Lectionary Readings: Year A, 7th Sunday in Easter

You might be surprised to know that there were over 50,000 Christian denominations in the world in 2025. That number is expected to grow to 64,000 by 2050. What’s even more interesting is that the number of people becoming Christians is slowing down, but the number of new denominations is rising. What that means is that we are making new denominations at a faster rate than we’re making new disciples. You might think, “Oh, that’s an easy fix! We’ll just start new churches and make them non-denominational.” Unfortunately, I’ve got news for you. For at least the last 25 years, the growth rate of making new denominations is already faster than the rate of new Christian congregations. That means, quite often: New church, New denomination. And why not? You won’t have to answer to anyone, or be involved in a larger community.

When I was in seminary the first time, several of the people in my cohort joked about how they all used the same identifier, but none of them were from the same denomination. Imagine a group of people who are Episcopalians, but you have the Reformed Episcopalians, the Traditionalist Episcopalians, the Catholic Episcopalians, or whatever other name. Each of them considers themselves a real Episcopalian, but they all belong to a different denomination. One of the people in seminary said, “We might all say we are part of this tradition, but the old joke is that we will start a new denomination over whether we like piano music more than organ music. And in the process of splitting we’ll call the other side godless heathens and heretics.” We all laughed, but it was a bitter-sweet laugh, because we all know that to be true.

A while back I was part of a mediation effort, an attempt at bringing together two parties who were in disagreement. After a few sessions of this, I discovered that there was a larger divide than expected. Another person was asked to join the effort at mediation, and I said to them, “You need to know that there’s kingdoms on both sides that people are trying to protect – and it ain’t the Kingdom of Heaven.” 

The truth is that churches and people are more likely to split than to stay together. People are more apt to leave a marriage, a committee, or a community group than they are to stay in one. Especially when there’s disagreement. People are more apt to leave a church when they experience something they don’t appreciate, like when the preacher says something that is theologically sound, but makes them question their loyalty to their political party, or when someone in the church wants to buy something they think is a big, fat waste of money. Why? Because it’s all about personal kingdoms, rather than the Kingdom of Heaven. For most people, it’s “My way, or the highway.”

In his book, The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis described Grey Town, which was an allegory for Hell. Instead of depicting little demons with pitchforks, and flames all around, Lewis described Hell as a place where everyone gets what they want, when they want it, just by thinking about it. And because they do, their egos take over. And because everyone else doesn’t want what they want, people move further and further away from each other so that they won’t have to deal with what anyone else wants or desires. Hell, in other words, is isolation, based entirely on “My way, or the highway.”

It’s a common problem. And it’s nothing new. Lewis wrote about it 80 years ago. And, we see that Jesus prayed about it in his prayer in the Gospel of John today: “Protect them, Father, so that they may be one, just like we are one.”

Up until this point in John’s Gospel, Jesus has been telling his disciples that he is about to leave them, and he is preparing them for that moment. But here, Jesus begins to pray a private prayer to God, while the disciples listen in. They are hearing Jesus’ concerns about the disciples and the people he will be leaving behind as he gets ready to join the Father. And what he prays for is simple: “Father, protect them… so that they may be one, as we are one.”

Jesus is praying for protection, and for unity.

Given what we just heard about denominations in this world, and how quickly we are dividing, rather than uniting, we can probably safely say that Jesus’ prayer has been largely unanswered for all these millenia. And, we probably should ask ourselves why.

More often than not, people confuse unity with uniformity. That is, people think that in order to be united, we all need to be the same. We need to think the same, act the same, believe the same, pray the same, and behave the same. And uniformity makes that job a whole lot easier for us. Because when people don’t behave the way that everyone is behaving, or they don’t like the same music – that is, they prefer a piano with contemporary music over a traditional music with an organ – that’s when we can say that they are not like us, and we can find a way to exclude them from the party. It’s more about making sure we can tell who is in the sheepfold vs who is outside the sheepfold. And while John’s gospel clearly tells us that Jesus calls himself the gatekeeper, we often like to take on that role, and tell people who can be in or who is automatically out, because we control the gate. Uniformity is all about protecting a kingdom, and it ain’t the Kingdom of Heaven.

