The Gospel isn’t meant to be gulped down on Sunday morning, but gnawed on through the week so it really becomes a part of us. You’ve got to work at it, like a dog with a good bone! Here’s the Gospel for this coming Sunday — the Seventh Sunday of Easter — with food for thought about prayer as an expression of love. Gnaw away!
Seventh Sunday of Easter – John 17:20-26
Jesus prayed for his disciples, and then said:
“I don’t pray for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all may be one, as you, Abba, are in me and I in you; I pray that they may be one in us, so that the world may believe that you sent me. I have given them the glory you gave me that they may be one, as we are one— I in them, you in me— that they may be made perfect in unity.
Then the world will know that you sent me, and that you loved them as you loved me. Abba, I ask that those you gave me may be here with me, so they can see this glory of mine which is your gift to me,because of the love you had for me before the foundation of the world. Righteous One, the world hasn’t known you, but I have; and these people know that you sent me. To them I have revealed your Name, and I will continue to reveal it so that the love you have for me may live in them, just as I may live in them.”
What’s the Backstory?
This passage is the end of what is called the “high priestly prayer” and it comes toward the end of the Farewell Discourse, Jesus’ love letter spoken to his disciples after he washed their feet at the Last Supper and before his arrest. Jesus has just given his friends words of hope, love and perseverance, has told them how to love one another, and that though where Jesus can go they cannot follow, the Spirit will be with them. And then, Jesus ends all of this with a prayer. The prayer has five different petitions. The first three are:
17:1-5: Petition for glorification based on the completion of his work
17:6-10: Petitions for Jesus’ disciples
17:11-19: Petition for the preservation and sanctification of “Christ’s own” in the world.
This passage contains the final two, which are about unity:
17:20-23 – Petition for unity of “Jesus’ own” and
17:24-26 – Petition for the union of “Jesus’ own” with himself.
Immediately after this prayer, in Chapter 18, Jesus goes with his disciples to the garden, where he is arrested.
A few things to chew on:
*Often people talk about prayer as a last resort. “Well, all we can do now is pray” — as if prayer is what you do when there’s nothing physical, nothing tangible, nothing that has any reasonable chance of success left. Yet Jesus ends this passionate soliloquy to the disciples not with a prayer of desperation but with prayer as the ultimate expression of love. The highest thing, the most powerful thing Jesus can do for these people whom he loves and who love him is to commend and entrust them to God. My friend Susan McDonald opened a conference once by saying: “We’re going to pray now … because prayer changes things!” Do you believe that? What do you believe happens when you pray?
*A few years back a friend of mine said at this time of year that she couldn’t wait until we got out of the Gospel of John in the lectionary because “it is *so* hard to plan children’s worship when it’s just basically Jesus monologuing about himself…” That made me laugh because it’s not just children that find passages like this difficult to follow. John (and Paul, too) have a style of writing that if you try to figure it out linearly … well it tends to give me a headache: “they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one…” Huh??? I think passages like this are a reminder that scripture is not an physics textbook. It is a love song or a work of art. Try taking a piece of this passage (like “they may be one, as we are one.” and plug it into Google and hit “Image” … and see what images come up. Some may be absurd, some might be beautiful, some might seem unrelated … but it’s a helpful tool to encounter this passage with a different part of your brain.
Try This:
One of the things I love about this prayer of Jesus is that it is rambling and even a little bit incomprehensible … and that Jesus prayed it out loud. Praying out loud often makes us nervous because we feel like we don’t know how to do it … or we have to get it just right. And yet some of the most powerful prayers I’ve ever experienced have been when people just connected heart to mouth and let fly. This week, each morning, go somewhere you can be by yourself — take a walk or sit on your front stoop — and pray out loud. Just connect heart to mouth and let fly … and see what happens!
Tolerance is not a Christian virtue
“…so that they may be one, as we are one.”
For a long time, the more conservative wing of the church has said the more progressive wing of the church has “made an idol of inclusivity.”
And I think they have a point.
It’s not that inclusivity is bad. It’s that inclusivity is not an end in itself.
Von’s and Ralph’s are inclusive. They’ll let anyone in and take anybody’s money. Inclusivity is not hard.
But what are we including people into? That’s the key!
At All Saints Church, we say one of our core values is “radical inclusion.” We say that “whoever you are and wherever you find yourself on your journey of faith, you are welcome to come to Christ’s table.” That is absolutely true. But I wonder if we realize the cosmic, world-shaking power behind what we are saying?
When we say what we are “including people into” is Christ, that means we are not including people into a world governed by another favorite buzzword — tolerance.
Tolerance means that you can be who you are … over there. And I will be who I am … over here. And we will “tolerate” each other. We will live and let live.
That’s not Christ’s table.
Christ’s table is when we all lay our lives down on the table together. When those lives — in all their starkest reality and incredibly diverse as they are — are mixed up with one another and with the life of Christ. And when we receive in return new life that is a piece of each of those lives and a piece of Christ.
Inclusivity for its own sake is not a Christian virtue.
Tolerance is not a Christian virtue.
Jesus tells us what virtue is in this prayer ‘that they may be one as we (Jesus and God) are one.”
Think about that. Pray about that. Let that wash over you. That all of us are one with the intimacy of the relationship of Christ and Creator. That we are willing to share and give ourselves for one another. That we are willing to see each other fully for who we are. That we are willing to be completely other-directed and dedicated to loving beyond all limits and counting no costs.
That’s the unity Jesus prays for us. Not the cheap unity of a conflict-free, “live and let live but don’t bother one another tolerance.” Not the “we’ll let anyone in the door” inclusivity of Ralph’s or Von’s.
That’s why we claim and aspire to radical inclusion. Radical both in the sense that we are willing to subvert and dismantle the power inequities that turn “inclusive” into “tolerant” … and also in the sense that it gets back to “the root” … which is inclusion based on all of us having equal seat at Christ’s table.
Jesus prays that we will be one in Christ. That means all are not just welcome … all are welcome to meet at the foot of the cross and around the table of Christ. All are welcome to be completely real with one another and to endure all the challenges of loving each other through the conflict that ensues.
All are welcome to not gloss over the differences of diversity but dive deeply into them, knowing that it is only through doing that that we together become the Body of Christ.
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Check out the rest of Sunday’s readings
The Lectionary Page has all of the readings for this Sunday and every
Sunday – click here for this Sunday’s readings.
Collect for Sunday
Pray this throughout the week as you gnaw on this Gospel.
O God, you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph to your kindom in heaven. Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit to strengthen us, and exalt us to that place where our Savior Christ has gone before; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.
