Unity in Christ can feel like a luxury in a world that seems to specialise in division. Wars drag on, election campaigns become verbal battlegrounds, and the cost-of-living crisis leaves many anxious about simply getting through the week.  Into that very real landscape, the readings from Acts 9 and Matthew 19 sound less like distant Bible stories and more like God’s word for right now.
 
Seeing again in a divided world
Saul sets out for Damascus as a man completely certain he’s right, breathing threats and determined to stamp out the “wrong sort” of believers.  It is into that hard certainty that Christ steps, stopping him in his tracks and quite literally knocking the sight out of him so that he can learn to see again.
 
In a time when social media rows, culture wars and even church debates can feel just as fierce, Saul’s journey challenges the comfortable assumption that “my side” must be the holy one. The same risen Christ still meets people whose anger is fuelled by fear, and whose zeal has forgotten love, and calls them into a new, humbler way of seeing.
 
“What then will there be for us?”
Peter’s question in Matthew 19 – “We have left everything and followed you. What then will there be for us?” – sounds almost like a line from a stressed modern disciple juggling work, family, and rising bills.  Jesus does not brush the question aside; he promises both renewal and a new kind of family where the first and the last keep changing places.
 
In a season when many feel they have less to give and more to worry about, that promise matters. God’s kingdom is not built on the confidence of the successful, but on the quiet faithfulness of those who keep showing up, serving neighbours, running warm spaces, foodbanks and debt centres, even when resources feel painfully thin.
 
One body, one hope
This Week of Prayer for Christian Unity carries the theme, “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling.”  It is a reminder that unity is not an optional extra for when life is calm, but a vocation given precisely in a bruised and anxious world.
 
When congregations from different traditions gather to pray together, share soup, or stand side by side in local partnerships, they quietly contradict the louder stories of conflict and mistrust around us.  They say, without fanfare, that the Church belongs to Christ, not to any one tribe, style, or strategy.
 
Incarnational hope in ordinary places
Both Saul and Peter discover that following Jesus does not lift them out of history; it throws them right into the middle of it with new eyes and a new heart. Their conversions are not escapes from the world’s pain, but callings to carry Christ’s reconciling love into real cities, real arguments, and real need.
 
So perhaps this week the invitation is simple and demanding: to ask Christ to interrupt our certainties, soften our judgements, and widen our hearts to brothers and sisters whose worship looks different from ours – and to neighbours whose main concern is not doctrine but dinner.  In a year of tensions, tight budgets, and tired communities, the Church’s quiet, stubborn unity may itself be one of the clearest signs that there is indeed “one hope” big enough for us all.

Revd. Talisker

Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash