UNITY

One of the things that I have discovered in accompanying children in their faith development is that much of what I end up doing is un-teaching. Children often ask me to address ideas they’ve grown up hearing about God that contradict the loving and merciful divine presence that Jesus presents, teaches, and embodies.

This experience of having to “undo” misconceptions has deeply shaped how I speak about God to my own children, leading me to ask: “What do I want to communicate to my kids that they will never have to unlearn? What do I want to say about God that I would never have to unsay?”¹

One of the most enduring, irrevocable divine truths for me is that we are made for togetherness. By God’s design, all of creation is connected in ways that we couldn’t even begin to understand. Just as a bee is drawn to pollen and a flower turns toward the sun and soaks up rain, we are created for relationship. In other words, community is God’s curriculum.

A fundamental part of living into the kingdom that Jesus dreamed for us has to do with our unity, what my favorite author Fr. Greg Boyle would call becoming “a community of cherished belonging.” He says, “There are two unwavering principles, rooted in the teachings of Jesus, that I believe would solve all our most vexing and complex social dilemmas if we embraced them: 1) Everyone is unshakably good. No exceptions. 2) We belong to each other. No exceptions. Compassion is the answer to every question. The only enemy is the enemy that would make us enemies to one another.”

When fragmented or alienated from one another, we suffer and wither, like flowers kept from the sun or embers that cool when removed from the fire. We humans, as part of God’s cherished creation, are designed for a holy oneness that seems almost impossible to imagine, let alone achieve in our current cultural climate. Yet, our being “The Body of Christ” – the ongoing incarnation of the spirit of Christ alive in the world today – (at least to me) remains unquestionably of God.

My eldest daughter once told me about a powerful lesson she learned in her high school history class. While learning about the Salem Witch Trials, her teacher announced a rather high-stakes game: “I’m going to whisper to each of you whether you’re a witch or a normal person. Your goal is to build the largest group possible that does NOT have a witch in it. Any group found to include a witch gets a failing grade.” The teens began grilling each other, breaking into small, exclusive groups, and turning away anyone who seemed suspicious. When all the groups had been formed, the teacher asked all witches to raise their hands…but no one did. The confused students said she’d messed up the game. “Did I?” she responded. “Was anyone in Salem an actual witch, or did everyone just believe what they’d been told?” What a poignant demonstration of how easy it is to divide a community.

In the atrium, we begin the presentation on the Parable of the Good Shepherd by saying, “One time when Jesus wanted to tell people about himself, he said ‘I am the Good Shepherd.'” Then we ask the children, “What does a good shepherd do?” and they respond, “A good shepherd takes care of all the sheep, keeps them safe, leads them to good food and water,” and so on. All great answers, of course, but if we look at this scripture passage in its historical context, the significance of the shepherd imagery becomes even more illuminating and informative.

When Jesus shared this parable in the first century, he was speaking to Pharisees, religious leaders who were steeped in the Hebrew scriptures and were presumably serving as shepherds for God’s people. They, like Jesus, were very aware that the book of Ezekiel was written during a distressing time when the Jewish people were separated from one another and suffering in exile. In this holy book, the prophet Ezekiel passionately communicates how God’s people are scattered, vulnerable, and lost, lacking good shepherds and how this state of anguish and separation is defiling God’s name.

“You have not strengthened the weak; you have not healed the sick; you have not bound up the injured; you have not brought back the strays; you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and scattered they became food for all the wild animals. My sheep were scattered; all over the face of the earth, with no one to search or seek for them…in this my name has been profaned” (Ezekiel 34-36)

The prophet Ezekiel is basically saying that God’s reputation has been damaged because the so-called shepherds are failing dreadfully at their job. So God declares that He will be stepping in to unite His people, bringing them together again so that His name will again be hallowed, or made holy again. (pardon the pronouns)

Similarly, each week when we pray as Jesus taught us and say, “hallowed be thy name,” it’s not simply an expression of reverence, but rather a petition like the rest of the Lord’s prayer, a plea for God to show His stuff! To bring about such a dramatic change in restoring our wholeness that all of humankind will take notice. We are imploring God to remove our divisions and restore our oneness.

Jesus prayed, “that they may be one,” because he knew that our journey to God, our path to the kingdom, is a group effort, with not a single expendable person. Sin is not a lack of perfection related to our personal performance. On the contrary, our individual failings – places where we need others to fill gaps and forgive us – are not some kind of design error on God’s part, but rather are a gift, a reminder of our essential interconnectedness. God doesn’t love us despite our faults and failings but in and through them is bringing about the Kingdom. As Brene Brown reflects, “Our imperfections are not inadequacies; they are reminders that we’re all in this together.”

The real enemy of the kingdom is any lack of inclusiveness and acceptance that distances us from God and one another. Jesus was a man of reconciliation in a world that had accepted, and even gloried in division, in proclaiming who was an insider and who was an outsider, the clean and the unclean. He was struggling to bring together people that others were struggling to keep apart. His aim was to hallow God’s name by being our Good Shepherd and guiding us together towards the fullness of creation for which we were made – a time when “God will be all and all” and we will be united.

It is God’s joy to bring us home and restore wholeness to us and our community – this is the true fulfillment of God’s dream for us. Healthy and life-giving community truly is the heart of the curriculum of Jesus. John Shea writes, “God desires unity and rejoices more when a wholeness is approached by the inclusion of what was formerly excluded than when an incompleteness, even when it is a righteous incompleteness, remains even one short.”

Discussion Questions:

1. What ideas about God have you encountered that might need to be reconsidered or “unlearned”? How do these compare to the image of God presented in this text?
2. The text discusses how the Salem Witch Trials classroom activity revealed how easily communities can be divided. What modern examples can you think of where similar dynamics of suspicion and exclusion occur in schools or society? How might we prevent this?
3. “What do you think “Community is God’s Curriculum” means? How does this idea challenge or align with common views about individual achievement and personal success?
4. The text references Fr. Greg Boyle’s two principles:
   • 1. That everyone is unshakably good and
   • 2. That we belong to each other.
   • How might accepting these principles change how we treat people who are different from us or those who have made mistakes?
5. The passage compares humans separated from community to “flowers kept from the sun” or “embers removed from fire.” What does this metaphor suggest about human nature? How have you experienced the effects of isolation versus connection in your own life?
6. What do you think about the suggestion that our imperfections and need for help aren’t flaws but gifts that remind us of our interconnectedness? How does this perspective differ from common cultural messages about weakness and dependency?
7. In discussing the Good Shepherd parable, the text describes how scattered sheep were seen as a sign of God’s “profaned” name. What does this suggest about the relationship between human unity and divine purpose? How might this apply to modern religious communities?
8. The passage argues that Jesus was “struggling to bring together people that others were struggling to keep apart.” What are some examples from Jesus’s life that support this claim? How might this mission be continued today?
9. How does the author’s interpretation of “hallowed be thy name” as a petition for unity rather than just reverence change your understanding of the Lord’s Prayer? What implications might this have for how we pray and act?
10. The piece concludes with John Shea’s quote about God rejoicing more in including the excluded than in maintaining “righteous incompleteness.” What do you think “righteous incompleteness” means? How might this concept appear in modern religious or social contexts?

1. Dr. Ann Garrido in a talk at Christ the Redeemer Catholic Church, 2020. ↩︎