Unity, on the other hand, is all about working toward the same goal. It’s not about being the same, but sharing a vision for the same end goal. In the letter to the Philippians, Paul said, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus … who humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross. Therefore God exalted him and gave him the name that is above all names.” In today’s scriptures, Peter says that we are to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, so that God might exalt us all in due time. Two weeks ago we learned that for us to ask anything in Jesus’ name means that we are to do it in the character of Christ, and that God will answer that prayer if we do what glorifies God.

Looking at this prayer of Jesus helps us to realize that even though Jesus is praying for protection and unity, a whole lot of Jesus’ prayer is that he would glorify the Father, and that the people who follow in his own footsteps would glorify him, all with the end goal that the Father might be glorified. People glorify the name of Jesus not just in word, but especially in action, in what they say and what they do. Jesus glorifies the Father. And we glorify the name of Jesus. And the end result is that God is glorified.

That’s what unity is all about. It doesn’t matter if we all look the same, think the same, love the same, speak the same, pray the same, vote the same, or worship with a piano or organ. What matters is that our work should glorify God, and that we do it in humility. It means that rather than working for our own kingdoms and our own glory, we instead work for the Kingdom of Heaven, and the glory of God.

Man, that seems like a lot. 

But that’s the ideal. That’s what Jesus was praying for. He was praying for unity. Unity in purpose and unity in goals. He wasn’t praying for uniformity, which means that we all act like clones of each other. Instead, he was asking that we work to bring about the same goal through the use of our differences.

And differences there will be. And differences, there already are. Need I remind you that there are over 50,000 different Christian denominations worldwide?

I said earlier that it seems that Jesus’ own prayer for unity has gone unanswered. And if Jesus’ own prayer has gone unanswered, then we need to ask why. Why on earth would Jesus’ own prayer for unity among his followers not have had the expected result? Why would we be struggling with the issue of being one after all these years?

In Peter’s letter today, he says that the “Adversary, the devil, prowls around, looking for someone to devour.” It’s not that the devil is eating us up physically, but eating us up spiritually. The devil is looking for people to consume, so that their minds and hearts are more focused on themselves, rather than on God. And this is why Jesus, in this prayer, asks God to protect his followers, because he is really just saying, “Protect my followers in your name. They’re awfully prone to looking out for themselves and all their own interests. They’re an egotistical bunch. Protect them from themselves, so that they may be united, that they may be one, just as you and I are one.”

Jesus wouldn’t have prayed that prayer if the ideal of unity wasn’t possible. He prayed this prayer of unity because he knows that it is possible. And he prayed the prayer of protection for his followers because he knows that we would often rather choose our own comfort, and our own little kingdoms. He knew we needed protection from ourselves if we are to live in unity, and be one, as he and the Father are one.

So how do we do that?

It starts with the questions of, “Is what I’m about to do, or say, going to glorify God? Or is what I’m about to say going to glorify me?” Or, maybe a shorter version of this is, “Who gets glorified by what I’m about to do?” because that also allows for the possibility that we are just propping up someone or something else so that we can benefit from their glory. It’s really easy to glorify another person, if that person’s power trickles down to us, and we reap the earthly benefits of turning away from God.

 Another question is, “Is what I’m about to say or do going to bring about unity or division?” There’s enough people in this world who like to sow division, because sowing division allows them to consolidate their power – and which is just another way of saying, “My way, or the highway.”

The ideal of unity is possible. Otherwise Jesus would not have prayed that prayer. And especially now, in a time when the world prefers division and self-glorification, we especially need protection from ourselves.

Jesus prayed, “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given to me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”

[This sermon was delivered at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Wickenburg, AZ on May 17, 2026.]