Easter 7A 2026

THE REV. E. WAYNE ROLLINGS

​ Last Fall, I began asking around about commemorations for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. It’s a period of eight days that begins with the Confession of Peter on January 18, and ends with the Conversion of Paul marked on January 25. As you might imagine, some intervening celebrations and events meant those who had interest in that week couldn’t meet to make plans until it was too late to implement them. 

A couple of us then met and did what we could. You saw that happen on Ash Wednesday. We haven’t been able to progress beyond that. Yet. 

The idea of Christian unity is a good one if you simply ask about its favorability. When you start talking about what it means and how it might be accomplished, however, that’s a different matter. My first experience with that week came while I was music director for a large Roman Catholic parish. The pastor often joked with me that the prayer life of 1,500 Catholics was in the hands of a filthy Protestant. Then, one summer Sunday after the last of four masses, an older member of the parish asked when I was going to become a Catholic. Before I could answer, the pastor said, “He’s more Catholic than you are. Leave him alone.” But, on the day I was asked to speak at a weekday Mass about unity, I was told, "Be careful what you say.” 

The institutional church’s attitudes have challenged ideas of unity since the early years. The early church was divided into four regions—Antioch, Constantinople, Alexandria, and Rome—each with bishops teaching and providing oversight from those cities. Jerusalem, having been destroyed by the Roman army in 70 CE, fit in as it could. Several councils of bishops met to address faith issues and to define accepted teachings. But ecclesiastical identity politics kept true unity well beyond arm’s reach. That is, if you’re only talking about actual human arms. Spears, swords, and flaming torches were longer. 

At least one writer has concluded that when Mohammed saw the battles, both verbal and real, between warring factions of church leaders, he formed Islam as a religion that would show the world how to live together in peace. But like at creation when God formed humanity, it started to fall apart when a bunch of people were allowed as part of it. 

And so it seems today we have before us what I call Jesus’ one unanswered prayer. At least we haven’t become able to answer it the way he intended, nor in the way we would like to be able to admit. 

We began dividing over things like the presence of one letter in one word, but that one letter had great implications for our statements of faith. Simply put, it changed the Holy Spirit as “proceeding from the Father” to “proceeds from the Father and the Son” as we will say in a few minutes. 

Then it became over issues that affect everyday life. The church in Rome needed to raise funds to finish building St. Peter’s. You can find information on “indulgences” on your own, even as they played a large part in Martin Luther’s note he placed on the castle church door in Wittenburg in 1517. Johns Calvin and Knox, along with Ulrich Zwingli, figure into the mix of Reformed thinking. Then there’s that guy Henry. It can get complicated. 

While I appreciate different opinions and understandings of our shared faith traditions, our many positions have grown from a family debate into very real and often threatening positions regarding what is taught about salvation. I think the main result of all of these is to satisfy the tempter from the garden and the wilderness by helping us avoid Jesus’ true purpose as he prays. It’s too easy to fall into the self-created trap of making salvation dependent on what we do and what we say we believe rather than on what God has accomplished through Christ Jesus.

After all, who can tell me, or even better yet, show me, what it means to be one in Christ, even as God is one in Jesus and Jesus is one in God? That is the true meaning of Christian unity, an end that cannot be found in attempts such as the Elizabethan Settlement’s demand that all British citizens attend worship every Sunday using the approved Book of Common Prayer. Also, they had to enjoy the oversight of bishops appointed by the crown. By the way, not having to do those things is what the founders of this country meant by “religious freedom.” It isn’t about making it acceptable to hate those not just like us, as some recent efforts seem to be trying to do. But the foundation of this country could be said to depend in part on Christian disunity. Then there’s the thought that if it were to be a Christian country, prosperity in this young country would suffer because capitalism and Christianity can’t really share the same playground.

“May they be one, even as you and I are one" is what Jesus prays for. Discerning what that means and how it becomes real in all our lives is how we do what Jesus asks us to do at his ascension. Be witnesses. Not to his departure, but to his eternal, loving presence in the world he came, and continues to come to, to save.
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After all, we are some of the people God has made into Christ’s Church to be just that—witnesses to unity in and with Christ in God. Oh, in case you’re wondering, it’s not just for a week anymore. It’s forever.