John 17:1-11
In John's
chapter 16 Jesus' discourse can be summarized as "final"
instructions. In chapter 17 Jesus is
offering a prayer for His disciples and the future Church before the final
events in chapter 18 begin to unfold. In
this context Jesus is asking the Holy Father to bless His disciples (and not
the world, vs 9b, but those who choose to follow Him) because the world is
going to do what it will do. These
disciples who were gathered with Jesus were going to be soon sent to call
people out of that world and into the fullness of life in Christ, into The
Church; so they were clearly going to need all the help they could get. And surely Jesus did not want His coming
death to be all for nothing!
To begin this enormous task, then, the one thing that
seemed to concern Jesus was not the theology or the doctrines they might share,
or the "talking points" they might use. His primary concern was for the
"unity" of this group - and ultimately the "unity" of the
Church for the sake of future seekers and disciples. Why such concern? Because a fragmented Church is a fragmented
Body and can only produce fragmented, incoherent, and completely subjective messages. When this happens, no one gets it - and as a
result, evangelism as the means of sharing the Good News becomes moot.
Reading several books these past few weeks on
evangelism, it has occurred to me that we are not losing people because of a
lack of "programs" no one wants to do but everyone expects someone to
do, and it is not primarily because of the preacher or the music or the ushers
or the greeters. While it is true these
things (and many others) are indicators of the general condition of life in The
Church, the one thing The Church is lacking overall is our "core
memory". We have forgotten who we
are as a Body. Individually maybe not so
much a problem, but as a Body a huge
and paralyzing problem.
But what is our "core memory"? Israel's "core memory" is the
Exodus and deliverance into the Promised Land.
Part of that "core memory" also includes the Exile which came
because Israel had forgotten its own story.
The people of YHWH had lost their "core memory" and had
forgotten who they were - or had freely surrendered that memory in favor of
abundance, affluent prosperity, and "subjective individualism".
So during the time of Ezra and Nehemiah and the
rebuilding of Jerusalem and the Temple, the people of YHWH sought to regain their
"core memory", learn from their collective mistakes, restore their
relationship to YHWH AND to one another, and move forward once again as a
"priestly nation" - not as a bunch of individual priests. Yet we also notice that by the time of Jesus'
ministry, the religious authorities had somewhat "overcorrected" to
the point of oppression. Religion became
more about rules than about righteousness.
Maybe it is this way today except that during all
the changes over the past centuries before and after the Reformation, the
Church has not so much "overcorrected" as it has
"understated" what discipleship and living in faith are really
about. This is to say, discipleship has
been cast aside in favor of "subjective individualism". While that "personal" component of
faith is necessary and present especially when we read the Scriptures and have
our own times of devotion, "subjective individualism" has led us not
TO the Church but away from fellow disciples.
Faith has become an "every man for
himself" proposition to the exclusion of corporate worship, fellowship
with other disciples, mutual accountability for spiritual growth - AND -
perhaps worst of all, no one is evangelizing because it's "someone
else's" job. Individually it's not
"my" problem. No one is
telling The Story, frankly because
very few know or even care what The
Story is, being much more concerned with their
own story. While this is important, it
is not "core memory" which belongs to the collective Body.
So Jesus' prayer for unity in John is compelling for us in that we are left to wonder if this is
one of those prayers for which the answer was "no". YHWH answers the prayers of the faithful, as
it is written in the Scriptures, and there would be no one more faithful than
Jesus. We are often painfully aware that
sometimes the answer to our prayers is "no", but this is all the more
confusing because clearly the will of Messiah (who is 'in the Father') was that
unity be protected and maintained. Sadly,
unity is probably the furthest thing from our minds - unless by unity we mean
that all must agree with us.
The most poignant speech ever delivered in the US
(in my opinion) was Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address. It was given as the Civil War was beginning
to wind down and about a month before President Lincoln was assassinated. While Mr. Lincoln was clearly talking about
the unity of the nation, his words can easily speak to the state of the Church
in the US as well.
In part Mr. Lincoln said, "Both parties deprecated war, but
one of them would make war rather than let the nation
survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the
war came."
Further he states, "Both read the same Bible and pray to
the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other."
And as a result of
the utter conflict within the whole body of the nation Mr. Lincoln offered
this: "The prayers of both could not
be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own
purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must be that
offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh ... and so [the
Almighty] gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to
those by whom the offense came."
In other words, both were offenders - and both suffered
for it.
The destruction of
disunity during this awful war also affected what was then the Methodist
Episcopal Church, resulting in what became known as the Methodist Episcopal
Church South. Methodist Christians were
willing to part company and tear the Body asunder over the issue of slavery and
states' rights rather than to work more diligently toward that for which Our
Lord prayed. The Church became entirely
too embroiled in national politics to the exclusion of unity in faith - both
trying to convince the other they
were truly following the Lord when, in reality, probably neither were. Not entirely.
Today it is not so
much the issue of slavery to man as much as it is slavery to ourselves and the
sin which envelops us, the sin we have come to embrace individually. Whether we are talking about the sin of
"subjective individualism" in which we create our own personal
doctrines or the sin of inappropriate physical intimacy, we are nevertheless
talking about the collective sin of a Body which would much prefer
"war" (schism) over unity.
This great sin, such as it is, is offensive to our Holy Father and an
affront to everything our Lord and Savior prayed
for.
"And now", in the paraphrased words of Mr. Lincoln in his
Gettysburg Address, "we are engaged
in a great civil war, testing whether [that Body] or any [Body] so conceived
and so dedicated, can long endure."
We are not sure where
we go from here. When Mr. Lincoln
delivered The Gettysburg Address, it seems clear no one knew where to go from
that point. What is equally clear is
that the War was far from over, and thousands more young men would die
needlessly.
It is not so
different today within The Church. Even
in light of Jesus' clear prayer for the unity of His disciples and thus His
Church, there are many who would rather fight over their own ideas and notions
of "rightness" than to agree on the ideals and righteousness of the
Savior of the World. Our "subjective
individualism" is about to choke the life out of the Body of Christ because
we are, individually, more concerned with being "right" than with
being "righteous" - and Christ our Lord will have prayed for nothing.
Yet we know this
cannot be true, for our Lord did not pray in vain, did not die in vain, and was
not resurrected strictly for "subjective individualism". Such was done and such is proclaimed for the
Body that is The Church. Individually we
must draw near so collectively we can work to regain and embrace once again our
"core memory" and lift up our Holy Lord who did not pray for the
"rightness" of what we would choose to believe individually but for
the "righteousness" of the Holy Church. For every time someone withdraws or withholds
or is harmed, the Body is weakened further and the destruction will soon be
complete.
Let His will be done,
now and forever! Let us repent of our
own personal desires and pray fervently for the unity of the Body which is the
Church - for Christ cannot be divided within or against Himself. He is One with the Father; thus we must be
one with each other.
In the name of the
Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen.