John 17:20-26
This Sunday, we find ourselves once
again in the murky writing of the gospel of John. I know that the writer of John was going for
a certain language and a certain message but I have to admit that sometimes
when I read this gospel, and especially when I am muddling around in the final
discourse of Jesus, I really just think John needed a good editor. Writing like this is one of the reasons I
hesitate to tell people who are looking for answers to “read the Bible”. Don’t get me wrong, there is a wonderful
theological message here which certainly applies to our Christian
experience. It is just teasing that
message out that is the difficulty.
Just like last week, we need to engage
in some Bible study to figure out this text.
Like a puzzle, this text is not simply going to reveal its meaning to us
on a first reading. Last week we did
some looking at the story in the gospel itself and the story behind the
gospel. Those that were here will
remember that the story in the gospel is that Jesus is preparing for his
death. He is about to go to the garden
of Gethsemane to meet his fate and he is saying goodbye to the disciples. He is offering them final words of comfort
and encouragement.
We remember too, the history behind
the text. The writer of the gospel of
John is part of a community of believers that have been expelled from the
synagogues because of their faith in Christ.
Theirs too, is a community that is going through difficult hardships and
is in need of comfort and encouragement.
All these things continue to be in
play this morning as we look at the text for our reading this week. Today, I think we will look at the reading
verse by verse to try to tease out some meaning for our own lives. You may want to open up that pew Bible to
follow along. We start with verse 20 “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.” We have to look back a few verses to find out
that Jesus is asking God to protect the disciples. He is asking on behalf of those who are there
(the disciples in the story itself) and those who will believe (the community
that John is writing for). He is hoping
that they will form one continuous community of faith and that they will be
protected by God. This makes a lot of
sense as times of stress have a tendency to splinter groups of people and the
disciples in the story, and the early community of John, are certainly in times
of great stress.
If we keep going we read “As you,
Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world
may believe that you have sent me.” This
is the kind of writing that makes me dizzy!
Basically you could say, “let’s be united in faith so that others will
hear the good news of the gospel.” The
people in the gospel and the people the gospel is written for, will be tempted
to succumb to stress and fracture as a community. Jesus doesn’t want that, as the united
community is the best way to show the love of God to the world. That same message keeps repeating line after
line, although the style of writing does not get any clearer.
“The glory that you have given me I
have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one.” Again, united community of faith. “I in them and you in me, that they may
become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and
have loved them even as you have loved me.”
Once more, united community of faith shares the good news and shows
God’s love. And it just keeps going
“Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where
I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the
foundation of the world.” I think we are
getting the picture, believers united in Christ show God’s love.
These last two lines are the end of
Jesus’ final discourse and are some of the final words Jesus offers before his
death in the gospel of John. This is the
summation of his teaching in this gospel, and unfortunately it too is a
maddening muddle of words. “Righteous
Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you
have sent me. I made your name known to
them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me
may be in them, and I in them.” What a
mouthful! We get the idea though; Jesus
is the revelation of God the Father, Jesus comes to make God known, and Jesus
wants us to share the love of God by being united in community.
If we slow down and read the text line
by line then the picture becomes clear.
Jesus is encouraging the disciples to be a community united in
love. It is through this that they will
be able to share the good news (that Jesus is the revelation of God) with the
whole world. Now that’s a good sermon
and it applies just as much to our lives today as it did to the lives of folks
back then.
The call for the modern Christian is
the same as for the first disciples, we need to be a community united in
love. So much of our culture is driven
by division and not unity. I hardly need
to mention the political discourse of our day as I am sure most of you have
already jumped to that conclusion in your minds. But besides the national dialogue, we have
many other isolating factors in our culture.
Many of us spend our days alone at desks, and alone at home. We work all day staring at computer screens
and talk to others only as necessary. We
come home and shut our garage doors and pull down our shades, signaling to our
neighbors that we don’t want to visit.
We watch TV alone and often avoid discussions with even our own family
members. We spend lots of time
“connecting” online, which only serves to isolate us from the people who we are
actually sharing physical space with. We
are living in an isolated, divided culture.
Jesus encourages another way. The call to the life of faith is a call to
community. It is in the community that
this indwelling love of God that Jesus is so busy talking about in the gospel
of John can be known. It is here in the
community that the love of God is shared and becomes a reality in our
lives.
You can’t share this love home alone
with yourself. If you are going to
experience God, you have to experience community. You cannot live a life of faith in a
bubble. You MUST be part of community,
be it here at church or somewhere else in your life, to experience this love
that Jesus is talking about. Jesus is
challenging us to take this idea of one-ness in God literally, and not simply as
a metaphor. We MUST all be together, to
all be ONE in God.
Today we are gathering at the communion
table and this is a wonderful opportunity to be part of that one-ness of
God. Here at the table, we remember that
Jesus is the revelation of God, and that in love, Jesus came to live among us
as one of us. We remember that in love,
Jesus consented to experience the depth of human suffering, even death on a
cross. We connect with the love that
Jesus and God share, by connecting with God and with each other at the
table. Just like the writing in the
gospel of John, there are a lot of layers of meaning when we gather here to
celebrate communion as the community of faith.
In a culture that encourages us to
divide ourselves along lines of race, gender, class, and belief; the unity of
the church can be a challenging message.
Jesus doesn’t tell us to get together with other people that are just
like us, or to isolate ourselves from people who make us comfortable. Rather, Jesus tells us that in order to experience
the love of God, we need to be united in community. It is through the uniting of diverse people
into a community of faith that we will reveal the good news of the gospel. We show God’s love when we live God’s love
together.
We can sum up all that that messy circular
writing in John’s gospel in one simple sentence: Let us strive this day to live
as a united community of faith, so that the love of God, which is revealed in
Jesus Christ, may also be revealed in us.
Amen.
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