As we have seen in last weekend's events of the inauguration of the President of the United States, when a person stands to deliver an address for an important occasion, he or she often begins with many greetings to those present. "Mr. President, Vice-President, Members of Congress, distinguished guests, my fellow Americans" - and then proceeds. This service is an important occasion, a service of prayer for Christian unity, and you who have come are worthy of being greeted. So, my brothers and sisters, my dear friends, clergy and students and lay ministers, lovers of God and servants of all, fellow Christians, fellow revolutionaries, you are the fellowship of the bold. You have come because you take Jesus at his word. You have come because you believe in old and powerful truths. You have come to affirm by your presence the need for Christian unity. You have come to proclaim your allegiance to Jesus Christ, who said "I am the way, the truth and the life." And you have come because you believe in prayer. This makes you more powerful than any President.

Richard Neibuhr once said, "The great Christian revolutions come not by the discovery of something that was not known before. They happen when someone takes radically something that has always been there." It is not the proclamation of the new and passing that brings about great change in Christians. Rather it is submission to the ancient and the timeless. Is this not true in the last thirty- five years? Think of the great Christian leaders that would come to everyone's mind. Mother Teresa sparked a revolution because she believed in and embodied love and compassion. Martin Luther King, Jr. led great change in our country because he believed in justice and equality for all people. These were not new ideas. They were always there. But when someone believed them radically, revolutions happened. Transformation happened. In short, revelation happened.

When I remember Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King, I am sad for their passing. But then I remember the Catholic and Orthodox thoughts on the communion of saints - that the faithful are still with us even after they die, and perhaps even more so having been freed from their mortal constraints, and I think about the words the saints still whisper today. This was not theology I learned in the Baptist church of my childhood! Even now, every week at my Protestant church, we recite the Apostle's Creed and affirm our belief in the communion of saints, but it took delving into Catholic thought to begin to understand what that meant, and the promise the communion of saints holds and the wonder it inspires. Who in the long line of Christian history sits beside us in the empty chairs tonight?

My Baptist friends from childhood would probably say "no one". Does that mean that the saints are not present with us now? Does it mean that only those who believe in the communion of saints have their spiritual present dwelling with them? No, because whether or not truth is true doesn't depend on our belief in it. Rather what is true determines whether or not our belief is right.

I think of Moses on Mt. Sinai after the exodus, during the giving of the law. While God appeared to Moses on top of the mountain in smoke and flame and quaking earth, the people below fashioned a calf of gold and said, "This is the god who led us out of Egypt." It's almost comical! Moses goes up to the mountain to meet Yahweh, and he does so, and after only a few weeks the people begin their dancing and drinking and idolatry, while the God of the universe and Victor over the Egyptians visibly appears above their heads, they don't believe in him. Did that mean that Yahweh was not the true God, that he wasn't the one responsible for liberation of the Jews? No, it just meant his people were dreadfully wrong, and they were judged. Truth is not determined by our belief. Our belief is judged by what is true.

When God looked down from Mt. Sinai then, what did he see? A small group of disobedient people. When God looks down from heaven now, what does he see? A large group of divided people. Now he looks over a church divided along lines of theology, race and class. Now he looks over a society that says Jesus is only one of many ways, he's not all true, and I'm not so sure I want the life he promises. If the implications of this division and lack of belief weren't so far-reaching, this too would be almost comical. The Lord, The Lord, the Almighty One, is present, while the world dances and drinks and worships idols of money and materialism and sex and self. Jesus has prayed for our unity and called us one, and his people have become content with being split. "Well, that's just the way it is."

Driving home down 16th Street N.W. the other day, I counted at least twelve different churches within about a half-mile of each other on one street — Lutheran, Catholic of the Dominican variety, Presbyterian, Greek Orthodox, Methodist, three different kinds of Baptist and several more. I wondered what kind of insights into God were being lost, what theological truths and spiritual realities they were missing by not being in closer fellowship with one another. I wondered how our city might look different if these churches could learn to work and worship together. I wondered if there were not such division in Christ's body if there might be less poverty and pain in our city. I found myself thinking about Jesus' prayer in John 17. "My prayer is not for these disciples alone, I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that they may all be one, Father, just as you 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. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one. I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."

Who is Jesus praying for? Who does he want to be unified? Those who believe in him, because of the teaching of his disciples, those who believe John's recording of Jesus' words, "I am the way, the truth and the life." That's why this week is the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. It is to pray for the unity of those who believe in Jesus as taught by the Apostles. It is thought the unity of these believers in Jesus that he says the world will know that he was sent by God and that God loves people like he loves his own son.

