John 17:20-21a “My prayer
is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through
their message, that all of them may be one…”
Friday closed with a nurse’s call,
asking if I could pray over a dying man.
I entered the hospital room to
the greeting, “Are you Catholic?” I told the grieving family, no, I am a
Protestant minister, but I was the only available minister/priest. The dying
man’s wife looked in my eyes, ‘Well, I guess God hears your prayers too.” My heart-felt
reply was, “Yes, God doesn’t have all these
barriers that we have erected between us.”
The family looked at each
other, then nodded. Together we prayed their
dying husband and father into the arms of his Savior, Jesus Christ.
Why has the Church of Jesus
Christ so miserably failed to live into Jesus’ final prayer? Why do the ‘people
in the pews’ understand the truth that in Christ we are all one so much better
than the religious leaders who teach them?
Truth is, I am ‘catholic’,
believing in ‘the holy catholic (of all times and places) church.’ (Apostles
Creed) May human-bound denominations learn to live what we profess.
