Brothers and Sisters, Grace to you and Peace through God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ in the relational self giving of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Before we get into our Gospel text this morning, there are a few things I want to acknowledge.

First, this is my last Sunday with you for a while. Next Sunday I will be on vacation in New Orleans. The following week I leave for a four week sabbatical. The purpose of the sabbatical is to research liturgy, with a particular focus on jazz liturgies. Jan and I then shoot out to the Black Hills for vacation. I'll be back mid July.

A second thing I want to acknowledge is that today we in the church celebrate and remember Ludwig Nommenson, missionary to the Batak people of Summatra. Nommenson went from Germany to Indonesia in the 1860s to bring the Gospel while also honoring native culture — not seeking to replace it with European ideals. We still see the fruit of his work today. Our own Indiana Kentucky Synod is in relation with the HKBP people, and one of their Bishops and another theologian were with us here in Bloomington earlier this week. Lyman Hitchock organized marvelous visits with Campus Ministry and St. Thomas. Pastor McKee and I were both given these stoles as gifts.

Third, and this will bear on my message this morning — on Thursday we celebrated the Ascension of Jesus. This festival celebrates the Ascent of Jesus to the Father. The day also often slips by with scant recognition. But the Ascension is deeply important to us. Only by being absent can Jesus really be present through the Spirit. The Ascension is the event that allowed the Reformers to articulate the doctrine of Christ's ubiquity. The ubiquity of Christ simply refers to Christ's omnipresence. He's everywhere, not circumscribed by space and time. He is simultaneously present at our Eucharist here at St. Thomas, with our friends in Chichipate Guatemala, in the churches of the HKBP people in Indonesia, and everywhere else where two or three are gathered. The Ascension is what makes Christ's real presence possible.

Which leads me to the theme of my brief homily this morning: unity. In our Gospel passage Jesus is praying for unity — that we in the Church may be "completely one." What is the unity of the Church? What does it look like? How does it feel?

The first thing to say is that unity was very very important to Jesus. John 17 is after all Jesus' final prayer before he ascends into heaven. This is his final prayer, the summary of his intentions for us his followers. If this is Jesus' final prayer, I think it's fair to assume its pivotal importance. We have the privilege of overhearing Jesus' prayers for us, the church.

So when Jesus prays that we be one just as he and the father are one, I think it's of the highest order importance. But what exactly is unity?

Surely unity is good, and is something to strive for.

Unity is also, however, a complicated term which we tend to oversimplify, making it romantic and sentimental. It is easy to load up the term unity with all sorts of baggage, to rush in where angels fear to tread, with suitcases full of jargon describing what unity is, what Christian or more broadly religious unity should be. Such hurried assumptions often lead to disappointment, sometimes to pain, and sometimes to something even more demonic — a need for outsiders, a need to scapegoat. But unity means something very different than simple agreement or homogeneity. Let's explore briefly some of the theological underpinnings of the word unity.

Most people think that unity means sameness or homogeneity. If we don't agree with one another, we don't have unity. Likewise, if we don't look alike or think alike, we don't have unity. That's simply not true theologically.

The theological key for understanding unity is found in our passage from John 17. Jesus prays to the father; let them be one just as we are one. The key phrase is "just as" or kathos. We are one, just as the father and son are one. The unity of the Church, or broaden it and say the unity of humanity, is just as the unity of the father and the son. Just as the father and the son are one, so too are the people of God one.

So to understand unity, we have to try to understand the unity of the father and son. What exactly does unity look like?

The Church has presented many answers. For example, in the 3^rd century Athanasius said that God's unity is some sort of substantial "stuff" that takes three forms — H₂O takes the forms of water, ice, and steam. The Neoplatonists said that God's oneness was God's essence, and God became three in manifestation. For Tertullian God's oneness was a unity of rule, like a CEO in unity with her obedient followers. For Origen, God's oneness was a unity of will. The discussions can be very technical. Helpful, if a little tedious.

So let me try to go to the heart of things for you. A tradition has emerged that understands unity as being based in difference, difference as played out in relationship. The insight began with the Cappadocian fathers of the 4^th and 5^th century. It was picked up and amplified by others including St. Thomas Aquinas and many in the Eastern Orthodox Church — where it achieved full expression. If you're interested in the discussion, I refer you to a very fine book by Catherine LaCugna called God For Us.

Let me put it simply. Unity is difference experienced through relationship. Relationships bring differences into unity. The father is the father by having a relationship with a son. The son can only be son by having a relationship with a father or mother. It's the relationship that makes unity. Not sameness or homogeneity.

The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard said that Spirit is relationship. There's a similar tradition in Trinitarian theology that understands the Holy Spirit to be the medium for relationship. There's the Father/Mother, and there's the Son. They relate to one another through the Spirit. I like that reading. It means that wherever and whenever we participate in healthy relationship, the Spirit is present. There can be, in fact, no relationship without spirit.

That's why the Ascension I spoke of earlier is so important. Only by ascending to the Father could Jesus send the Holy Spirit. Only in ascending to heaven did we receive the sprit that makes relationship possible, that makes unity possible. Because we have the spirit, the Church can manifest the kind of unity that Jesus prays for in John 17.

That's why we in the church have unity. God has given us the Holy Spirit. And that Spirit allows us to be in relationship one with another. Unity is not sameness, or homogeneity, or similarity. Unity is relationship that allows our diversity to flourish. Diversity is something to celebrate, not to do away with.

That's why it's great that we disagree with one another on some issues. That's why I'm honored when one of you tells me that you're not sure I'm being faithful in my approach to gay-lesbian issues. That's why I'm delighted that we all don't share the same political views, that we think differently about so many things. That's why it's safe to be a member of St. Thomas even when you don't agree with the Church leadership. We get to be different. We get to have healthy fruitful relationships — not in spite of our differences, but because of them.

This is the source of unity: the coming of the Spirit who makes relationship happen between diverse persons. Praise God we don't all have to think, look, or act alike.

Thanks for hearing me out on this rather technical issue. In these coming weeks, I'll miss you, as I'll miss the students. Of course I won't miss you so much that I won't enjoy my little sabbatical, and the periodic fly fishing I hope to do. But I'll miss you all still. Pray for me, as I will be praying for you. And God's richest blessings upon you all.   —   Amen.