Acts 16:30: The jailer said to Paul and Silas, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved"?

The answer? "Believe on the Lord Jesus." That was it. "Believe on the Lord Jesus."

One day, my Japanese friend, Dr. Akiyoshi, takes me by train to Nagasaki. It is Memorial Day, 1965 - but not the month of May. Rather, it is a Japanese Memorial Day, only twenty years after the atomic blast which turned a beautiful city into a radioactive junk yard. We sometimes speak of the "brotherhood of man," but all too often the "brotherhood of man" is a replay of Cain and Abel.

By 1965, Nagasaki is rebuilt and once again beautiful ... except the old railroad station. The station was purposely left as a twisted steel and broken stone reminder of what happens when an angry world goes mad! We visit the Peace Museum, with photos and relics from the day a single plane dropped a single bomb with hopes of ending an endless war.

On the train ride home, Dr. Akiyoshi asks me, "As an American, what is your impression of Nagasaki?" My answer comes quickly, "The Coca Cola bottles." I do not have to explain to him because in the museum he showed me two Coke bottles which had fused into one as a result of the intense heat of the blast. Another strong impression is the photo of the shadows. The blast literally caused people to disintegrate into thin air ... leaving nothing but their shadows on a sidewalk.

Turn about being fair play, I ask Dr. Akiyoshi, "As a Japanese, what is your strongest impression of the city?" His answer surprises me. "Kyoki." Since I am a sergeant assigned to the chapel at Hakata Air Base, I know that "kyoki" means "church." Dr. Akiyoshi continues, "What I find so strange is that in Nagasaki there are so many kyoki. Baptist! Methodist! Presbyterian! All Christian - but so many different kyoki." Sometimes I visit these churches. I hear them singing the same songs. I hear them praying the same prayers. But so many kyoki."

Forty-five years later I still marvel at our oddly opposite impressions of Nagasaki. Coke bottles fused into one - and the church of Jesus Christ, splintered into many! Coke bottles ought to come in six packs ... not churches! Perhaps Dr. Akiyoshi would agree that the Church is only a shadow of what Jesus Christ intended her to be! As my friendship with Dr. Akiyoshi grew, we talked often of Christianity. I asked him if he thought he could ever become a Christian. "No," he would tell me. "Too many kyoki."

It was the intention of Jesus, of course, that his followers would be fused by the power of the Holy Spirit, fused into one Body. Listen again to the prayer, paraphrased by Eugene Peterson. It is the Lord's Prayer as we heard it in our Gospel text. "Father, the goal is for all of them (meaning his followers; meaning you and me) all of them to be come one heart and mind. Just as you Father, are in me and I in you, so they may be one heart and mind in us." The reason for our unity is clear: Non-Christians will know the truth about Jesus, as they see the harmony of the Christian Community! And they will know that truth by the way Christians are one. But Dr. Akiyoshi's observation that day in Nagasaki tells us it doesn't take a Bible scientist to know that the Church seems light years from any sort of unity of community!

Pastor Barbara Lundblad is a Lutheran voice who wishes, like most of us wish, that things might be just a bit different. She says, "I give thanks for the Christians who worship in stark simplicity. For those who speak from the heart without benefit of printed words on a page. But I also give thanks for the ancient liturgy of the Roman Catholic Mass, passed down through the centuries, for its mystery, for signs that cannot be reduced to words. I give thanks for Baptists, and Presbyterians, and Congregationalists, for the holiness churches and gospel tabernacles in all their diversity. For high church and low, for incense and 'amens' shouted aloud, for icons lit by candlelight and for bare walls. I give thanks as long as people don't worship their denominations. After all, a denomination is only a language through which we speak of God."

That's a fine analogy by Pastor Lundblad. A denomination is a language which helps people communicate with God and vice-versa. And we need to be tolerant of those who do not speak the same theological language! Probably most of us here this morning wear the Lutheran label. We "speak" Lutheran! Perhaps you would agree that "Lutheran" communicates clearly to us about the grace of God in a way that other Christian tongues might speak less distinctly. But, to be honest, other Christian tongues speak a little more distinctly than we Lutherans about the work of the Holy Spirit. Yet, what holds us together as Christians is that we all confess Jesus Christ as Lord. That is the "oneness" for which Jesus prays. The most important element in all of this is that wonderful fact: we are not saved as the result of the way we speak about God. Amazing Grace! Our salvation comes because Jesus speaks the language of love and forgiveness from the pulpit of his cross. And God continues to speak up for us, through God's Holy Spirit.

The jailer said to Paul and Silas, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved"?

                             The answer? "Believe on the Lord Jesus." That was it. "Believe on the Lord Jesus."

Our latest water bill at Grace proclaims what we already know: we have had a flood of baptisms recently. We are blessed as a congregation to offer the blessing of baptism to so many, including this day - Cody, Kari and Sydney. It's speaks loudly of Christian unity that the word Lutheran does not once get spoken in the baptismal liturgy.

This is a refresher course in Water 101, but a person is baptized, not into a Christian denomination ... but into the Christian faith. Not, "I baptize you in the name of Luther, or Calvin, or the Pope." But rather, "I baptize you in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." When children and adults are baptized at the font of Grace, presumably they will become conversant in the language of Lutheranism. Maybe not. Maybe they'll end up speaking Christ with the accent of another denomination. In the end it really does not matter - as long as they are fluent in Jesus!

How silly we are and how sad it is - those times we love our labels more than we love our Lord, especially so in a world so versed in the vocabulary of hatred and war - resulting in all too many memorial days in all too many lands.

Christian unity is not an option - it is a prayer. How silly, how sad - so many kyoki! One of the most important prayers we pray as Christians begins, "Our Father who art in Heaven." However, as we discussed in our Saturday morning Bible Study, the prayer for unity in the upper room is also and equally, the Lord's Prayer. "Father, the goal is for all of them (meaning his followers; meaning you and me) all of them to become one heart and mind." For Christ's sake, let us pray the buds of Christian unity comes to fruition. After all, if Jesus doesn't have a prayer, who does?