We pray, O gracious Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that we all may be one as you are one.
In your community of complete unity, we have our beginning and our end. To you we pray, asking for the gift of visible unity among all who believe in your Christ.
As we commemorate this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, we are reminded by your Word that all human beings are our neighbors and that we are to love them like ourselves and in the same way we love you. Help us to overcome the barriers and divisions we have nurtured against your will.
Grant to us, O Lord, a new Spirit of love and solidarity, that we may proclaim your good news to all of creation.
We ask this through your Son, Jesus Christ, who with you and the Holy Spirit are one God, forever and ever.
Amen.
Yesterday marked the beginning of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, and an ecumenical team from Burkina Faso—made up of Chemin Neuf community members and the local community—has composed the above prayer and the meditations for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity this year.
Burkina Faso has made headlines over the past two years for the abductions of priests, pastors, nuns, and Christians of all sects and denominations.
For this week-long meditation, they have chosen the theme: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27).
Lest you think that is the most straightforward of Christ’s commands, the lawyer who questions Jesus immediately rejoins with: “And who is my neighbor?”
(cue two millennia of lawyer jokes)
But we are all the lawyer saying to Jesus: of course that person is not my neighbor. Or that country, or that group. Of course this love I am to extend goes only so far and no further. Of course there are limits and exceptions and—my favorite word!—boundaries.
We do love to draw lines in the sand—so does Jesus, famously—but how do our divisions and our distinctions exist within the all-encompassing love of God? A love that really doesn’t have the same divisions and categorizations that we so desperately need as humans.
And that is the mystery that so many Christians have been searching to live together for the past century. How do we mirror that unity of Christ, that love of Christ, without erasing history, but rather working within it, toward that unity of God that God wills for us?
One of my favorite quotes from recent reading is a saucy aside in Christianity Incorporated by Michael Budde and Robert Brimlow:
“Those who, like Jesus, seek first the kingdom of God instead of lesser gods and loyalties do not necessarily enjoy better sex, more income, or patriotic accolades.
“Martyrdom, for example, can lead to an increase in single-parent families, orphaned children, and decreases in family income.”
And what they mean here is that following the Gospel isn’t necessarily supposed to make us uncomfortable—it’s supposed to make a world in which it is easier to be good—but that following the Gospel will not come with obvious rewards and there are no comforts or financial securities guaranteed in it. We may, like the lawyer, balk at exiting the comfortable circle of security in which we find ourselves enscribed.
Are we willing to go and “do likewise”? To embrace the discomfort of embracing lepers or the person outside of our circle of welcome? Not for the sake of discomfort itself, but because the love we have received demands new wineskins and cannot be held in the old.