That’s Disappointing

It used to be said by some people, like a few weeks ago or something, that what unites us is greater than what divides us. Meaning, look at all we have in common before rushing off to do battle. The divisions might appear to be very important, but they are not nearly as essential as our common humanity, as the sense that we are all alive and share a single ancestor and all eat food and all belong in families and know what it’s like to have parents and to need love. Indeed, the need for love is so universal at least we can offer each other that. Don’t worry about the big looming ideological and religious troubles that set us one against another—Christian against Atheist, Conservative against Liberal…need I go on? I mean, remember way back at the beginning of COVID, all those celebrities singing that wondrous song, “Imagine?” We could imagine a world with no sadness and no trouble and no division.

Except the new pandemic world looked into the eyes of all those well-meaning saps, breathed in, breathed out, laughed heartily, and cried lustily, “There is no ‘we.’”

Well, there are perhaps some smaller “we’s,” some ever tinier groups of people finding each other and trying to make common cause over something—religion, race, politics, mask-wearing—anything. But no one can agree with anyone else a hundred percent. There will be something that splits the two and so finally, in a few more weeks, the entire world will be surveying the screaming verity that what divides us is absolutely greater than what unites “us”—sorry, forgot that there is no “us.”

Honestly, division is a basic reality of life, and one that Christians should be used to, although there are deep feelings of guilt associated with it. Mostly because of Jesus praying that long prayer to the Father about how we all should be “One.” It feels like one of those prayers where the speaker is ostensibly addressing God, like it begins, “O Father God,” or something, but then you realize that it’s actually an addendum to the sermon because the prayer/preacher, midway through the text, realized that no one was paying attention, and so decided to recap all the main points in the lengthy ten-minute address to God at the end. The sarcastic person at the back pries one eye open and whispers to the person in the plush seat one over, “Who is he talking to? Is he praying to God or preaching at me?” and the other person whispers back, “SHHH, both, SHHH.” I mean, Jesus was praying to God, not praying to the disciples, but there’s this certain kind of je ne sais quoi in the prayer, or it feels like it anyway.

And also, there’s the gospel for this morning. This bit is seriously depressing:

 Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another. Truly I tell you, you will not finish going through the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.

I mean, one might be inclined to say, “Of course,” everyone suffers the consequences of division in one way or another. But this is rather more comprehensive than that. This is one single division, one single reason that children—and it’s rather sickening to think of it actually—might be willing to have their parents delivered up and executed, or siblings against each other, not to mention followers on Facebook. It’s not because of a tweet (although that could be how it’s discovered), or because of saying something at work, or because of which way a person voted—it would be because of Jesus.

One single division across humanity: those who love Jesus and want to be with him no matter the cost and those who don’t. Or, as Paul more elegantly puts it:

Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.

Though “the many” feels rather small on this side of the grave as it becomes less and less worthwhile for the “all men” to keep up the charade of belief. We were all united in sin and trespasses. What united us was greater than what divided us. But then Jesus came and saved some. And now there is a terrible and unsurpassable division that cuts even through families and sometimes even though churches and certainly online.

Moreover, the many who by the one man’s obedience are being made righteous are temporarily a lot more uncomfortable than the ones who are sticking with that original disobedience, mostly because, though beset from the outside, they suffer from the divine scrubbing going on within. They imagine that old comfortable life, united with all humanity, and feel lonely and sad. And their discomfort is only promised to increase as the day of the Lord draws near. But imagine—imagine all those years of eternity, living forever in the light of the Son…I was going to try to rewrite the words of that stupid song but I can’t. I have to go to church. See you there!