Texts: John 17:20-26 Acts 16:16-34

Ann Ferrell Lewis First Presbyterian Church May 20, 2007

That the World Mav Believe

When a good friend discovered that she had an inoperable brain tumor, she began to prepare for the inevitable. With three children ranging in ages from seven to 15, her most important task was to prepare her children for her own death. She also wanted to leave something unique and individual for each one so that they would remember her love long after she was gone. She decided that it was time to finish the scrapbooks she had started for each child. Then she recruited friends to film video messages for each child. It was her way of saying goodbye. 1 do not know what she said in those videos, but her husband has told us that she did such a good job of preparing her children for her death, that they have each managed the incredible grief they feel in as positive a way as can be expected. Their mother empowered them to live courageously and even joyfully.

With hours left to live, Jesus prepares to pass on his ministry to his disciples, and in doing so he knows that he is also entrusting his ministry to all who come after them. Jesus prays for us. Jesus prays for those things that will most clearly maintain the integrity of the faith: unity, glory, and love. He prays for our unity with one another and with God - the same kind of unity that he shares with God. He prays for God's glory to be evident in us - a demonstration of our unity with God. And he prays for God's love to be visible in us - the same love that he made known to us. He prays for us to demonstrate unity, glory, and love - so that the world might believe in Jesus, and know that he is from God. Jesus entrusts us with this responsibility: to be united in spirit, to manifest the glorious presence of God to the world, and to demonstrate the same love to the world that he took to the cross. He understands that these are essential to maintaining the genuine nature of our life of faith in Christ which is necessary for others to believe. Weare entrusted with embodying the nature of Christ for the world - and if we fail to take that role seriously - then we fail Christ.

There are many places throughout history and even today where Christians and the church have failed Christ through imperfectly reflecting the unity, glory, and love which first come from God. Just this week 1 had a friend tell me, "1 never saw people do the kind of mean and manipulative things outside of the church that 1 have seen in the church." You would think that observing sin alive and well in the church would be enough to turn my friend away - but that is not the case. Because, in spite of the flawed people who make up the church, the gospel message has gotten through. God's grace and love have been far more evident to him than the power of sin. My friend knows Jesus Christ, and his life is filled with the joy and the love which only comes from Christ. When he encounters the roots of sin in the church, he works for the purity of the church. Wherever meanness and nastiness are present, Christ is at work in him demonstrating kindness, faithfulness, and love.

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Another friend, who is a pastor, likes to compare the church to Noah's ark. It may stink and have a whole lot of manure on its decks - but it's the only thing floating. Jesus knows human nature - that is why he prays for us ... because we are all he's

got. .. we're not much to look at. .. we've got scars and blemishes and flaws aplenty, but we're the ones he's entrusted to carry on his ministry - and because he gave us the Holy Spirit we have everything we need to actually do it. But first he prays for our unity.

In working with the confinnation class this spring, we recalled the history of the universal church. It's always painful to me to realize that nearly all the milestones of church history are marked by conflict and division. Not that conflict and division have always been bad - at times conflict has been necessary to maintain its integrity and to move the church forward to growth and change. But conflict and division have created a splintered body of Christ - separated by denominations and independent structures. The end result is a church today that is comprised of distinct groups that each aim to do alone what we can only do together. If we are to be the body of Christ that Jesus envisions us to be, we must work toward unity at all levels.

I can think of no better way for us to glorify Christ than when we work together with Christians from other churches toward common goals. And the church is no more clearly the church than when we come together in work and worship. Right here in Snohomish, the churches are making a powerful witness by their joint ministry of the Community Kitchen. The ministers meet monthly to build relationships, learn and pray together, and to coordinate other joint ministries such as our Back to School Prayer Rally and our Community Thanksgiving service. If you have been a part ofthese events you know the evident joy when we forget about the congregational boundaries that separate us and join together with our brothers and sisters to be the living Body of Christ in Snohomish.

Nineteen years ago, Charlie and I had the privilege of experiencing this same kind of unity of the Body of Christ at a global level. We traveled to Switzerland to join sixty persons from all over the world in an ecumenical educational project of the World Council of Churches. You could hardly have found a more diverse group of people. Among our group was: an Ethiopian Orthodox priest who enjoyed telling folktales; a young Catholic journalist from Brazil fresh out of college; a doctor and her husband from Uruguay; a social worker from India; a tennis pro turned seminary student from New York; a punk rock fan from Norway; two Romanian Orthodox nuns; and a fonner moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Taiwan. We came together to learn from one another, to grow from our diversity, and to discover how we can work for the unity and mission of the church. We lived together for six months. We studied together, played together, and traveled together. Every day we worshipped together, employing the diverse styles of worship that we brought to the community. We learned songs from one another. Two of those songs I've selected for worship today. We shared stories with one another. Personal stories, stories of life in our countries, stories about the church in our countries. I would have to say that participating in this Ecumenical Institute was one of the best experiences of Charlie's and my lives, because it gave us a vision for what the

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Body of Christ truly is and how necessary it is for the Body of Christ to build bridges across the cultural, economic, political, and denominational barriers that divide us to express our unity. Probably the most memorable moment when our unity was demonstrated was when we stood together in the catacombs of Rome, in a space that the early Christians used to gather for worship. And there we were, living evidence of how believe in Christ had spread throughout the world - to Ethiopia, Ghana, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Russia, North America, South America, India, Indonesia, and the South Pacific. We stood there and without anyone person leading, the Holy Spirit spilled out of us in song - together we sang with one voice in Latin, the language of the early Roman church:

"Ubi Caritas - et Amour, Ubi Caritas, Deus Ibi Est." "Where charity and love are, there is God." We were looking to the world a whole lot like the people Christ prayed we would be.

