“The glory that you have given me I have given them, so
that they may be one, as we are one…. — John 17:22
John offers these words as part of Jesus’ prayer before he was
arrested and crucified. If we have ever wondered about unanswered
prayer, then here we have Jesus’ prayer that the church will be one
even as Jesus and God are one, and 2,000 years later it appears that
we are still waiting for God’s answer to that prayer.Not only did the early disciples fight among themselves, but also, there has never been a chapter in church history where the fighting and quarreling has disappeared.
Jesus offered an image of the unity for which he prayed in his own relationship with God. When one examines that image, one is struck by its own seeming contradiction. If God and Jesus are one, why was Jesus allowed to die on the cross?
Because we look back on the cross through the perspective of the resurrection, we may fail to grasp the full power of Jesus’ cry of abandonment reported from the cross. At the same time, perhaps it is in the cross that we see a resolution to the seeming contradiction between
Jesus’ prayer and the continued experience of the conflicted church.
If God and Jesus are one despite the appearance of the contradiction of the cross, then is it possible that there is a unity to the church that also transcends appearances?Jesus suggested that his disciples would see his glory that God had given him out of love. That glory was revealed in the brokenness of the cross. Is the glory of God hidden in the brokenness of the church as well?
Jesus suggested that God’s indwelling in him was like his indwelling in the church. When Jesus was crucified, the disciples, while temporarily running away, came back together to try to understand what had happened.
Some of them, the most vulnerable among them, went to the tomb without a clear understanding of what they were looking for. It was in that frightened, almost desperate, clinging to their Lord that they experienced the resurrection.
The conflicts in the church also cause many to run away but still they gather, and it is often the most vulnerable among us that go to the tomb out of desperation. Yet time and again, we experience the resurrected Christ reconnecting us with each other.Perhaps the answer to Jesus’ prayer must first be experienced among
the faithful as an experience of Christ that transcends all their expectations.
When we have experienced this unity that transcends
all that seeks to separate us, the world may come to believe that,
indeed, Jesus is the Son of God.
EXCERPTED FROM WATER FROM THE ROCK,
A Lectionary Devotional for Cycle C by Stephen McCutchan www.smccutchan.com
