The last sentence of today’s gospel reading seems quite ironic in the scope of the world we live in: “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.” One? You mean we are supposed to be one? Right…of course, everyone talks about it; we all have heard those “we are the people, we are one” song lyrics. There is a recent movement called the “One Campaign” in which celebrities such as Brad Pitt urge people to commit themselves to a common cause for justice in the world. Even our money serves as a constant reminder: “One nation under God.” But do we ever truly feel one with anything?

On a universal level, wars ravage nations (often in the name of religion), poverty and disease afflict vast populations, and conflict is more common than concord. Things seem to be scattering in a million different directions, rather than coming together “as one.” We experience such feelings even on a small level. I have spent the past four years at the same high school, and can very truthfully say I have rarely felt “one” with anyone there. Always competing-to get a fraction of a point higher GPA, to raise more money for a certain club, to load up a resume with a laundry list of accomplishments so to ensure I get into a good college-a sense of oneness with anyone else seems most impossible to attain. Yet there it is-Christ imploring us to be one as He as one with the Father. Where do we even begin?

Society consistently focuses on the ways in which we are all so different, rather than how we are alike. This creates some major roadblocks, considering that the most important aspect of feeling one with anyone or anything else is a sense of relation with them. There are threads that connect us as humans, we just have to remember to look for them every once and a while. We often fight these threads, reject them, or pretend they don’t exist. In my English class this year we read Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, in which the central character, Raskolnikov, is a perfect prototype for the existentialist person who truly believes his life has absolutely nothing to do with anyone’s around him; he believes he has complete control and can do anything he wishes without feeling remorse or guilt, including murdering an elderly pawnbroker and her innocent sister. Raskolnikov comes to find throughout the course of the novel that no matter how hard he fights it, he suffers for his crime through mental and physical anguish. It is this suffering that connects him to other humans and eventually pulls him back into the world.

The reading from 1 Peter addresses the idea of suffering, that it is noble and right to suffer as Christians. Just as Christ was made to suffer for our sins, we also suffer for various things. Suffering is one of these threads; a connecting fiber in an otherwise disconnected world. Another is fear. At one point or another, every human fears. Ranging from spiders and snakes to that undiscovered country of death, there are millions upon millions of things to fear-take your pick. Final exams, college, my choice of study, having to get my meningitis shot -just a small inventory of the things I am fearing at the moment. I fear about my role as a Christian; am I doing what I should; could I be doing more? Sometimes fear can be good. It makes the final turnout of an event so much sweeter if you have to overcome a negative anticipation of it first. Regardless of what we fear, we all do it.

What else? Uncertainty and doubt-that’s a big one. In the reading from Ezekial, God tells his people that he will never hide his face from them. Yet, there are times when it does feel like God is hiding his face. When the answer just won’t come, when hardships fall upon us, when the day is long and the night can’t come soon enough-it is only human to wonder if anyone is really listening. And although we feel completely alone at times like this, there are thousands of other people feeling the same thing.

There’s longing. We all long for certain things; for acceptance, for change, for companionship, for that new pair of $700 Chanel high heels so cruelly thrown in our faces in the new issue of “Vogue.” Some in the world long for essentials we easily take for granted: food, water, shelter.

Then there’s the ultimate end-all pulling us together as one: love. Love; the most divine and glorious and magnificent gift that we have received and will ever receive-and it comes directly from God. I’ve had the John 3:16 verse memorized since I was five years old- “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life” -but have not until recently truly contemplated what it means. The world was created in love, and the world is and will continue to be sustained through love. Everything has a root in love. Love demands sacrifices, demands more than we are sometimes willing to give it. God made His sacrifice-the ultimate sacrifice; it is up to us to decide whether we can make our own.

Do you see how the threads are slowly weaving together? All of a sudden, we have more in common with the man in the car behind us who is in such a hurry he feels the need to drive as close to our car as possible, or with the woman who takes our spot in the grocery line because we stopped for a tiny second to look at a magazine. Even the one person we swore we would never understand, swore we would never relate to on even the slightest level-there is something that you share.

So, the challenge before us now is to recognize and overcome our differences in appearance, in thoughts, in our places in society, and focus more on the features that bring us together. It’s not easy, and is certainly not a task that could ever be fully accomplished, but there are a number of things we can do. It does not take grandiose gestures; it is often the most simple of efforts that connect us to others. Smiling at the waitress who appears to have a lot on her mind and in turn gets your order wrong; letting her know that yes, you understand and its okay. Loaning the person who’s dollar gets stuck in the vending machine one of your’s to alleviate the smirks they are receiving for trying to shake the machine. In this church, reaching out your hand at the peace to those beside you whom you may not agree with on everything. It is these moments that create the ripple effect, that cause your actions to extend to countless others, and eventually, come back to you.

In the gospel, Jesus tells His Father, our Father: “[I am asking] on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them.” The fact that, at the end of his life, Christ is pleading for us, not for himself, should be enough in itself to instill a longing in any Christian’s heart to make an attempt to pay attention to his words. Words that transcend the petty differences that come in the way of understanding them. Words for you, words for me, words for us: “Let them be one.”

Amen.