May 5, 2013 | 4:00 p.m.

That They May All Be One

Edwin Estevez
Pastoral Resident, Fourth Presbyterian Church

John 17:20–26

In the life of the church, we are in the season just after Easter and just before Pentecost—the day we celebrate as the day when the early church was born. During this time and beyond, the early disciples were trying to make sense of Jesus as the Christ—as human and divine. They wrote letters, like Luke and Acts, and Paul’s letters to different churches; they wrote accounts and testimonials like the one in John, in which our text is found today. So they recalled some old memories. And one such story they found important to pass on is the story of Jesus’ prayer before he’s betrayed, arrested, tortured, gets the death penalty on a cross, and is buried in a tomb. His final prayer is for their unity, that they may be one. He presses the point: “Just like you and I, Father.” Just like that—in relationship that is mutually loving and giving, in connection that is life-giving and dynamic.

Why was this story shared with us, this prayer of Jesus? Perhaps John is concerned with the current events of his time. Maybe there was infighting, fragmentation, messy separations, and ugly divisions. Maybe there were people that weren’t getting along culturally—Jew versus Gentile. Maybe there were economic divisions—a property owner and a slave. Maybe there were gender and sexuality issues—men and women.

Perhaps John wrote about this because he wanted to say, “Don’t you see—this was Jesus’ last prayer. And it’s a long one because he cared about us; he didn’t want us to live so divided.”

We find ourselves in a similar situation today, don’t we? A world divided, by economics, politics, gender and sexuality, by culture and ethnicity. We divide in emotionally abusive ways, in psychologically traumatic ways, in violent ways.

There are many prayers in the Bible, as you know—wonderful and powerful prayers. But this is one of those prayers that is explicitly directed at the hearer in the days of the early church and the modern reader after the Gutenberg Bible.

In other words, this prayer is for you. And you. And you too. And him. And her. And me. For us. A prayer that in a world divided, and even as divided and fragmented selves, that in God, we might be one.

It tells us a couple of things about God.

First and foremost, faith in the way of Jesus Christ tells us about a God completely uninterested in being the distant clockmaker out there, somewhere over the rainbow, sitting on a throne, moving pieces around the king’s chessboard. We label God, sure. We tell some people they are welcome and others that they are not, in the name of God. We box God up and say God is this or that.

In this evening’s Scripture, Jesus calls God “Father,” and for a long time, the church seemed to express that God could only be Father, dominated by this male imagery, to the exclusion of other imagery in the Bible that compares God to mother and father to the motherless and fatherless, God as founder of God’s people, a Mother with a babe at her breast, or a myriad of other ways. This was done for so long that some, who had a terrible relationship with their father, assumed God had many of the similar characteristics—distant, aloof, away most of the time on business, inaccessible, angry, and even abusive.

But God isn’t interested in the boxes we create or labels we make or the arguments we have over who God is. Instead, God is unrelenting, pursuing us with love, refusing to give up on us even when we have, challenging our comfort and comforting us when we feel too challenged. God surprises us. God meets us in the mess, as we sit there with all the broken pieces in our hands and on the floor. When we have no clue how to put it back together again, God meets us there. God interrupts us.

No, God is not the distant God we imagine or create but the God who in Jesus Christ prayed for us 2,000 years ago. For you. And you. And you. And him and her and your friends and family and even your enemies and neighbors. All of us. That we may all be one. God is concerned. God cares. This is a God for us, not against us, not interested in your demise, destruction, or punishment. This isn’t the fire and brimstone God set against us. No.

This brings us to the second point I want to share this evening: Jesus’ prayer tells us about what God wants to accomplish. Yes, we are a fragmented people. We are divided not just along religion, gender, class, and ethnicity, but also in our being, in our connection to God’s creation, and to God. What God is hoping for, against hope, and pursuing relentlessly in love, with love, through love is that the love that birthed us might bind us together and, in so doing, that we might be made whole, that we might be healed and integrated, that the broken pieces might be put together again. God is at work so that our loneliness would find community, that our hate would find forgiveness, that our pain would find healing, that our broken spirits would find joy, that death would find life, the darkness find light, and that we might be whole, that we might all be one.

Take this moment to pause. To reflect within yourself. You can close your eyes. You can jot down your feelings and thoughts on a piece of paper, as I ask all of us some questions.

What are the divided places in your heart? Where are the painful parts of your life you’d rather forget? What are the areas in which you feel fragmented, a disconnection between what you believe and what you do? Where are the places in your own being and memory that need forgiveness and reconciliation?

Beyond the self, what are the relationships you have or had that need mending, need restoration and healing? What are the ones you need to let go of in order to love more dearly and to have peace?

And even further, where are the places of division and fragmentation in your neighborhood, your community? Where are the places of violence, destruction, and death that need peace, joy, light, and life?

We are called to those places—in our hearts, in our relationships, in our communities—and we are called to be whole, to be one, to cease to self-divide and exclude, to stop our labeling and categorization, to join in Jesus’ prayer and enact its hope—to be one people, divided no longer.

In his book titled Going Public, Michael Gecan tells his stories as a community organizer, someone who enters into broken communities and tries to put the pieces back together again, to help organize people so that as one neighborhood, one community, they can address wrongs and satisfy needs—like clean water, less street violence, more lighting. He writes, “All real living is meeting.” We are always meeting people. If we are present to those encounters, to the other, we will learn their stories, and in those encounters, we will often learn about the ways in which we can help one another be more whole, to be one, to be less fragmented.

The young adults went on retreat to Michigan this weekend, and we discussed relationships—family, friends, and romantic partners—in the context of God’s relationship within God’s self and with us. We clearly saw how interconnected our stories were—the commonalities—but also the ways in which our family patterns shape our identities and even our views of God. Sometimes these stories were joyful and hopeful and other times broken and messy.

As friends, as the family of God, as a church, as followers in the way of Jesus Christ, we are called to these broken places, to be the encouragement and support we need, in physical, emotional, and spiritual ways. We are called to build our communities, to address injustice, to pursue the good of others, even when it costs us something. And in these broken places, Jesus prays for us today even as he prayed 2,000 years ago—that they might all be one. As we come to the table this evening, let us remember that we are called to be one, to participate in the love of God. We are promised that in the broken places, we are not alone and that God puts us back together again, as one people, a community of God, and that we reflect the beauty of God. Amen.