John 12: 20-23
“My prayer is not for them alone [meaning the disciples]. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you 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. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— 23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me." I heard these words spoken 6 days ago by a pastor in one of the larger non-denominational, charismatic churches in Madison. We were on retreat together with as part of the Missio cohort with a denominationally and racially diverse group of area pastors. His comment was had come in response to something which Kerri Parker had said. Kerri is the executive director of the Wisconsin Council of Churches and she’s a collaborator with UDTS on the Awaken Dane grant. She had been describing to the group the kinds of partnerships that already exist between some churches and denominations in which they share clergy and recognize one another’s baptism. And this pastor was visibly bewildered, his expression oscillating between incredulity and epiphany.
“Is that happening? Is that possible?”
…
Our remarkable text for this sermon comes from what is known as Jesus’ ‘high priestly prayer’ which comes at the end of the longest block of Jesus’ words in the gospel of John, his farewell discourse.
In our text, we are invited to overhear Jesus’ prayers in the final moments before he is arrested.
In these final words, Jesus prays for those who will believe in him through the message of the disciples. For those who would read and receive John’s gospel, both its first audience and on down through the millenia all the way to us. Uniquely in Scripture, here we encounter Jesus praying for us, revealing to us a prayer that reverberates within the Triune life, a prayer that transcends time, echoing across the generations to meet our ears today, and to grant to our hearts a full measure of joy and hope.
And what is it that Jesus prays for us?
I pray…that all of them may be one, Father, just as you 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.
Jesus prays for unity in later generations of Christian believers.
It may help us to understand what to make of this prayer, to know something of what it meant for John’s first audience to hear it.
According to Raymond Brown this prayer would have had a pretty specific meaning for John’s community.
He suggests that they would hear this prayer as one for unity between what had become, at this point, some decades after the Ascension, two distinct Christian communities: the Johannine community who came to believe through the witness of John, and the Petrine community, who came to believe through the message of Peter and the other apostles, reflected in the Synoptics.
What separated these two groups of Christians? Brown notes some subtle but important differences, both in terms of Christology and ecclesiology. Both held a high Christology, but where we see in Matthew and Luke affirm that Jesus’ birth was miraculous and that he had no human father, and ascriptions to Jesus as King, Lord and Savior, what we don't see in those gospels, but which is pronounced in the gospel of John, is a Jesus who says, “Before Abraham even came into existence, I AM.”
The Johannine community uniquely emphasized the pre-existence of Jesus as the eternal Word. This is something we see clearly in John 1: “In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” It is also repeated elsewhere in the prayer here in John 17. In vs. 5 he prays, “So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.” So John’s community believes it sees something more clearly about who Jesus is than the Petrine community.
According to Brown, they also likely differed from the Petrine Christians who were moving toward more defined ecclesiastical offices and polity—while Johannine Christians emphasized that all Christians were first and foremost disciples, each with the Spirit – an view that tends to call into question moves toward hierarchy.
Additionally, whereas the Petrine Christians emphasized the importance of holding onto the Apostle’s teaching without change, the Johannine community stressed that the Holy Spirit is a teacher who keeps teaching the disciples, and will guide them into all truth, addressing matters that the disciples could not yet bear while Jesus was still with them, according to John 16.
To oversimplify, the Petrine Christians were more committed to tradition whereas the Johannine Christians were more open to new things the Spirit might have to teach them.
My point in spelling out these differences between early Christian communities is not to question their common confession of Jesus as Lord, Savior and Son of God. But, instead, to help us recognize that the differences between Christians in view in John 17, were real and substantial: they touched on important matters of Christology, and on practical ecclesiastical and polity concerns, as well as on matters of what the Spirit was saying to the church in real time.
The differences were real, and they were not unlike those we experience today.
But Jesus prayed for unity.
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A partner in ministry of mine in Madison, Jon Anderson, leads an organization he founded a few years ago called Collaboration Project. Their mission is to foster collaboration between churches the good of the city. He and I have been working closely together for a few years now.
A couple weeks ago, he shared with a group of pastors a dilemma his organization is facing. While they’ve really gained a lot of traction, and built connections with a wide spectrum of the Protestant churches, including engagement with something like 110 different churches: from evangelicals and charismatics to mainline churches, Lutheran, episcopal, UCC, presbyterian. But they’re beginning to encounter increased pressure to draw lines around who can partner with them and who can’t. And that pressure is coming from multiple directions. Some of the churches are pushing for a clear biblical statement of faith. Others have refused be involved so long as there are non-LGBTQ affirming churches or funders in the mix.
The differences are real, deeply felt and painful.
So what are we to make of Jesus’ prayer for unity?
John’s vision was for there to be a clear and compelling contrast between the world and the Jesus community, that they would stand out because of the way they loved one another, because of their uncommon unity.
It’s a beautiful and inspiring vision.
But precious few of our local churches look anything like this. In fact, in large part the folks in the pews on Sundays’ have already sorted themselves out into what we blithely call ‘likeminded’ churches. Recent research has suggested that people increasingly choose their churches based on the dominant politics and social attitudes, rather than based on its theology. Politicization around COVID-19 has exacerbated this, such that a good number of people have left churches because they didn’t like the mask and social distancing policy, one way or the other.
But Jesus prayed for our unity.
Pastors often preach this passage in order to call for unity in their congregation. While, of course, unity in the local church is a good and godly thing, unity for the local church is not what John envisions that Jesus is praying for here. Here Jesus was praying for unity between two groups of Christians who had differences on Christology and polity and different convictions about whether it was more important to stick to the tradition or listen for the fresh words of the Spirit.
Jesus prayed for our unity.
But what can that mean? It’s hard for us to fathom. One person of the Trinity petitions to another person of the Trinity on our behalf!? The eternally begotten Son asks the Father to make us one, as they are one?