On a human level, the truth is we are not one. Many miles remain on the road to unity in the body of Christ. But on a spiritual level, the truth is that in Christ, all those who believe in him are indeed already one, bound by the Holy Spirit. The Apostle Paul says in his letter to the Corinthians, "The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one spirit into one body - whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free - and we were all given the one Spirit to drink...Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it." Paul says later in Ephesians, "There is one body and one spirit - just as you were called in one hope when you were called - one Lord, on faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all." All those who believe in Jesus are one on a spiritual level. This is the truth, whether or not we or our traditions or our communities affirm that.

Earlier I addressed you as the "fellowship of the bold". You are that because you recognize the reality that on earth Christ's body is currently divided, and yet that by the Holy Spirit we are indeed one. Therefore you say, "We will work to become one in our fellowship." You are bold to take Jesus at his word, that there is power in the unity of his people. And you are bold to work to that end.

Pursuing Christian unity is not always easy. Not only are there substantive theological issues to understand and navigate, but there are many cultural barriers as well. Even more challenging, our arrogance and ego, thinly veiled by spiritual language, can often keep us divided in the guise of maintaining ecclesiastical purity.

I was asked to speak tonight in part because of my work with The Regeneration Forum. We work hard to bring emerging Christian leaders together across deep difference like tradition, race and class to advance conversations and relationships that will impact the church and the culture. We put out a magazine called re:generation quarterly, facilitate about twenty reading groups around the country, and host an annual national gathering called the Vine. When we bring people together, we don't ask for them to leave their unique gifts and understanding of God at the door so we can have a simple, shallow, lowest common denominator discussion. No, we want people to show up with the richness of who they are and the richness of their tradition so that together we can learn more about God in ways that we wouldn't if we hadn't come into relationship with someone so different. We bring together men and women, black and white and Asian and Hispanic, Catholics Orthodox and all manner of Protestants, homemakers and CEO's, academics and urban activists and throw out the substantive and serious questions and topics of our day, and see what happens. More than interesting content for conversation, we trust that by having time together around issues we all care about, that we will get to know each other, and shape each other. And we hope that in twenty years, after two decades of real and deepening relationship, we might find ourselves working together on who knows what but all the while bearing witness to the reality of the unity of the body of Christ.

I met Ever Horan a year and a half ago, me a Protestant pastor, she a devout Catholic working with George Weigel on a biography of the Pope. Even our first time together we trusted Christ in each other and talked about our differences in our understanding of God, theology and church. She vulnerably told me about her understanding of the Virgin Mary. We talked about the place of tradition and Scripture and the locus of authority. We talked about the Catholic church being the true church, and whether or not Protestants could experience Christ fully. And she taught me about the communion of saints. It was quite an evening, a long and good one!

Eventually, Ever joined the board of The Regeneration Forum, and our friendship has grown. And so has our partnership. I've had a Trappist spiritual director for three years now. He recently asked me to help pull together a group of young Catholics to meet with him and several other Cistercian religious to understand GenX spirituality. I asked Ever to help, and in a couple of weeks, we will go to our first of four meetings over the next year to do just that. Were it not for Ever's willingness to have a true friendship with an Episcopalian with Baptist tendencies, this would not have happened. We believe somehow God will reveal his love to the world through this, just as Christ prayed for.

How do we walk this road to Christian unity? Staring at a road that is marked by real differences and quite a bit of human weakness, how do we step? The word that has come over and over as I was thinking about this occasion is courage.

We must have courage to intentionally pursue true relationship with people with real differences in theology, race and class. It leads to much harder conversation, and much richer lives, a bold witness.

We must have the courage in these relationships to show up with the uniqueness that God has given us, not hiding what we truly think and believe, for then how can God teach through us? And we must have courage to receive God through the uniqueness of what our brothers and sisters truly think and believe, and who he has made them to be.

And how can we do this if we don't have the courage to be humble? It takes a man or a woman with great maturity to not be threatened by challenges to our dearly held understandings that are presented by someone who believes otherwise. But humility enables us to realize that God is bigger than our own understandings, and that he can and often does work powerfully through those with whom I disagree. Humility enables us to learn from all people because the humble person knows that he or she doesn't know everything.

We must have the courage to keep Jesus at the center, especially in a world that doesn't believe Christ and even in Christian churches that often disagree over who he is. When we let go of Jesus, we let go of the power of God.

So have courage to take Jesus at his word. Believe, brothers and sisters, that unity matters, that he has promised that by the unity of his people all the world will know that Jesus was sent by God into the world and loves us. Keep a firm grip on his words, "I am the way, the truth and the life." These words are not a discovery of something that was not known before.

Therefore have the courage to take radically something that was always there. Or rather, have the courage to take radically someone who is always with us and holds us together in love. And may his promises come true and his prayers be answered. May a world that is dancing at the foot of Mt. Sinai see God by his people living together in love.