All Saints Church, Worcester

Morning Communion - Ezekiel 37:1-14 and John 17:20-26

Looking at Our Values - Celebrating & Embracing Diversity

Today is Passion Sunday, a day when we really begin in earnest the build-up towards our remembering and celebrating the passion of Jesus which took him all the way to the cross for us. Passion clearly lies close to the heart of Jesus. As a church we are seeking to respond to God's call to reveal the heart of Jesus in the heart of the city - and that means sharing the same passions as Jesus.

That's why we have set ourselves five Operational Values as a church - because they seem to be things which matter to Jesus: Openness and Honesty; Being Real; Generosity; Excellence; and today - Celebrating and Embracing Diversity.

Because we are committed to being honest about not all being the same and not all being perfect, we will need not only to show real generosity but also to rejoice in our diversity. This can be a strength, not a weakness, and will become so increasingly as we learn to celebrate rather than to fear or to scorn our differences and then even to be willing to embrace that which we have not previously encountered. These are opportunities for personal and corporate growth. This will also be worked out through our commitment to work with other Christians across the churches of Worcester.

That's a brave statement, to which we invite church members to give not only their assent but also their commitment and energy.

Celebration of Diversity may sound like a new concept - but isn't it what God has been about since the beginning? We only have to look to our amazing creation to see that God seems to love diversity: Genesis 1: 20 "Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth…" God's characteristics of abundance and variety shine through such statements and we only have to look around us to see how that has worked out, don't we. That says something of the nature of God. Just look at the variety in the human race - that's significant too.

Moving on, look at the variety amongst the first disciples chosen by Jesus - you had fishermen, you had a tax collector, people from the radical political groupings - it was certainly quite a mixed bag!

God has never been interested in a monotone world or church. And when we come to look at the prayer which Jesus prayed in John 17 we discover that this celebration of unity within diversity is not only something which reflects what God has done right back through time, but that it also says something about who God is right back through eternity!

Let's look at the prayer for a moment because it is Jesus' fullest prayer, prayed just before his arrest and death, packed with the things which were most important to him.

Of all the things Jesus could have asked for at this time for the church - that they may be courageous; that they may be strong; that they may be pure in heart; that they may be creative and visionary, etc - he asked for none of these - but rather that the Father watch over them so that they may be ONE! This is his prayer both for the first disciples and for those who will believe in me through their message.

But the unity about which Jesus was passionate was a particular kind of unity. Jesus prays: 'That they may be one as we are one'. This is where we connect with the very nature of God. How is God one? In a totally unique way - by being also three! Father, Son and Spirit are unique and distinctive - not 3 x 1/3 but 3 x 1! And yet they are also 1 and not 3. Unity within diversity begins in eternity with the Trinity - the unity which Jesus prayed for us to have is the same kind of unity which will reflect God's nature in us.

That means it is not only OK for us to be quite different from one another, it's actually an opportunity for us to reflect not only the heart of Jesus in terms of his passion but also the nature of God in terms of the unity of diversity within the Trinity. That's why we state as our value not merely that we will live with our differences but that we will celebrate them.

There's so much that could be done with differences - we could fear one another for our differences - something which is at the heart of much racism. It's not a very big step to go on from there to scorn one another for our differences - They do it like that. They wouldn't dream of doing this - leading to the potential for forming groupings and factions within the Body on a 'birds of a feather' basis. All of this is destructive. It is destroys fellowship, it diminishes worship and it is damages our mission - after all Jesus prayed that we might be one so that the world might believe that the Father has sent him!

Contrast this with the possibility of celebrating our diversity - enjoying the differences between us, seeing them as part of the richness of God's creating and saving work. I want to celebrate the diversity within our worship this morning and within the life of the church on this day and this week…. [Examples: age spread; different services; Open to God; meeting on Confirmation; being part of the wider Benefice - Holy Week opportunities to experience this.]

Doesn't that build fellowship, deepen worship and sharpen our mission to this city and beyond?

And personal and corporate growth comes when we take a step beyond celebrating and risk embracing our differences? Let me give you one example. When I was training for the ministry at an evangelical college we were encouraged to embrace the good and Scriptural disciplines of other traditions. One of these was to become more comfortable with silence. At first I was fearful and scornful of this and when we had weekly Quiet mornings some of us didn't take them very seriously. It wasn't a very mature approach I have to confess. It was new and seemed foreign to me as well as being tainted as being more to do with Catholic than evangelical spirituality. I didn't have much option about accepting it, but over time I began to appreciate it too and I would now say that I deeply value the practice of being still before God in prayer, and have grown considerably in my relationship with God through it.

That's what it means not only to celebrate but also to embrace. We won't all be able to do that for everything - otherwise we'd all end up being the same again anyway - but even for those aspects in which we feel we cannot embrace we need to be able to accept as Christ has accepted us. That's why we have also spoken of generosity which is really about grace - grace which God has poured into our lives and which we need to be willing to allow to overflow into the lives of those around us. This really is the key to all that we are and do!

William Temple said - spiritual unity is perfect mutual love for one another. The way to the union of Christendom does not lie through committee rooms… it lies through personal union with the Lord so deep and real as to be comparable with his union with the Father. The prayer is not so much that we may be one, but that we may be in the Father and the Son, for certainly then we shall be one.

We've looked at this unity within diversity as a passion of Jesus and considered something of what it might look like; let me finish with a brief word about where it can take us - we heard not only a prayer of Jesus this morning but a prophetic picture from Ezekiel. We saw a remarkable transformation within that picture from a valley of dry bones to a living moving marching army. A picture that has often brought great hope to God's people. What made the difference between the before and the after? The first thing is that the scattered and diverse dry bones joined together to once again form into united bodies once again. That opened the way up for the second which is that God breathed his life into them by His Spirit. Both were vital if the dry bones were to become an army for the Lord.

If we keep to ourselves both within this church and between the churches we are little more than a valley of scattered dry bones. If we come together and join together then we will see a fresh outpouring of God's Spirit on all the churches which will enable us to make a much more significant impact for God in this City.

And so we are back to the prayer of Jesus - he was passionate not only for unity across our diversity but also for the glory of God. This value of ours is a value which reflects the nature of God, which will build our fellowship, worship and mission, and as God pours his Spirit into our individual and corporate lives will turn us into the sort of united army which will bring great glory to God in this City. 'May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.'