Jesus prayed for our unity.
Do you think the Father heard that prayer?
Of course.
What this means is that within the Triune life, there’s a conversation happening about the unity of the church. A swirl of petitioning and a desiring and a working toward unity among those who know Jesus.
What do you suppose Jesus is doing about that desire for unity, now that he sits glorified at the Father’s right hand?
What would it look like if Trinity was already answering Jesus’ prayer in the places where we live?
In my classes I often stress the importance of discerning what God is up to in order to be able to join God in that.
In Jesus’ prayer, we get a pretty good idea of something we ought to watch for God to be doing.
If Jesus prayed for Christian unity, you better believe that it is something the Trinity is actively working toward.
And not just in some vague future-tense. You may be tempted to think of unity merely in eschatological terms. As if unity will be a nice conclusion to the story, but it’s one that really has no major role in the plot because it is simply impossible before Jesus sorts out who is right and wrong on a number of important questions.
But if unity were only a possibility in the eschaton, what sense would it make for Jesus to indicate that unity among believers was meant to bear witness to the world?
No, clearly Jesus’ prayer and John’s vision was for a more immediate and genuinely possible form of unity.
Jesus prays not for an invisible, mystical, future unity, but for a visible, tangible, present one.
When John’s community hears Jesus praying for them to be united with the Petrine community, that’s not a far-off wish. That’s a actual possibility, and one that calls for a certain posture and set of actions.
To be clear, the unity Jesus prays for is not something that we can muster. The sad fact is we can’t just all get along, at least in any way that will be uniquely beautiful and compelling to the watching world.
Unity is a matter for prayer, because it’s ultimately something only God can do. But, and this is good news, it is something God can do.
More than that, friends, it is something our Triune God is doing right now, for those that have eyes to see it.
“I’ve never been a part of a group like this,” said one of the other fellows participating in our Missio Madison retreat last week. She was a lay pastor who had served as an interim for several UCC and United Methodist congregations in and around Madison.
When she said it, the room was full of nods from others who could say the same thing. During the retreat, we took turns sharing stories about how we’d experienced God. We’d heard little testimonies from a conservative Baptist leading a couple house churches, a charismatic Latina in a bi-lingual congregation, an older African American man leading recovery ministry in a non-denominational church, a younger African American guy leading a progressive Presbyterian campus ministry, a white female ELCA associate pastor who started a food truck ministry, a white female arts pastor in a large mostly white charismatic church, and a white woman connected to the largest church in Madison who did consulting with non-profits.
Later, one of the women shared that although the stories were really different than her own experiences and came from different traditions, she was able to resonate with at least one part of each person’s testimony.
These are relationships that the Spirit is knitting together through kinship in Christ and partnership in the gospel in a geographical area, and they’re glimpses of the Trinity answering Jesus’ prayer.
In addition to anecdotes like these, I’m convinced there are seismic shifts happening that are paving the way for uncommon unity among believers. Let me quickly call four to your attention.
One is the shifting religious demographics of the nation which are making the old divisions upon which denominations defined themselves in opposition to one another increasingly irrelevant in the light of the greater contrast between all people of genuine Christian faith and the rest of the population which is increasingly secular and into self-help spiritualities.
A second shift paving the way to unity is how the practical crises facing many of our denominations and churches—financial pressures, old building and empty pulpits--are turning us toward one another out of necessity for support, cooperation, collaboration and sharing.
hird, is the profound sense I’ve heard from numerous people that God is softening up hearts, stoking curiosity and generousity and forgiveness. Turning us toward one another with a fresh willingness to know one another as we truly are, and to discover together whether the church might actually, by the miraculous work of God, provide a refuge from the virulent polarization that has enveloped our society.
Finally, as a result of these and other factors, there have been over the last decade and a half the emergence of dozens of new networks of churches, organizations like Collaboration Project, in cities across the nation that are blowing fresh wind into ecumenism through opportunities to unite in service to the community.
Jesus prayed for our unity and the Father heard that prayer, and now Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father, and has sent the Spirit to empower us to join in God’s answer to this prayer.
So what might it look like for us to be involved in the Triune campaign for unity among believers in Jesus?
First and foremost, and this is no small thing: We join Jesus’ prayer.
Mission is, by definition, joining God’s action and here we see that God’s action is praying for unity. So praying for unity among believers in your place is a form of mission. We’ll all have an opportunity to do precisely this in just a moment.
Second, you can take a small step toward relationship with those across denominational lines in your local setting. Invite them for coffee or a meal. Ask about their families and their hobbies, not just their church. Share with them some of your story and how you’ve come to know and love Jesus.
Now, your Presbytery or your District Superintendent might not agree, but my advice is to invest at least as much time into relationships with the other pastors in your immediate area as you do in your Presbytery or District. Why? Well, for one reason, unity in a Presbytery or a Conference isn’t going to raise one single eyebrow. But unity between the 5 churches in town, or the 4 churches in your urban neighborhood who don’t look or vote the same, now that’s something to wonder about. Unity in the local setting makes a powerful Christian witness.
Third, and finally, once some trust and respect and kinship has developed, look for ways to make common cause together in serving your community. In Madison, Collaboration Project is helping to coordinate an annual weekend of service that invites dozens of churches to serve their local school or park or non-profit alongside folks from other churches – and concluding with a time of celebration.
In my work in Madison, it’s been increasingly clear how many pastors and Christians are ready for a new season of ecumenical friendship and collaboration across the old divides. They want to be able to say: “I’ve never been part of a group like this.”
Maybe you do, too. Igniting that desire is a work of God’s Spirit.
“Is that happening, is that possible?”
Well, Jesus prayed for it, so you better believe it.
