle, and the same strategy he pulled on Adam and Eve: to distrust God’s word and distrust one another, blame others and even God. The devil tempts us to imagine we can be like God and see into the hearts and minds of others, acting as judge and jury. He tempts us to gossip, putting the worst spin on things…or he tempts us to say nothing, rather than defending others. He tempts us to justify ourselves at the expense of others. He tempts us never to weaken, never to lower the wall in our hearts, never to sacrifice our pride and self-protection by seeking forgiveness from others or extend it to others ourselves. He tempts us to be like the servant in Jesus’ parable, who begged for mercy before the King and was mercifully forgiven an unpayable debt, but, having been freed, hypocritically goes out to immediately bind someone else with astonishing harshness. Why does Satan tempt us to live by the sinful flesh in these ways? That the people of God might be in dispute, divided, at enmity with one another…with apologies to Frank Sinatra…that we would all do it ‘my way’…and the place where the gospel of forgiveness and mercy is preached would be suffocated by division and feuding.
That is why, on the night that he was betrayed, Jesus prayed for the people of God. In what is often called ‘Jesus’ High Priestly prayer’ in John 17, Jesus prayed for his disciples who were arguing about greatness and who would be scattered: “I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours” (v9). Jesus prayed for his infant church, which would soon be persecuted and dispersed throughout the Empire: “I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world” (v14). And he prayed for us too, that we might be in such close communion, just as the Father is with the Son: “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.” (v20-21).
The unity that Jesus prays for is not just for his church to ‘get together’ like a religious ‘gather round’. It is not organisational unity, like a club. Only God can create true unity, so that his people would know the Father just as closely as Jesus knows the Father. He prays that his Father will sanctify his church of all times and places—that is, set apart from the world and purified for God’s service by his holy word.
Church unity is at the Crossroads. On the night he was betrayed, Jesus speaks of his imminent death as he celebrated the Passover with his disciples. The only One who could restore the unity that the first people had with God and each other in the Garden of Eden did so by shedding his precious blood.
On the night of the first Passover, the head of the household sacrificed a lamb in accordance with God’s command and painted its blood over their doorframes. That lamb was the substitute for the household so that God passed over them when he brought judgment on Egypt. Each household was saved, yet God brought his people out of Egypt together, united by their common faith in God’s promise to pass over their homes marked with the blood of a sacrificed lamb and lead them to freedom.
On the night that Jesus remembers God’s redemption of his ancient people, he as the head of his household, does something new with this meal. He took bread, gave thanks, and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying: “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” After the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you for the forgiveness of sins.” (Luke 22:19-20).
By his powerful word, Jesus united his body and blood with bread and wine not only to give a lasting memorial of his suffering and death to redeem the world, but as a way to bring the benefits of his death on the Cross, to all who eat and drink in all times and places. Lutheran Pastor Wilhelm Lohe once said:
“Behold, the altar of our Lord and his holy adornment! There lies waiting the bread, and he himself is ready to carry out the greatest of all miracles, to unite his body and blood with bread and wine, thereby sharing his humanity with us. Even now he waits for our “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes” with which we go to meet him at the completion of the miracle.
He is prepared to empower and strengthen the words of the consecrating pastor with his word, so that what he promised at the first Lord’s Supper forever and to the end of days may happen, that these temporal gifts become eternal food and saving drink.”[1]
Jesus reconciled all humanity to God by shedding his precious blood on the Cross, and by this meal he brings this reconciliation to us personally, so that our relationship is restored with the Father. We speak of the Lord’s Supper as ‘Holy Communion’—Jesus invites us to his table, to personally commune with the Holy One, that we might abide with him, and he in us. Luther intentionally applied Jesus’ words “Given for you” personally, out of pastoral concern to assure each person that Jesus’ body and blood was given for them and the forgiveness of their sin. This is true for you and me.
Yet even if someone were to receive the Lord’s Supper at their hospital bedside, they would not commune individually. When Jesus says: “given for you” the ‘you’ is plural. For we commune not only with the Holy One, but the ‘holy ones’—sinners who have been forgiven and purified of all sin by Jesus’ precious blood; the never-ending stream of holiness and divine life that binds his people together of all times and places, with him. As Jesus places in your hands his body and blood through bread and wine, we commune together not only as his congregation, here and now, but transcend time and space as we commune with all the other saints of all times and places, including the saints who have departed this world before us, seated at the heavenly feast.
Our worship in this sanctuary on earth and the heavenly sanctuary are simultaneously joined. We are one with the saints on earth, and the saints and angels in heaven as we gather around the throne to worship, praise and adore Jesus the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Together, we sing ‘holy, holy, holy’ as we meet with a holy God, who in Christ has removed he separation of Eden by restoring us to life with him. We are forgiven, our robes washed in the blood of the Lamb, which is not painted over our doorway, but the doorway of our heart; marking us as God’s own, together.
On the night that he was betrayed, Jesus surrendered himself over to his betrayers. He gave no defence of himself when put on trial. He suffered the shame of public ridicule and humiliation. He was pierced by false accusations, hate, and even iron spikes. He did this to include you and all your brothers and sisters in the communion of saints, even though he knew he would be betrayed, even though he knew there would be squabbles, even though he knew there would be division. That’s why he did this— so that you are never alone, but united with him and all his people.
As we live in a divided and disintegrating world, applying business practices, corporate strategies and policies, programs and frameworks of human design to the church will never achieve true unity. True unity can only come from the Father, through Jesus, who serves as our Pastor through word and sacrament, law and gospel. His living and active word goes to work in us to divide between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, to judge the thoughts and attitudes of the heart, that by his death we might die to sin, and by his life live a new life in righteousness. As Jesus leads us to follow him as his peacemakers, he is present wherever two or three are gathered in his name, so that whatever is loosed on earth is loosed in heaven, and people are freed to be bound to him and each other in love.
So, until the day Jesus returns, take comfort from his words: My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one” (John 10:27-30). Amen.
[1] Loehe, Wilhelm The Word Remains: Selected Writings on the Church Year and the Christian Life. Emmanuel Press, Fort Wayne, Indiana, 2016 pp.16-17
