05282022 – John 17. 20-26 (Memorial Day Weekend!)
John’s gospel is “hard.”
It is not “an easy” gospel to preach …
In this Gospel, Jesus is praying to the Father.
We “for our parts” are voyeurs. We see. We hear. We lean in, to catch his every word. We “try to listen carefully.”
It is familiar enough “scenario” to most of us. It is Maundy Thursday.
Jesus has just shared a meal with his disciples, he even washed all of their feet, (taking on the role of a servant or of a slave.)
He has also has given them a new cryptic and hard commandment to love as he loves, and told them of his leaving. His departure. His exodus, if you will.
Then he prays.
Boy, does he pray.
In today’s gospel we overhear a portion of his prayer to his Father and our Father.
He prays for his disciples. All of his disciples.
The ones that are seated around him…
And the ones that will yet come to believe in him…and who will yet, one day, follow him.
He prays for us.
This has been called the “high priestly prayer.”
It is only to be found in John’s gospel.
The prayer is directed towards all who will come after him and follow him as his disciples.
If Jesus is praying for our oneness, then he is also recognizing and rejecting the boundaries and differences that divide us.
There are divisions within us, our families, our churches, our nation, our world.
The divsions are many.
We live in a world “full of divisions,” male and female; rich and poor; gay and straight; conservative and liberal; educated and uneducated; young and old.
Sometimes, they are not just divisions but have become oppositions.
These divisions exist not only out there in the world but primarily and first in the human heart.
We project onto our world our fragmented-broken-fractured lives.
Oneness is not about eliminating differences. It aint gonna happen!
It is about accepting that there are differences. It is about love.
Love is the only thing that can ever overcomes division.
Over and over Jesus tells us that.
We need to Love God, love your neighbor, love yourself, love your enemy.
Our love for God, neighbor, self, and enemy reveals our oneness, and the measure of our oneness, our God-like-ness, is love.
That’s how we best project him.
In love there may be differences but there is no division.
Do you remember the church at Corinth?
They had become split and divided, factionalized and broken, into at least four factions.
They had grown up in a culture that taught them to seek supremacy over others.
Yet the apostle Paul appealed to them … to see that despite their varying gifts and opinions, they were all parts of one body with one Lord.
In the strongest language he could find, Paul called Christian love “the greatest” spiritual quality.
He pleaded with the divided Christians to prioritize love, love which “never fails.”
First off and foremost, you are Christian. You are followers of Jesus.
You are baptized in his name. You have been marked with the cross of Christ forever.
Act like it.
Treat one another accordingly.
Be Christ-like.
Differences will always exist, Love will bind you together. Love will hold you fast.