The Rev. Dayle Casey
The Chapel of Our Saviour
Colorado Springs, Colorado
May 20, 2007

7 Easter - C
Acts 16:16-34
Revelation 22:12-20
John 17:11-26

On the night before he died, the Lord Jesus prayed for us and the world. He prayed that we, his Church, his Body, might be one, even as he and the Father are one. Jesus’ prayer was his dream for us, much like St. John’s dream of last week, his dream of a body of faithful people united not alone in truth, but in that truth that love is. He prayed this not just for the twelve who shared that night with him, but also for you and me.

What did Jesus have in mind that night when he prayed for our unity in him? Well, one thing is certain. He did not have in mind some melding of all the doctrinal and liturgical differences among Baptists and Presbyterians and Lutherans and Episcopalians and Roman Catholics, nor did he have in mind that one or more of them would prevail over the others. When Jesus prayed for our unity, it was his hope that we might have a common consecration, a common sacred purpose, just as he and the Father have a common sacred purpose.

To be consecrated is to be made holy for the living of the life of God, for the living of the life of the truth that love is in the world, even as Jesus himself lived that life in the world.

We dash Jesus’ dream at every turn, of course. But the Church’s present disunity cuts much deeper than the relatively insignificant differences of liturgies or prayer books, much deeper even than differences of doctrine and of who might be ordained priest or bishop. These differences are mere cosmetic wrinkles on the skin of the Body of Christ. The real trauma of the Body of Christ, the really life-threatening wound we inflict on Christ’s Body, is our common failure to recognize the intimacy with each other to which we are called. The really bloody wound in Christ’s Body is our failure to recognize the depth of the relationship of all God’s people with one another. The really traumatic and life-threatening wound in Our Lord’s living but broken body is our spiritually impoverished habit of seeing a brother or sister and then failing to do unto that person as we would wish to be done unto, starting right here. The Church’s disunity is grounded not only in a deficiency of truth, but also in a failure of love.

As a young man in South Africa, Mohandas Gandhi, a Hindu, heard the same prayer of Jesus that we just heard this morning. And one Sunday he went to church, planning to ask the pastor afterwards for instruction in the Christian faith. But as he entered the building, the ushers refused to seat him. “Why don’t you visit the colored people’s church?” he was asked. Gandhi left. And though Gandhi never abandoned his admiration for Jesus, he never became a Christian, of course.

There are, in the world, basically two ways of keeping order and peace. One is the way of the world. The world seeks to divide and conquer, seeks to impose order and what passes for peace by force, even by war. It is a way as much practiced in Jesus’ day as in ours.

The other way, God’s way, is to kiss and embrace and sit down to a meal together. God’s way of holding things together is not to keep the sinners at arm’s length from each other, but to remind the sinners that they are all of the same family, to make them companions, to bring them together in an embrace of peace so that they might all eat at the same table, where love overcomes and perfects any deficiencies in truth.

So on the night before he died, Jesus met with his disciples in an upper room and prayed for our unity with God and each other. Not for a unity of doctrine, but for a unity of persons. “He took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples. ‘This is my body; he said, take and eat.’ ...Then he took the cup, gave thanks, and offered it to them, and said, ’This is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. Drink from it, all of you. Even you, Judas. You, too, Peter. I tell you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine again until that day when I drink it anew with you in my Father’s kingdom.’” Companions the disciples were, literally the sharers of bread together, and of wine, the sharers of divine life and purpose.

All meals are intimate affairs. Meals create companionship, friendship. But never has a meal been so intimate as that meal, the sharing not only of bread and wine, but of body and blood, the sharing of life with life.

Abraham Lincoln, too, recognized the power that companionship, the sharing of a meal, has to make friends. Shortly after the end of the Civil War, a war in which brother had fought against brother and father against son, Lincoln hosted a dinner for some former Confederates, and for others from the North. A woman who was one of Lincoln’s guests from the North was infuriated by the kindly way Lincoln spoke, not only to those from the South, but about them. He spoke of them as friends, and of his intention to restore the Southern states to the Union. So she later objected to Lincoln. “Mr. President,” she said, ”These are your enemies. You’re not supposed to invite your enemies to dinner, you’re supposed to destroy your enemies.” Lincoln smiled and said, ”Madam, don’t I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”

Fifty years later, on Christmas Eve, 1914, a similar meal took place, and with similar results. British troops were huddled deep in their trenches in Belgium within shouting distance of their German enemies, who were hunkered down in their own.

During a break in the fighting an informal truce was declared, and the war was suspended in that location for the observance of Christmas. Suspended for the observance of Christ’s mass, as it turned out, suspended for the observance not only of Jesus’ birth, but of that meal Jesus hosted and of his dream for us all in that upper room on the night before he died.

As rendered by the remarkable 2005 film “Joyeux Noel,” the French were there as well, and this is how it happened:
The German troops began the festivities that night by placing small Christmas trees, decorated with lighted candles, on the rims of their trenches. A German soldier took out his harmonica and began to play “Silent Night.” Then, from the British side, a bagpipe picked up the tune in accompaniment.

Now a harmonica and a bagpipe are not my preferences for Christmas Eve, but under the circumstances, they had an absolutely holy effect. Someone began to sing, then another, and another: “Stille nacht, heilige nacht. Alles schläft; einsam wacht.”

