Prayer: The Vehicle for Christian Unity

I was reading through Thessalonians today and couldn't help but notice how often prayer appeared. Then, like a good college student, my next thought was to context. This brought me to see that prayer has some connection to community, to unity within the church. Ephesians seems to echo this refrain; be unified, love, be peaceful...pray without ceasing. What about the famous Acts 2, the starting point for many a church or christian community? What did the church do? They ate together, they gave to all who had need, and, well, they prayed. It says they went to the temple every day to pray and praise God together.

In fact, what about prayer FOR unity. How important is that? Well, the Lord's Prayer that is so often quoted as the "way to pray", has unity, forgiveness and love throughout. Then, there's Jesus' "prayer" in John 17. One of the few(2,3 maybe) times the Scriptures quote him praying...its saturated in a plea for unity and love for creation and, specifically, for the church. Paul prays for unity and peace in Romans, Timothy, Philippians...forget it, he ends and begins every letter with some form of plea for unity in the church. And, although this post is mainly about Christian scriptures, these themes run the length of the Jewish Bible as well.

I've had the joy of seeing this idea in practice here at New College. At other schools, where the numbers are in the thousands, there may be various clubs for each sect of Christianity. But, here at New College, because the Christians make up about 5-7% of a 800 student population, ecumenicalism is nearly forced (blessed) upon us. In a room full of baptists, pentacostals, presbyterians, catholics, episcopalians, lutherens, methodists, and probably 3-4 more that I'm missing...there is a beautiful union in prayer. Certainly we have different ideas about how God works exactly and how the church is supposed to function, we find in prayer that we actually hold pretty similar beliefs. Whether it's a Hail-Mary, a recited prayer from a hymnal, speaking in tongues, or a simple hallelujah uttered...we're all praying to the same glorious God, needing God's love and desiring that he work in us as the church.

Prayer is the language of ecumenical unity. Might we all pray more and plan less. Might we all embrace eachother. Might we set our eyes on Christ. That difference may be celebrated, but overshadowed by glorious unification. That intellectual dissent would not distort spiritual solidarity.