A Sermon for the Seventh Sunday of Easter
The Rev. Patricia Gillespie

Acts 16:16-34
Rev 22:12-14, 16-17, 20
John 17:20-26

I heard it last night. Loud singing at midnight. And it wasn't hymns praising God like Paul and Silas sang in jail ... that I might understand. One of my neighbors has a rock band and they practice in the garage with the door open. This raucous music and offensive words I just don't get. It's not an earthquake but, like the Paul and Silas's jailer, I don't understand at all what's going on.

It's beyond us: I don't get the kids' music. And the jailer can't imagine why those guys are singing.

Our lack of understanding separates us. The locked jail doors and the generation gap ... both are signs of our disunity.

It will take the prayers of a saint, or better yet, of Christ, to overcome all the misunderstandings and separations in our lives. Jesus prays that we all will be one because he has seen how great and how many our human differences are.

It's no mistake that Jesus chose twelve people, not just one, to lead in his place when he left. He knew that people are different; and that people need to hear different voices if all are going to hear the good news. But Jesus prays that, in their wonderful diversity, his followers can still be one, as surely as Jesus and the Father are one.

But ever since those first twelve followers, people gathered in worship have had their differences.

Even today in one modern synagogue, there was always a dispute over whether to stand during the recitation of the Shema or to sit. One faction felt it was disrespectful to sit, and preferred to stand; one faction felt that standing was bad, and that all should sit. It was awful ... every time the rabbi would begin "Shema Yisroel," the congregation would erupt in disputes and argument.

The standees were trying to lift the sittees, and the sittees were trying to pull down the standees. Every Shabbat it was the same: Argue, argue, argue. So the congregation sent a delegation to the rabbi, consisting of both sittees and standees, "Rabbi, is it our tradition to sit during the Shema or stand during the Shema?"

The rabbi thought for a while and said, "I don't know. It's always been a point of contention for as long as I have been here."

So they went to the former rabbi and asked him: "Rabbi, during your tenure at our temple, was it the custom to stand during the Shema or sit during the Shema?" The rabbi thought for a long time, but he couldn't remember. "Let us ask the rabbi before me," he said.

So off they went, dug up the old rabbi in the nursing home, and asked him the question: "In our congregation, is it our tradition to stand during the Shema or sit during the Shema?" The old rabbi thought for a long time. "It is not my recollection that our tradition was to sit during the Shema," he said finally. The standees were exultant, but their delight was short-lived as the old rabbi lifted his hand in warning. "In my recollection, it was not our tradition to stand during the Shema." And the sittees were exultant, but only for a moment. "But Rabbi, if it is not our tradition to sit, and it is not our tradition to stand, what is our tradition?"

The old rabbi thought for a while and then spoke. "It is our tradition to ARGUE during the Shema."

So those must be the Episcopalian Jews. It is the denominational gift and burden of the Episcopal Church to agree to disagree. To argue together and at the same time to be able to pray together.

That ability to pray together, even when we differ about important things, is what defines Episcopalians. We are not defined by a set of doctrines that you must believe. We are defined by our Book of Common Prayer – the prayers we share together and offer ‘in common.'

Of course there are those who see us arguing and suggest that we wishy-washy Episcopalians don't know what we believe. They see the danger of a "lowest common denominator theology" – a theology that, by the time we set aside all our disagreements, is impoverished to the point of uselessness and meaninglessness.

But that's not how the Episcopal Church works. Our "Via Media" or "middle way" is not an in-between average or a lowest-common-denominator compromise. It's not a watered down theology, but a "broad theology" - an open and inclusive theology. We really are like those Jews and the Shema. They don't end up in some wimpy half-sitting, half-standing crouch. They stay firmly ‘standees' or ‘sittees' – but while they hold their postures, they say the Shema together: "Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God is one." Different attitudes united in one confession of faith.

When we disagree with the position, or we don't understand the singing, we try to find a common note to share.

Do you know the story of the Women's Vocal Orchestra? Women prisoners of war in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) during WW II literally survived by making music together.

Six weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Japan attacked the Dutch East Indies. Shortly afterward the Dutch colony capitulated and Japan began isolating in internment camps all white civilians who were nationals of countries at war with Japan. In the Dutch East Indies, a hundred thousand civilians were interned – the men in different camps from the women.

One of the women's camps was in Palembang. This camp held at one time or another roughly 600 internees, wives of military personnel, government officials, planters and businessmen; missionaries and nuns, nurses, teachers and over 100 children. After the first year and a half behind barbed wire, the women and their children were thin and hungry. Their rations consisted of a few tablespoons of watery rice porridge to which might be added rotten vegetable stalks at lunch and dinner.

Most women had malaria and dysentery. Some had beri-beri. The conditions in the camp were squalid, in a tropical and monsoon climate.

From the first week of captivity, a Dutch glee choir presented Dutch folk songs, a British group shared popular English songs and church choirs sang Dutch or English hymns. The Dutch and British usually sang separately because of the language barrier. Eventually no one could remember any more songs.

Then a wonderful thing happened. One of the women, a Presbyterian missionary, wrote down entire works of composers such as Beethoven, Debussy and Chopin from memory. Another woman helped arrange the orchestral and piano works for four-part women's choir, and women of every nationality began rehearsing their new "vocal orchestra." They had found a way to transcend the language barrier that divided them.

On the day of their first concert, as the first measures of "Largo" from Dvorak's New World Symphony floated through the air, a guard came running from the guardhouse, bayonet at the ready, shouting and waving his arms. Large gatherings were not permitted, as the women all knew. Still they kept singing and the guard became so entranced by the music that he stopped ranting and quietly listened through the entire concert.

The impact of the music on the prisoners was enormous. Many cried. They had not expected such music among the cockroaches, the bedbugs, the rats, the mud and the awful latrines. The music renewed their sense of human dignity, and of being able to stay on top of it all. (Peninsula Women's Chorus, from the jacket notes on their 1983 recording.)

The music, as surely as an earthquake, had set them free, if only for a moment. Those women singing in captivity let go of their differences of language and culture and found strength and hope in their harmony and unity, unity in what they did have in common.

The beauty of music is a spiritual thing ... like the water of life offered freely as a gift to anyone who wishes. That is where we find strength, freedom, and new life – in those places where our souls touch. That is the unity that Jesus prays that his followers will find. That is the unity that Jesus shows us in his very life, in being one with the Father.

The reality of God fully present in one human person, Jesus, gives birth to the possibility of God present in me, or in you, or in George next door. That is where our hope of unity lies – that we are indeed one in Christ.

Songs we don't understand and ideas we disagree about can be fertile areas for growth in understanding or they can become prisons that keep us apart. But Christ, the liberator, frees us from our differences.

In our common prayer we find unity and harmony. Because what we hold in common is Christ.

Our lowest common denominator is the Alpha and the Omega – the beginning and the end, the lovesong of God from before the foundation of the world.

Christ, our lowest common denominator is the highest, most holy God. And that is something to sing about!