Maintaining God's Unity

We lived for 7 years up in Winthrop Harbor, the Cornerstone of Illinois. Our house was 6 blocks from the Wisconsin border and about 2 miles from the Lake Michigan shoreline. We were maybe 5 miles from the Zion Nuclear Plant. We had several good friends who worked there.

This week I’ve been thinking about a nuclear plant as an analogy for the church. I’ve been reading up on it a bit this week. I got out my old World Book Encyclopedia. And now that I’m an expert nuclear engineer, let me explain it to you. It catches something important about the life of the church.

In the center of a nuclear plant is the reactor, filled with highly processed uranium. If you dig a ton of uranium out of the earth, most of the uranium atoms will be fairly stable, pretty much self-contained, with a nucleus and electrons whizzing around it.

But in a ton of uranium ore there will be scattered a very, very few uranium atoms that are different. They are called U235. And those atoms are highly reactive. They are quick to shoot off an electron here and there. And if another U235 atom gets hit by one of those electrons, it will split and shoot off another of its own. And so if you make a pile of this highly refined uranium, with just U235 in it, an amazing chain reaction can begin, where they all are stimulating each other, creating incredible energy, a nuclear reaction. And when it works right it can produce enough electricity to light thousands of homes and power industries and do all sorts of good things.

But it’s important to be able to turn the reaction off sometimes for repair, and to regulate it to keep at a safe level. So the reactor has rods installed, made of the rare metals, cadmium or boron. And if you slide a cadmium rod into this reaction, it dampens it. It muffles it. The cadmium just absorbs those bouncing electrons and doesn’t give anything back. And the reaction cools.

So if you start the reaction up, it will just feed itself and grow in the energy it produces.

But if you push the rods into the reaction, they will dampen it and slow it down and sometimes intentionally shut it down.

The church is a lot like that. God catches us in pretty rough, unrefined condition, like raw uranium ore, with a lot of gunk that doesn’t accomplish much at all. And he changes us from being dull molecules where the electrons just spin around ourselves all day. He energizes us to be able to reach out in love and stimulate one another to love and good works. In the New Testament book of Hebrews, chapter ten, verse 24, we read, “And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds.”

And when God has done his purifying work in his people, this wonderful reaction starts to happen where we encourage one another and stimulate one another and love flows all through the church and this incredible power is released. You can feel the hum when the reaction is working. And all this incredible power flows through the church and out into the world and does all sorts of good things. And you can just listen to the tone of the buzz on Sunday morning and watch the faces as people greet each other and maybe even hug each other, and ask with real concern, ‘how are you today?’ and you can just feel the warmth begin to flow as the reaction is working.

But there are damper rods in the church, too. They provide an important function in a real nuclear reactor, but in the church, you can’t love too much and in the church they only sap the power and the life and the love.

A few harsh words in the church and this barrier comes up between too people. The chain reaction is blocked. The love stops flowing. Somebody’s feelings are hurt and they pull away, and the reaction slows. Somebody decides they are going to just focus on themselves, so they stop connecting with the others, and the reaction slows. In a nuclear reactor there are only very rare metals that can dampen the reaction. But things that dampen the reaction in church are all too common and cheap. And in our text for this morning the Apostle Paul calls on us to make every effort to keep them from breaking our unity. “Make every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

Our text for this morning is, again, Ephesians 4:1-6. 1 I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.