Unity takes time. And lots and lots of effort. It requires patience and long-suffering and a stalwart determination to make it to the end—together—no matter what. It is costly in just about every way you can imagine, and probably in some ways you cannot yet imagine, or dare not imagine because that cost might be just too pricey. Unity is costly, but is it worth it?
Apparently unity was worth it for Jesus. As Paul explains, the divine plan is “to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.” (Ephesians 1:10) The cost for Jesus was, of course, his own life. But that is not the only price he paid—unity cost him, and continues to cost him, in patience and long-suffering.
The work of universal unity began slowly, and it progresses slowly.
As Jesus taught, the work of the kingdom is like a tiny seed or a pinch of yeast—tiny, imperceptible, slow. This was true even in his own earthly ministry because at times, rather than bringing people together, people were divided because of him. Seems counterproductive, doesn’t it? And yet Jesus was patient. This patience was inherited from the heart of his heavenly Father who had already been patient with mankind for quite some time, understanding that we have a penchant for disagreement and a limited capacity for accepting one another.
The people were divided because of Jesus. People are still divided because of Jesus. The trouble is that oftentimes—then and now—we dress up our divisions in Jesus’ robes. Our divisions are about a thousand other things (politics, race, gender, laws, morality, ethics, history, economics, church polity, even our interpretations of Jesus himself), but we call them Jesus.
Sneaky and dangerous misnomers.
Which brings us back to the cost of unity: If we are to continue the slow work of the kingdom, another cost will be our other divisions. Some of which are likely to be those divisions we dare not even dream of because they are so precious to us. Yet once we have laid those down and sacrificed all of our supposedly right opinions and values at the feet of Jesus we can then be a part of his universal unity.
