One People. One World. One God of All.

Easter 7A-26
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

In the last moments before his arrest, Jesus looked to heaven and poured out his heart’s deepest desires to God. Jesus prayed that we would love one another across differences. He prayed we would preserve and cherish our God-ordained oneness. He told us we don’t make this unity happen–it already just is.

By contrast, my prayers these days sound more like psalms of lament and complaint. Our Christian siblings gathering today on the National mall in Washington, DC use religion to project their power and domination. People, powers and principalities now champion an anti-gospel and injustice. On the night he was betrayed, Jesus could point to many such betrayers. Yet, Jesus prayed we might awaken to the God-infused unity deep within us, entrust ourselves to it, and live into it.

Jesus prayed we might all be one. The focus is not which one but everyone. We are one with all who suffer. We are one with all those whose voice and vote are being actively erased. We are one across humanity, religions, and wisdom traditions. We are one across cultures, ethnicities, and race. We are one across species, planets, and throughout the cosmos. The 14th century English saint, mystic, and abbes, Julian of Norwich said, “The love of God creates in us such a oneing that when it is truly seen, no person can separate themselves from another person.”

Jesus continues to pray that we might be one with God and each other because this is precisely how the world finally comes into eternal life this day, tonight, and forever.

The setting for Jesus’ prayer was the upper room on Maundy Thursday, and the mood in that room as Jesus spoke to God was heavy and poignant. “He has just said goodbye to his disciples, and every word, deed, and gesture he has offered them is weighted with grief. He has washed their feet, fed them bread and wine, promised them the Holy Spirit, and commanded them to love one another. He has spoken to them with both tenderness and urgency, as if time is running out. Because it is.” (Debie Thomas, That They May Be One, Journey with Jesus, 5/17/20) We can apply this lesson to our own life: “What matters most when time is short is what matters most.”

Jesus’ high priestly prayer in today’s gospel is a kind of commencement address. Jesus prayed that his death and resurrection would be the beginning of zoe ionias, or life eternal (John 17:3). This phrase is notoriously hard to render in English. Unfortunately, the phrase eternal life is often misinterpreted to mean “life in heaven after you die” — as are kingdom of God and its synonym, kingdom of heaven.

But if “eternal life” doesn’t mean “life after death,” what does it mean? Jesus offers us this definition in his prayer to God: “This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom [God has] sent” (John 17:3). So here, “eternal life” means knowing, and knowing means an interactive relationship. In other words, “This is eternal life, to have an interactive relationship with the only true God and with Jesus Christ, his messenger.”

The Greek phrase John uses for “eternal life” literally means “life of the ages,” as opposed, we could say, to “life as people are living it these days.” Eternal life is a life that is full and overflowing centered in an interactive relationship with God and with Jesus. (Brian McLaren, The Secret Message of Jesus, pp. 36-37)

Jesus walked among his betrayers and imparted peace. Forgiveness is the great gift of glory that breaks the endless cycle of vengeance and acrimony. Oneness in Christ leads beside the still waters of belonging and community. By this gift we find resilience in relationship and the ability both to impart strength and to receive strength from one another. Jesus’ prayer issues in a new heaven and a new earth which, even after two thousand years, we have barely begun to comprehend.

Julian of Norwich said of God: “I am the one who makes you to love; I am the one who makes you to long; I am the one, the endless fulfilling of all true desires.” (end quote) We strain for this glory even when it eludes our grasp. The mere pursuit fills our hearts and illumines our lives. We live the good life by living as Jesus lived—the life for which he prayed. Life eternal and abundant, the life of the Father to the Son, the life of the Spirit of our ascended Savior, life in God, now and forever. Amen.

The Human One, Jesus our Lord, let himself be victim to our violence and was raised declaring a message of forgiveness, not vengeance. He let himself be pushed out as an outsider, one of Them, to begin breaking down the barriers of Us and Them. His Father and the Spirit of Truth represent a Oneness that transcends all dualisms. There is no longer Us and Them. There is only Us. This is a brand-new Oneness. A wholly different God. Believing in this God might appear to be atheism to some of our siblings in faith. Yet it is the ancient and always new way which leads to life and the abundance of life.

Somehow, despite Jesus’ prayer, Us vs. Them thinking is so entrenched in me I cannot easily undo it. How can we help one another cultivate Jesus’ life of oneness? Searching through the treasure box of ancient wisdom passed down by generations of faithful followers of Jesus, there are two faith practices I believe are especially helpful today. One such faith practice that seems to be cropping up everywhere is (I think) called contemplative prayer, also known as silent prayer, and/or mindfulness meditation. Christian mystics down through the ages echo the wisdom of many Eastern religions that seek to open the heart to the profound reality of oneness. Silent prayer helps us access the right brain to counteract overemphasis on left brain thinking. In silence we encounter the foundation of life in all life, the soul within all souls which makes us one.

Another essential practice (I think) is solidarity with the most vulnerable. Martin Luther King, Jr. became most dangerous when he opposed the ultimate Us and Them thinking of militarism and launched a Poor People’s Campaign. His mantra succinctly expressed the new logic of Oneness that transcends the old us-against-them thinking. King said “I’m not free until everyone is free. I don’t have enough until everyone has enough.”

Jesus’ prayer opens the way out from suffering wrought by Empire. The word of God is like a lamp to our feet and a light to our path (Psalm 119:105). When he was lifted up, the disciples stood gazing toward heaven, when suddenly, two angles, robed in white, stood by them and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” (Acts 1:11a). Now, as Saint Teresa of Avila (1515–1582) famously said, “Christ has no body but yours, No hands, no feet on earth but yours…” We do God’s work through our hands. Through faithful contemplation and action we become one as Jesus and God are one.