What Jesus Really Meant by Christian Unity

What does it look like for Christians to be one? The question comes from a prayer Jesus prays during what we call the Last Supper. He asks that his followers "be one" as he and the Father are one. But what does that actually mean?

Christianity has always carried this idea that Christians should be unified. It doesn't take much looking around to see that unity isn't exactly what defines Christianity today. Some might argue that we're united in a creedal sense, that affirming something like the Nicene Creed is what unity requires. But even that doesn't hold up under much scrutiny.

What if Jesus wasn't picturing unity centered in orthopraxy, right practice, but in ortholatry, right worship? That question came to me during a conversation at last week's Barstool Theology meetup, where we got into worship and the theology behind what we sing. It struck me: what if worship is the way Jesus envisioned Christian oneness all along?

Every church, in every form and expression, includes worship as part of its services. And in that moment of worship, we're doing something Christians have done since the very beginning. I keep coming back to Pliny the Younger's investigation into the early church, where he discovered that one of their defining practices was singing to Jesus as God. Writing to Emperor Trajan around 112 AD, Pliny reported what Christians told him under questioning:

"They were in the habit of meeting on a fixed day before dawn and singing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and of binding themselves by oath, not to some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not to falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so."

From the very beginning, singing has been something all Christians do: an act of reorienting ourselves toward Jesus. In that moment, we're all doing the same thing. Proclaiming His Lordship. Despite whatever religious, political, cultural, racial, or other lines divide us the rest of the time. When we worship, we are one.

And maybe that's what Jesus was talking about.