A teaser from tomorrow’s harangue…

We can try and create events that proscribe the words of Jesus’ deepest and most intimate prayer. We set up councils and events and programmes to “promote” Christian unity. This is good and necessary work, even when frustrations put stumbling blocks in the way.
It is not through the structures we create, however, but it is in the relationships we form in working through our difficulties and differences of perspective that we discover the unity we seek.
Jesus must have known this when he broke all human resources rules by putting together so many opposing personalities on his original team of twelve. Fishermen and tax-collectors, zealots and conservatives, idealists and pragmatists. How was he ever going to get them heading in the same direction?
Yet here is the confidence of his prayer “… so that they may be one, as we are one…” He knew something about the magnetic, melting power of the application of the kind of love that emanates from the heart of the Creator.