I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. (John 17:20-21a)
“…that they may all be one.” Remember that Christian folk song we all sang back in the ‘70”s? How did it go? “We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord/And we pray that all unity may one day be restored…And they’ll know we are Christians by our love.” Yup. That was a pretty big hit back in the day. I remember we even sang the Coke-a-Cola jingle: “I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony/I’d like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company…”
Oneness, unity, perfect harmony. These are the things we pray for and find so hard to achieve. Even when Saint John the Evangelist wrote that vexing, poetic, imaginative, frustrating, and inspiring gospel, we Christians weren’t all singing in the same key. Just take a look at any of the New Testament epistles and you’ll see that the early church couldn’t get its act together any better than we can now.
The gospel lesson in the RCL which ends the seven weeks of Easter (John 17:20-26) is part of what Bible scholars call Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer. It’s a long prayer and discourse supposedly given by the Lord on the night before his crucifixion.[i] Jesus knows he’s not going to be around much longer, so he prays that his followers and all who come after them (that would be us) have a spirit of agreement which can bind them together as a witness to the world. I like to think he’s praying we have a transcendental love, a love which unites even when we can’t agree on things. He asks that we have the sort of love the Father has. That’s a love which might not like everything the kids do, but still values them, forgives them, and never breaks the familial bond that unites them.
Unfortunately, we’re so often like a family of siblings standing around the deathbed of a matriarch as she says, “You kids promise me you’ll always stick together.” We wipe the tears from our blubbering eyes and swear, “Yes, Momma! We’ll always look out for one another.” Then, as soon as she takes her last breath, we pull knives on each other over who gets the old lady’s China and silver tea service.
Jesus prays in this prayer that the love of the Father and his own spirit will be in the Church. Notice he doesn’t pray that correct doctrine, perfect liturgical practice, or adherence to a political point of view be present. Just the Father’s love and his spirit. I take this to mean we don’t have to agree on everything. In fact, we don’t even have to like one another. But we do have to love one another. What must be an essential mark of the Church is the open, visible trust that we are a community—diverse and weird as we are—that stresses belonging, forgiveness, and forbearance. We are going to have our differences just as any family does, but we’re never going to deny the holiness of God present in each individual.
In the First Lesson for Easter 7 (Acts 16:16-34) Paul and Silas offer us a demonstration of transcendent love. They did a good deed and got tossed in the clink for it—with open, undressed wounds from a severe beating. The jailer has them in the inmost part of the prison. I’m sure this space was dark, wet, and a virtual petri dish of bacteria. Then the earthquake frees them. The jailer is certain that all his charges have scattered like cockroaches in a flood light. Being an antique Roman, he draws his sword and is ready to off himself when he receives a completely unexpected and totally undeserved act of mercy from our two heroes. I don’t know about you, but I’d say Paul and Silas, who have been unfairly tried, punished, and jailed, would certainly be within their rights to vamoose out of jail and let the guy who stuck them with their bleeding wounds into a pit of mold and fungus disembowel himself. After all, what’s one less minion of a corrupt state? But these boys don’t see a pagan enemy or a police thug. They see a child of God.
What I’ve always liked about this story is verse 35b: “…he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.” I mean, what did he believe in before? Was he a sullen atheist? I get the feeling this guy was a real s.o.b. at work and to his family. When he finally repented after being saved from mandated suicide by an act of love, his whole household rejoiced.
Christians, I think, are people who love in spite of ourselves. We’ll have different tastes, different ideas, and be moved by different things. We’ll argue and fight—sometimes with very good reason. We’ll hate each other’s guts from time to time and invariably disappoint one another. We’ll assume a position of arrogant superiority until the day we finally stand before God in glory and—maybe—find out we were wrong about everything. Wouldn’t that be wild?
But if we don’t all hold hands and share a Coke, we can’t escape being a family, like it or not. If we can keep living in that truth, we just might make an impact.
[i]
Most Bible scholars will agree that there probably wasn’t a stenographer
hanging around taking dictation as Jesus prayed. It’s very likely John’s
invention, composed around the end of the first century of the common era. It
may not be historically accurate to what Jesus said, but it reflects John’s
community’s understanding of what it means to be a Christian.
No comments:
Post a Comment