Unity is Not Uniformity

And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.
 –John 17:11

Yesterday, I drove from Tulsa to Lindsborg, KS for the Bethany College board meeting. Even in that short drive (just over 250 miles) I was struck by the amazing diversity of the topography. My journey from Tulsa, which is hilly and wooded, across Keystone Lake, out across the cattle dotted grasslands of north central Oklahoma, through urban Wichita and into the greening fields of central Kansas was a study in diversity. God loves diversity. Genesis teaches us that God created the world that way on purpose. Even a one foot square piece of my back yard reflects the diversity of God’s Creation! Environmental scientists teach us that bio-diversity is necessary for a healthy eco-system. Homogeneity in an ecosystem leads to the deterioration of the system and ultimately, it’s death.

God created the human family amazingly diverse as well. And yet, while the rest of the Creation seems to favor diversity, we humans all too often seem to fear it. Consciously and unconsciously we are suspicious of that which is different and these suspicions negatively impact our behavior toward and attitudes about one another. How often in today’s world do we see one group actively trying to vilify, demonize and ostracize those who are different? Sometimes these behaviors are so subtle, we are hardly aware we are participating in them! For example, churches, even those like the ELCA which strives to embrace diversity, all too often continue to gather in homogenous gatherings of the similar. There is truth to the statement that, in the United States, Sunday morning is the most segregated time of the whole week. Why is that?

In John 17, Jesus prays that his disciples might be one. But, this is not a call to homogenous uniformity. Instead, it is a prayer for solidarity in the face of the challenges they will face as they answer Christ’s call to go into the world to continue his work of proclaiming and embodying the love of God for the whole world. In his ministry, Jesus embraced a wide diversity of people in that love and commands us to do the same. The call is not to make others like us, but to see Christ in their faces as we walk with them. Jesus is praying that we might be deeply rooted in the power of God’s love which was extended to us and to the whole world through the cross, even as we are sent out in love to a diverse world riddled and ruptured daily by fear, violence, and death.

God created a diverse world. Jesus invites us to join him in sharing God’s love for that world, and in so doing, learn in a deeper way, God’s love for us in Jesus Christ.

--Bp. Mike Girlinghouse