This is the last Sunday of the Easter Season, a season in which we hear readings from the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. In those readings we hear how frightened disciples encountered the resurrected Christ and became empowered Apostles. The light of that brilliant revelation changed these few so radically that they moved across the known world like wildfire and the church sprang up through their willing work, like sparks breathed into flame by the power of the Spirit.

Today's story of the slave girl's liberation is only one in a string of stories in which the bodies of men and women are freed from prisons of various sorts. Their spirits are released from possession by lesser things. Their minds are opened to new possibilities suddenly made visible - made believable - in the light of the resurrection and the Apostles' ensuing words and deeds that reflected that light into the hearts of faithful Jews and the home of pagan gentiles.

In the lives of the Apostles we see the union of the work of Christ with the will of his followers. In the Book of Acts we see their intentions as the result of the incarnation, the crucifixion and the resurrection. The Apostles branch out from Jerusalem, with hearts afire and projecting a glow that draws crowds, like a New Testament version of the burning bush. But this new fire is meant not just for Moses' eyes but for the whole world to see.

But let us allow our attention to be redirected backward in time, so that we might uncover the root of this New Testament burning bush.

In today's reading from John's Gospel we sit again in the Upper Room at the Last Supper. It is the eve of the Crucifixion. Jesus has told them he is going away and that they cannot follow him. He has instructed them to love another, promising that he will come back for them in time, and assuring them that in the meantime he will send another Advocate to remind them of his teaching. Then we hear a lengthy prayer that scholars call the High Priestly Prayer. Jesus' words are meant for the disciples' future understanding.

The words are like seeds Jesus that plants knowing that they will only take root after they have been watered with His blood. These seeds of the future church need a light that has not yet fully been cast. The full Gospel will only blossom after the son has risen.

The time of giving instructions to the disciples is over. Maybe they got it. Maybe they didn't. It all comes down to the faith, now. No more questions and answers. There's nothing for it but prayer. Jesus asks his heavenly Father to draw the disciples into the relationship the Father and Son already enjoy, that they - Father, Son, disciples - may be as one.

But the next step is cause for our rejoicing. Jesus extends his prayer, so that it stretches beyond the room, beyond the city, beyond the disciples' time and place. "And I ask not only on behalf of these," Jesus prays, "but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one." "Those who will believe"- that would be us!

Jesus has turned his prayer to all those of every time and place who will come to believe through the testimony of his disciples.

Immediately after Jesus' prayer in the Upper Room, Jesus and his disciples will leave the warm lamplight of the table. They will go out into the cool darkness, cross the Kidron Valley and pause in a garden that will sprout soldiers and police like sudden thorns. Judas will seal the deal with a deadly kiss and Jesus will be hauled away to a series of escalating horrors that will end in his gruesome death.

But that final moment turns out not to be the end, but a hinge by which all history swings wide open like a prison door suddenly shaken loose. Freedom for all who want it is seen in the witness from the Cross-that act which looked like fragmentation, failure and finality becomes, through the resurrection, a sign of unity and a call to follow where Christ has gone - not necessarily to death- but as response to God's call to us in our own day.

Now there are two kinds of unity. There is the unity we work for- that union we seek and make manifest in our actions that are consonant with the Gospel. And there is the unity that is a mysterious grace, a gift given out of love.

We need both.

In so many of the rites and practices of the church, from baptism to ordination, we state our intention, make promises and then proclaim, "We will, with God's help." At the Eucharist our hands break the bread and pour the wine but all is in remembrance. Christ's gift of himself is ongoing. The benefits are poured out over and over again for us like a chalice that always holds more than enough.

God made us in the beginning; we are not the work of our own hands. And Christ continues to form us, guide us and empower us through our baptism, our weekly gathering at his table, and by the encouragement of the disciples around us.

We are one through our baptism. There is one bread that we break and share, and by consuming it we are remembered weekly into the body of Christ. We are united because of who Christ is and what Christ has done, and is doing, for us. This unity is indissoluble. Differences of opinion cannot wash it away. Arguments over theology will not dissolve this bond. What Christ has joined together by His death and Resurrection no one can put asunder. This is one form of unity - and it is Christ's work.

Then there is our work- the work that leads to the second form of unity. Our work requires intention, dedication and outward actions done in faith, just like the early disciples. We find unity when what we say and do is consonant with Christ's commands, commissions and example. It is our hope and intention at St. James that we will become evermore conscious, ever more discerning, about what to do and how to do it so that the light of the Gospel might shine through us, as it did through the early church's disciples.

Whether it is a mission trip to Honduras, the blessing of the soil on Rogation Day, an Art Show to raise funds to care for our historic buildings and grounds, a vestry incorporation retreat, or a meeting of the parish finance committee - we are always faced with making a conscious choice about our intentions.

We can forget our true mission - to reconcile the world to Christ - and become distracted by lesser things. We can elevate form or appearance above substance. We can mistake disagreement for dissolution believing that everything is falling apart rather than remembering that all is made new in Christ. If we choose to fall in ancient pits or wander metaphorically into dangerous parts of the woods, we can. We have free will.

But those pathways lead to becoming opaque to the light of the Gospel and blind to the will of the Spirit. When we walk in those ways we will fail to cast out the darkness, within us and around us. Without insufficient light coming through us, and the presence of holy fire within us, we will achieve little of lasting worth.

Or…everything we do as a parish can serve to illuminate minds and warm hearts that have grown cold. Christ is with us. Christ is for us. Christ will come again. We are one because Christ has made us one. Let us respond to this gift by being a gift to others. Let us receive, and then transmit, the light that shines upon us.

I believe that Jesus continues to pray that his disciples will be one, and that he sees us as one already. If Jesus sees us that way, we should see ourselves the same way, and live out the consequences of this unity that is the prayer of Christ.

A clergyman once remarked to Sir John Barbirolli how he wished he could fill his church building the way Sir John and the Halle Orchestra filled every seat of a large concert hall. The conductor replied, "You could, if you had a hundred members who worked together as well as the members of this orchestra."

Or as Ignatius of Antioch wrote:

Form all together one choir,
so that, with the symphony of your feelings
and having all taken the tone of God,
you may sing with one voice to the Father through Jesus Christ,
that He may listen to you and
know you from your chant
as the canticle of His only Son.

Let us be that canticle. Let us proclaim the Gospel in our lives. And let us do it as one body, united in Christ.

AMEN