The relationships we have built with Christians from around the world from that experience and from friendships from seminary and through ministry in the church have continued to be a blessing. This week, our congregation and presbytery played host to Dr. Nuhad Tomeh, a Lebanese Presbyterian who is a liaison to the Middle East Council of Churches. Dr. T omeh works closely with several of our friends we met either at Princeton or in our ecumenical experience in Switzerland.

Dr. Tomeh came to speak about his work with the Middle East Council of Churches, particularly he spoke of the struggles of the three remaining Presbyterian Churches in Iraq, and of the issues that Lebanon deals with as it recovers from 15 years of civil war as well as the more recent Israeli bombing of Lebanon. In Iraq, two of the Presbyterian Churches have had to close, one after the death of an elder who was serving as pastor and the other because the war had taken too great a toll upon the community and church. He spoke of how for the first time in Iraq, Christians are being targeted by extremists because of their faith. He told about how a sixteen year-old girl, who attends the youth group at the Baghdad Presbyterian Church was kidnapped, and how her kidnappers wanted to get $30,000 ransom. The girl calmly said that her family did not have that kind of money and that they could kill her if they had to. Meanwhile the women of the church in Baghdad gathered for a vigil of prayer for the safe return of the sixteen year old girl. It was something like the vigil that Paul and Silas kept when they were in prison, praying prayers, and singing hymns. For three days the women of the Baghdad Church did not stop praying. And although there was no earthquake, the hardened heart of one of the captors began to soften. At first he said to the girl, "Can't you just get on the phone and ask your grandparents to pay something, anything, like maybe $3,000?" Again, the girl said, "I cannot. My family does not have anything they can pay." But the prayers of the church were at work and the girl's calm demeanor impressed the first captor, whose heart was softening - and he argued with the others until at last the girl was released unscathed. I wish I could say that at that time, the captors' hearts were so completely changed that they came to believe in Christ - but I don't know that. What I do know is that God's Spirit was at work in their midst, and that the prayers of the church united in Spirit led to their softened hearts - and the girl was released. But perhaps there was something that touched them about the calmness of the girl in the face of their threats. Perhaps they saw in her something that they desired for

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themselves. Perhaps the Spirit was only beginning to awaken in them a longing for this kind of peace that comes from the knowledge of Christ's love that is so great that he would go to the cross for us.

When we asked Dr. Tomeh what we can do as Christians to help the people of Iraq, Lebanon, and the Middle East - he called for Christian unity in prayer and action for peace. He insisted that the most important step for peace in the Middle East is for the conflicting groups to come to the table to talk with one another. He encouraged us as Christians to unite in our influence upon U.S. foreign policy to urge negotiations for peaceful resolution of these conflicts. If Christians were united in one mind and one voice, the Body of Christ could playa significant role in calling for the end of war and the establishment of a just peace in which persons on all sides of the conflict are validated and empowered to work together toward a sustainable future - if we could do that it would be the most profound witness of the glory of Christ's love that we could make in our time. Weare not powerless to work for unity and peace. Because the Spirit that first transformed a gathering of frightened disciples into courageous witnesses of Jesus Christ is the same Spirit at work in our lives and by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are equipped to be the Body of Christ. And by this witness of faith others may come to believe.

Next Sunday we will celebrate Pentecost - and the power of the Holy Spirit. In preparation for Pentecost, we invite you to pray. Pray for your own relationship with Christ, that your heart may be one with his, pray for others that his love may be made known, pray for the church that together we may manifest the glory and love of Jesus Christ, and pray for the world, that all may come to know the saving grace of Jesus Christ. When you came in this morning you received a ribbon. Our ushers will now come forward to distribute permanent markers. And we invite you to respond to Christ's Spirit at work in you, by writing your prayers on the strips of ribbon you received earlier. Together we are creating a visible expression of our prayer that will hang in the sanctuary for the season of Pentecost. If after the service you would like to use more than one strip of ribbon, we invite you do take the time to do so. When you are finished, the ribbons can be placed in the basket in the narthex.

Let us pray:

Come, Holy Spirit, come, touch us with your presence, unite our hearts that we may be one with Christ as he is One with God and One with You. Empower us to be a living witness of the love of Jesus Christ. May his glory live in us, and may his grace fill us so that others will be come to know and believe in Him. Amen.