One love
One blood
One life
You got to do what you should
One life
With each other
Sisters and my brothers
One life
But we're not the same
We get to carry each other,
carry each other
(One by U2 (2006))
There is one life, one blood, one love, we are not the same but we carry each other. When we think of our lives, we know we exist in a community of life that God has created & God longs for us to be united.
Jesus prayed for his disciples, “…that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one…”
In this text from the Gospel of John, Jesus affirms his one–ness, his connection with God seven times. Each time with a slightly different emphasis and he wants his disciples to experience it too.
As followers of Jesus, our baptism connects us with Jesus and with God our creator; and we live that bond out in our mission in the world by the love we share with God’s creation.
Josh was a college student spending his vacation working with a relief organization that built housing in underdeveloped countries. Josh made friends with a number of the children in the village. One boy, Obioma, especially endeared himself with the college volunteers. Always upbeat and smiling, Obioma was eager to do whatever he could to help. Josh noticed that Obioma wore the same dingy shirt every day. So he scrounged up three T-shirts from what he and the other students had brought and that family and friends back home had donated. The shirts were a little big on Obioma, but he'd grow into them.
When Josh gave the shirts to the little boy, Obioma gave him a big hug and broad smile. The next day, Josh saw two older boys wearing shirts he had just given to Obioma. Fearing the worst, Josh went looking for Obioma to make sure he was all right. "Those gifts were for you, Obioma, so you'd have a change of clothes," Josh told his little friend after he found him safe. Obioma replied, "But, Mr. Josh, you gave me so many!" [From More Random Acts of Kindness.]
The generosity that Josh shares is returned by Obioma as he shares generously with others. In his calling to reach out and help, Josh found his bond to others who in turn knew their connection too. We live out our mission where we are, as the poet, KY farmer and Christian, Wendell berry reminds us that Jesus’ call to live the abundant life means: We become “conscious, consenting and responsible participants in the one great life.”
One great life.
As human beings, we are social creatures. Connected with each other through God’s creation. Our lives are not as separate as we so often think they are. As God shows us throughout creation.
I have just started the book the Hidden Life of Trees – written by German forester Peter Wohlleben – a book that goes into detail in how trees communicate and share food underground, via their root systems. The forest is filled with a community of neighbors that sustains each other. Wohlleben leads his readers on a fascinating journey into the forest, viewing trees as living beings who exist on a very different timescale from our own frantic lives. His book reminds me that such connections are what God has built into all of his creation. We all are linked one to another through our creator.
As he lay on his sickbed in 1624, the priest and poet John Donne pondered his life as he heard the church bells and wondered if it tolls for him.
“Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill as that he know not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me and see my state may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that.”
And then Donne muses about our interconnectedness through the church and in creation.
“The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does, belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that body which is my head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated.
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promentory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Another man may be sick too, and sick unto death… this bell that tells me of his affliction digs out and applies that gold to me, if by this consideration of another's danger I take mine own into contemplation and so secure myself by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.”
(Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions: Meditation XVII by John Donne, 1624 )
Donne give us much to consider – for the bell tolls for us to consider our lives seriously.
“All humanity is connected in the Body of Christ, and all are equal before God. The implication for the individual living on Earth is that he is part of a greater whole, such that the death-bell has deep and significant meaning for everyone who hears it. We are all in this life together and part of the same divine plan, so the bell does toll for the sake of all who have ears to hear it.
The toll for another’s death is also a reminder to get our own affairs in order in the short time remaining before our own death. The civic-mindedness that comes from seeing oneself as part of a greater whole also provides direction for one’s life as an expression of spiritual devotion as one tries to live by God’s will.” (Gradesaver.com)
In this one great life we have, we get to carry each other. May we find that one-ness that Jesus prays for us. In our bond with God who created us and the love we share with one another. Amen.
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