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Oneness

 Cate Thorn explores the concept on one God, unity and community 
Rev Cate Thorn

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Oneness

Transcript
So today is the last Sunday in our season of Easter. We had the Ascension during the week, but at ends at Pentecost, so our red today, next Sunday don't forget Pentecost, but these last three weeks, as we've heard the Gospel of John, we've been treated to a slew of farewell words. Aphorisms, Jesus gifts, his beloved disciples wisdom to guide and to prepare them. To live without him. Three weeks ago, of course, you all remember the gospel that will preach to, aren't you? It went something like this. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another by this everyone will know that you are my disciples. And wolf asked not, what does Jesus do, and how do we emulate that he asked us? How does Jesus love? How is it that Jesus loves because it is by this that we will be known as disciples. as if it is not simply an acquired garment, that we overlay ourselves worth, but something deeper, And last week a gospel went those who love me? My father will love and we will come and make our home with them. My peace. I give to you not as the world gives. Let's not ask therefore what does this mean? Or what does this piece look like? So we can get it and make it look like that. It has asked how we are a place of home for the divine. How do we receive a piece? Given that is not given as the world gives. and of course, today, i in them and you in me that they may become completely one so that the world may believe that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me, How? Is Jesus one with the father? How are we to become completely one? How is it possible? If you think a little bit, who wants to do that, who wants to become absorbed in some sort of a more amorphous sameness of being with everyone else? There is something revelatory going on here. We've heard these words before. I don't know about you, but as you listened to today's Gospel, it seemed to go a little bit convoluted and around in circles. And I get a little bit confused. Perhaps befuddled, perhaps your eyes glaze over a little. Yeah yeah. It's all about love. Disengage, perhaps. But if something is being revealed here, what is it? If we seeking to comprehend it to understand it, because surely we need to so that we can be the disciples and our day, what is being shown forth? Because it seems to be very important. The stuff about love the stuff about peace and God making God's home with us and this piece about now being one And all of these things are threaded through with Father and Jesus and the Holy Spirit intertwined as one and now, it's like it's our turn. If we follow a thread through today's Gospel evading, the repetition it seems to me to read something like this. That they may all be one that the world may believe you have sent me and loved them as you have loved me before the foundation of the world. About being one, belief sent Loved Before the foundation of the world. When you think about being one, what do you imagine? That would be like, Do you think it's some sort of unity that we have to be as one? What do you think that we are as one, bien? When we speak of one, do we imagine that we somehow it's a unifying sort of tight ball of energy that draws us all tightly together. As if there's some power that has to Hold Us in that place. What do you imagine? It's the kind of Oneness that's ever expanding that has all these kind of points and the power resides in the relationship. The energy of that is an outward going energy that can ever expand, its the relationship that connects us and that's where the power is. When Jesus is speaking to his disciples of this Oneness, as he is farewelling them. Do you think they imagine it's something they have to go and work really hard to achieve? That these success or failure as being the bearers of Jesus teaching depends on them being as one. And that might mean that they have to defend that Oneness before, all else and guard it. Because any different sort of vergence from being just one is a great threat. Could Jesus be speaking about being one that already is? It is the way things are. If they could be the case then, let us consider creation. Is it expressing Divine Oneness in all its abundant and glorious variety? Is it reflecting Divine glory in that revealing Divine love before the foundation of the world? But back to that question. How is Jesus one with the father? You see in the church, lineage in the tradition. We talk about the Divine, as uncreated over against that which is created. And we believe Jesus is created. So how was he won with that? Which is uncreated, And of course, I know these are just words words, we necessarily have to use that limit us words to describe Waters beyond words. But this is what is being said. So in his farewell words are they describing how things are first to his disciples? Then we know, to those who will here. And now to us, we are being invited to participate in the way things are. also, we have been showing there was a choice we can make So if that's the case, then Jesus is talking about some sort of innate already Connection in God. As Jesus was sent and intended. So we might assume that creation is intended and that we each are intended, we are not an accident. And as Jesus knows this. So he saying we can too. And when we know this, we can be intentional about it. We can attend and nurture and strengthen and develop this connection. This very deep innate Connection in us. We can participate in relationship. We can become as one. As we do that, we are opened and made aware that we are participating in the energy of and for life that which we named God. We become aware that we are being part of a 1. Uniquely an individually, of course, we are created and we're empowered to choose whether to collaborate with this or not too. But Brian Taylor in his book setting, the gospel free says this, when it's like this, we can let go of the security of keeping God, as a thing for ourselves. As a being we can come to know, God, simply as being itself, the creative and dynamic energy within us and throughout the Universe of life and of love. If God is being then, Union with God, is not something to be achieved. It is a fact of life. Our efforts in prayer are to open ourselves to what is and what can be realized in us with awareness. If God is being, then when we love, we are moving with rather than against the being of all life. Love is what works and it is how things are I recognize even here, we are, a community of rich and varied talents into preferences. And as I say these things, I know that some of us will likely have little time perhaps little patience for what seems so introspective or rather. Sure. It's good and fine. But without concrete outputs, what's the use of it? Some of us just want to get on and do stuff. And last time I preached, I did indeed suggest that by what we do, as a community of faith, we will be knowing and become known that how we enact, what we speak of reveals, how we are the resurrected Body of Christ, and this place. But if being, as one as the way things are, and once again we turn to the plethora in variety of creation, we see that Oneness and how it is expressed or perhaps we could turn to Paul's metaphor of the many parts of the body of Christ that we as the body of Christ in this place are a conglomeration of many very diverse and different parts. We participate in the one that is. and that means, We need each other. It means that we value and we take seriously, each person who is a part of our being one in all the wholeness and Brokenness. We don't all need to be the same. To express Oneness. But also, we need to be mindful to align our doing. With the knowing gained from our growing awareness of how to mow skillfully and effectively enact the life of God for the world. We need to open ourselves to be willing to be changed, to be willing to hear, and heed the voice of the other end, the Cry of our creation. We need one another. Creation needs us to act. And our world has a need of knowing this Oneness of which we speak. As authors Andrew Harvey and Caroline Bakker right in their books. Savage, Grace Living resilient lie in the Dark Night of the globe. They write this many activists have a profoundly limiting rejection of religion and any form of spirituality, one of our deepest purposes in writing, this book is to awaken activists of every kind to the Urgent. Necessity of a Bring ourselves at a far deeper level. With the peace, passion, stamina, and moral and spiritual strength, that can only come from an incessant cultivation of the inner Divine. It would be tragic. If the dominant soulless culture prevents activists from drawing on the grace. The power, the stamina of the strength and the Discerning wisdom of the conscious spirit. Confronting the appallingly difficult, World crisis in which we are engulfed without being sustained. By spiritual practice is as Marion Woodman once said, Like walking into a raging forest fire dressed only in a paper 22. What those demands of us is an unprecedented claiming of our inner and outer Authority. If humanity is going to have the ghost of a chance, it can only be through the arising of a worldwide movement of universal Love In Action. This cannot come from above, it can only come from the individual acts of millions of Ordinary People daring to, come together to claim and to take back their power, In an increasingly authoritarian Society. The only source of strength is within and within the communities we improvise and create when this is not limited to the boundaries of the communities, we create we participate in Oneness with the whole of creation. We have unique and particular part to play. It is time to take our place. It is time to act.