And as the night grew more silent and more holy, and as the soldiers recalled those silent and holy nights of more peaceful Christmases, from somewhere in the trenches and in a tune and language common to them all, came an invitation to prayer in song: “Venite adoramus, venite adoramus, venite adoramus, Dominum!”

Someone suggested a truce for the night. And in response, cautiously, the lieutenants – Scottish, French, and German – made their way to the middle of the fifty yards of “No Man’s Land” for a meeting. One brought a bottle of wine and three tin cups.

Drinks were shared all around while they talked it over. “The war won’t be won or lost tonight,” one said. “What harm would it do to take a break for Christmas?” offered another. In time, they agreed and shook hands. The troops then began to leave the trenches, abandoning their defenses.

The men gathered around their officers. They circled each other like hounds who have only just met and who want to play, but don’t want to be bitten. They shared bread and chocolate as they had it. They shared pictures of wives and girl friends. They sang. They told jokes. They played with the cat all the soldiers knew and claimed as their own, the cat who crossed all borders with impunity, the stray who went by “Nestor” in the French camp but by “Felix” in the German, and who begged equally well in either language. The French troops discovered that the German lieutenant spoke French fluently, because his wife was French.

They learned that the German officer and his wife had spent their honeymoon in Paris, not far from the French lieutenant’s home. A Brit wrote a letter to a friend in Germany, asking a German soldier to post it for him when he got a chance. Others exchanged invitations to visit each other after the war. They shared whiskey straight from their bottles, no tin cups needed.

A priest, a Scottish stretcher-bearer and chaplain, fashioned an altar and a pulpit, and as the soldiers from the three warring countries gathered around God’s table, he spoke to them not in English or French or German, but in the language of God’s Church, in a language as common to them all as were the carols they sang earlier to begin that Christmas Eve. “In nomine Patrii, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti,” he began. And everyone said, ”Amen.” “Dominus vobiscum,” he continued. And all responded as one: “Et cum spiritu tuo.” “Oremus,” the priest then invited: “Let us pray.” It was, as the priest later told his unhappy bishop, the most important mass of his life, and he did his best to share the Gospel with them all, to share the good news, the hope and dream and prayer of Jesus for them all.

Later, in the early light of Christmas Day, they played a soccer match, it is said. And the Germans won 3-2, it is said. But after all, the British and French insisted, one of the German players had once been on a real football team. In the singing and in the games, in the chocolates and in the photographs from home, and in Jesus’ meal, they came to know each other as persons, as brothers in Christ, as companions and friends. And, of course, at that particular location on that particular day, the war simply fell apart. For how, the next day, could one shoot the one he had come to know as friend?

And their superiors behind the lines? Well, of course, when they heard about it, they were furious. “Fraternization with the enemy,” they all called it in the war rooms in Berlin and Paris and London. “How can you fight a war unless soldiers see each other as enemies?” they fumed. And the soldiers from every country were disciplined and redeployed to different units with more stomach for war. Even the religious superiors fumed. Removing his priest from his assignment on the front, the Scottish bishop told his priest that he was disappointed in him, that civilization itself depended upon their killing the Hun, and that the priest’s behavior on that silent night was unacceptable in a war as holy as the war to end all wars.

It was all Jesus’ fault, of course. Jesus had planted the seed with his dream in the upper room on the night he prayed for us, his dream that we might be one as he and the Father are one.

For what is the Holy Eucharist if not fraternization with ones we might call enemy if not for Jesus? What is the Holy Eucharist if not a sacrament, an outward and visible sign of that inward and spiritual grace of our unity with God and each other which crosses all borders like a cat begging for food? What is the Holy Eucharist if not a dream of an end to enmity, a way of tearing down the walls of hostility that divide us, a strategy for making our enemies our friends in Christ?

Religion and faith, friends, are not all doctrine and impressive feats of magic. Religion and faith are relationship, relationship with God and each other that creates a peace that surpasses human understanding.

There once was a well-respected and much-loved teacher named Hufis, a Sufi sheik, who could do all sorts of wonderful things. But he began to hear of another sheik, Raaleh, whom travelers from the other side of Persia said could do even more wonderful things. This troubled Hufis, so he set out to find Raaleh, and the two teachers met on the shores of the Persian Gulf. It was prayer time when they met, so Hufis took out his prayer rug and flung it out on the water. Then, walking across the water, he said his prayers seated on his prayer rug, floating on the water.

When he finished, Hufis turned to Raaleh and asked, ”Can you top that?” Raaleh took out his prayer rug and threw in into the air. Then, climbing an invisible staircase, he sat down and said his prayers, floating in the air.

When Raaleh descended, he said to Hufis, ”What you and I have done today the fishes and birds do every day. Wouldn’t it be more wonderful still if we could learn instead to treat each other as human beings?”

The real trauma of the Body of Christ, the really life-threatening wound we inflict on Christ’s Body, is our common failure to recognize the intimacy with each other to which we are called. The really bloody wound in Christ’s Body is our failure to recognize the depth of the relationship of all God’s people with one another. The really traumatic and life-threatening wound in Our Lord’s living but broken body is our spiritually impoverished habit of seeing a brother or sister and then failing to do unto that person as we would wish to be done unto, starting right here. The Church’s disunity is grounded not only in a deficiency of truth, but also in a failure of charity.

Healing the wound begins here, at the Holy Eucharist, where we learn to fraternize with those who might be our enemies were it not for the love of Christ for us both. It is here that we can see that our enemies can be our friends because they are friends of God.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.