Sermon Notes — October 5, 2025
John 17:20-26
“Though We Cannot Think Alike”
Rev. Dr. Mary Beth Bernheisel
October 5, 2025
I met Ashley in June 1991, which was the summer before my senior year of high school. It was the opening Convocation of the Tennessee Governor’s School for the Arts, and my friend Craig and I were looking for open seats. Craig spotted two together across the auditorium and we sat down in front of Ashley and his friends. Craig introduced me to Ashley and it was instant mutual distaste. He thought I was too much. I thought he was a snob. By the end of the month we were fast friends.
We kept in touch while we were in college – we both studied music – but since his undergrad degree took five years and mine took four, I was the first to go to seminary. We were each as surprised as the other when we discovered that God was leading us in the same direction. I went to Boston University School of Theology. He went to Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville.
I am a United Methodist pastor. He is a Southern Baptist pastor. And we will both tell you that we are one of each other’s best friends. Early in my career when I was an associate pastor I was in a blind panic about a situation I was in that I did not cause but that could have been detrimental to my ministry and he talked me out of my nauseating anxiety. I have pointedly asked him to justify things that he does that I don’t agree with, and he always has. Every time we talk our conversations are punctuated by the phrase, “You and I will come down in different places on this, but…”
There are a lot of things that we disagree about – there’s a lot that we disagree about doctrinally and theologically. But at the end of the day he loves Jesus and he does his very best to love his neighbor, and I love Jesus and I do my very best to love my neighbor. And neither of us has ever doubted the other’s love for God and neighbor. We can question all sorts of other things about each other’s theology or doctrine, but that stands alone as the bedrock of our Christianity unity – that we both strive to love God and love our neighbor.
If we met today would our relationship be the same? No. The unsanctified parts of my heart would hold him at arm’s length because he pastors in a denomination that doesn’t allow people who look like me to do the work that I do. And I can’t speak unequivocally for him, but I would guess that, at a minimum, he probably wouldn’t be fully on board with a woman in ordained church leadership.
But because we have known each other’s hearts for over 30 years, our theological and doctrinal issues just don’t get in the way of our friendship. We don’t avoid the issues, but they aren’t the most important thing.
I’m not trying to paint an inappropriately rosy picture for the sake of a sermon on Christian unity. I have lived in towns that have stopped community worship services altogether rather than be in fellowship with a church that blesses women in ordained church leadership. But my friendship with Ashley is a sign that Christian unity is possible across all sorts of differences, and that gives me hope.
Will you pray with me and for me?
Today’s text is from a piece of John’s gospel called The Farewell Discourse. The Farewell Discourse begins in chapter 14 and ends with the conclusion of chapter 17. In chapters 14 - 16 Jesus prepares his disciples for his departure – first through his death and then through his ascension into heaven. In chapter 17 Jesus turns from speaking to his disciples to speaking to God in prayer, a prayer that occupies the entire chapter. In verse 20 he starts to pray in earnest for the unity of his disciples, both those who were with him in the moment and all those who would become his disciples in the future.
Instead of trying to dissect this text, I want to lift up a few themes for us to consider together this morning.
The first is this:
Christian unity is not on a to-do list for the church.
Busy, successful, results-oriented people like us are tempted to hear Jesus pray for unity and then get started on it right away, like another project for us to complete. Jesus is not asking us to be unified. Jesus is asking God to bind us together in the way that only God can.
Second, Jesus does not pray for Christian unity for the sake of Christian unity.
Jesus prays for unity so that
the world will know that you sent me and that you have loved them just as you loved me. (v.23)
Christian unity is a testimony to the world – a testimony of God’s deep and abiding and unconditional love not just for those who confess Jesus as their Lord and Savior but for everyone. When John uses the word “world,” he is talking about “all the forces of the world and all the systems of the world that are hostile to God and hostile to God’s work.” And yet if we are to believe John 3:16, it is this world – with all of its hostility to God and God’s work – that God loves enough to give himself for. It is the world for which God will stop at nothing to save.
Christian unity is a witness to God’s love for the world. In the words of theologian Lamar Williamson,
Jesus knows that the world will not believe the message if it cannot see the love of God in the messengers.
Finally, Christian unity is relational. This may seem obvious, but in our pathologically divided world we hear the demonization of those who hold different beliefs than we do, who think about things differently than we do, and who have different opinions than ours. The world has devolved into infantile name-calling and we have forgotten that the way we speak to each other and about each other can cause profound healing and it can also cause deep harm.
But Christian unity isn’t about agreeing on theology or doctrine or scriptural interpretation. Christian unity is about staying in relationship with each other even when we disagree. In fact, one of the greatest witnesses to God’s gift of reconciliation through Jesus Christ is when Christians disagree and still manage to worship together, still manage to pray together and for each other, and still manage to serve the world together. Somewhere along the way we seem to have forgotten that we can insist on being right, or we can be in a relationship. But in many cases we can’t be both.
It’s just a guess, but I am pretty sure that Jesus is more concerned about the part where we stay in a relationship with each other than he is about us being right. Because none of us has the corner on the truth. We learn more about God and God’s will and God’s love for us from each other than we will ever learn in isolation.
In 1749 John Wesley delivered a sermon called “Catholic Spirit.” I am going to pull out the salient points, but I will not do it justice and so I recommend that you read it for yourself. If you’ve never read one of John Wesley’s sermons before, buckle up. Not because you’re about to go on a wild ride, but because you will want to get out before the ride is over.
This sermon is the source of one of Wesley’s most well-known statements on Christian unity
Though we cannot think alike, may we not love alike?
He goes on to ask, “May we not be of one heart, though we are not of one opinion?”
And here we are at the heart of the matter. Wesley says that Christians aren’t required to have the same thoughts or the same opinions, or the same way of worshiping. Our unity is based on our love of God and love of neighbor, our willingness to show love through action, our desire for each other’s goodwill, along with our willingness to work for each other’s goodwill, and our willingness to pray earnestly for one another. It is based on urging each other to good works, and holding each other accountable for faithful love of God and neighbor.
I appreciate Lucy Lind Hogan’s straightforward statement on the matter.
We are one in Christ whether we agree with each other or not. We are one in Christ whether we like one another or not. To become a part of Christ is to become a part of the community: a part of the one.
We are already one with Christians all over the world. All we who follow Christ and put our whole trust in his grace dwell spiritually within the Father and the Son, and so we also dwell with each other in that eternal unity. The question becomes, then, how do we respond to this unity that we seem to have gotten ourselves into?
Here’s what I think:
I think that, first, we recognize that unity was important enough to Jesus that he prayed for it. And he prayed for it precisely because he knew that there is no way for us to accomplish it ourselves. If we could do it ourselves Jesus would have just told us to do it, like he tells us to feed hungry people and visit people in prison and give clothes to people who don’t have any.
Second, we join Jesus in praying for unity. We do that already in the Communion liturgy when we pray that we will be one with Christ, one with each other, and one in ministry to all the world. We pray because, like Jesus, we know that we can’t accomplish it ourselves. We pray because Jesus believed that unity was important enough to pray for.
And finally, we invite others into this messy, imperfect unity that is a work in progress – not because we’ve got it right but because the more people we invite into our unity, the more perfect our unity becomes. The more it reflects the unconditional love of God in the world.
When we gather around this table, we gather as one. We gather as one with each other, and we gather with Christians around the world who look different from us, whose worship doesn’t look like ours, and whose doctrine and polity may be widely different from ours. We gather because Christ has invited all of us to the table to be in relationship with him and with each other until Christ comes in final victory and the unity that we pray for becomes reality.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.