Seventh Sunday of Easter
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Scripture |
John 17:20-26 20“I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one. 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. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, 23 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. 24 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. 25“Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. 26 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.” |
Devotional |
John 17 is Jesus’ prayer to God on the eve of his death. These are not instructions to the community but Jesus’ prayer to God. These verses are often treated as instructions for Christian unity but we shall see then as Jesus’ words to God. Jesus prays that we will be one with God just as he is one with God. “In the prayer, Jesus does not supply pragmatic directions on how to arrive at church unity or how to recognize the face of the “evil One” in the world. Rather, Jesus places the church’s future in the hands of God and invites the church to listen in on that conversation. The church’s future is thus shown to be God’s not ours.” 1 The church’s future is the future of Max and Maxine along with Joe and Josephine as well as you and me. The early Church Fathers referred to the process as deification or divinization. Becoming like God or being one with God, is not an easy concept for us western Christians. Protestants often shutter at the mention of these two words. Is it that difficult for us to accept that a Christian is taken into a relationship of unlimited intimacy with God? John Cassian (360-450) tells us: “This will be the case when every love, every desire, every effort, every undertaking, every thought of ours, everything that we live, that we speak, that we breath, will be God, and when that unity which the Father now has with the Son and which the Son has with the Father will be carried over into our understanding and our mind, so that, just as he loves us with a sincere and pure and indissoluble love, we too may be joined to him with a perpetual and inseparable love and so united with him that whatever we breathe, whatever we understand, whatever we speak, may be God. In him we shall attain, I say, to that end of which we spoke before, which the Lord longed to be fulfilled in us and when he prayed: ‘That all may be one as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they themselves may also be made perfect in unity.' And again: ‘Father, I wish that those whom you have given me may also be with me where I am.’’’ 2 John Cassian changes this from theology to Christian practice. A Christian practice one cannot easily ignore. Do we leave the practice to Max and Maxine and Joe and Josephine or does this become our Christian practice? 1 Gail R. O’Day , The Gospel of John , in The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. IX . p. 798 |