I love those ‘Spot the differences’ puzzles in newspapers and magazines, where there are two pictures side by side, but one has a certain number of missing items or altered detail that you have to find.
I wonder what differences we would spot if we put a picture of the world and a picture of the church side by side? What differences would the world notice between itself and the church?
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus prays to his Father in Heaven that the world would see something different about the church, so that the world would come to believe the Father has sent Jesus as the Saviour. That’s why Jesus prays for his church to be one; to be brought to complete unity. This perfect unity would be starkly different to the world—fragmented, isolated and individualistic. Covid brought a lot of this on, to be sure, as in the main we learnt to live behind screens bunkered down in our homes and offices. But this imposed physical disconnection masked a deeper disconnection—one which has existed from the beginning after Adam and Eve first sinned then tried to hide from God, before blaming one another, the devil and even God himself. Ever since, the great cult of ‘looking after number one’ has innumerable devotees.
The church is not immune from this self-focus, self-interest, self-rule, and self-pleasure of society. Rather than focusing on the common good, some demand their personal preference prevail. The old joke of congregations fighting over the colour of the sanctuary carpet is, sadly, all too real. Many have a consumer attitude towards church, attending worship depending on “what I get out of it.” Rather than freely giving to others, the first thought some children of God have is counting the cost to themselves. Rather than serving others, the focus becomes on serving self. ‘Hypocrite’ is an all too familiar word directed at the church, as saints and sinners struggle with dissent, envy, gossip, slander, bitterness, jealousy, selfishness, a holding of wrongs against one another, and the quest for power and control, which comes from the standpoint of fear, rather than faith. All of these cause deep division and disunity.
How might this relate to us at St Paul’s? If we put two pictures together—one of the world, and of of this congregation—what would be different? What might appear the same?
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus gives us the Good News that the source of true community is found not within us, but rather with him and the Father who in love sends him into the world. Jesus prays first of all for his disciples—“those who you gave me”; but it is a prayer not for them alone. Jesus includes all those who will believe in him through the message of the disciples whom he will send. Together, all who believe—the church—are gifts given by the Father to Jesus.
We have to be given to Jesus because our hearts and our wills are not naturally inclined to follow him. We hear in Psalm 14 that no one seeks the true God but all have turned aside. In Ephesians 2 Paul says we are spiritually dead in our trespasses and sins…unable to come to Jesus ourselves. In 1 Corinthians 2:14 he says that in our natural spiritual state humans do not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but consider them foolishness, and cannot understand them.
Jesus’ prayer reveals that true Christian community comes not from anything we can manufacture, but from the very life and love of the Triune God. The setting of Jesus’ prayer in John 17 is the night on which he was betrayed and handed over to his enemies, deserted by his friends, before being unjustly tried, convicted, and ultimately crucified. This is seen by so many as a failure and worthy of ridicule, yet it is the way both God’s glory and love are shown in the Christ who put himself last and selflessly laid down his life. At the heart of Christian community is the shape of a Cross, by which God reconciled heaven and earth by the precious blood of his Son, whose crucified arms were stretched wide in a loving embrace for all people.
There is no unity without the Cross, and no glory either—which is perhaps why today’s Gospel reading takes us back to Maundy Thursday, even though Ascension Day was marked this week.
But perhaps today’s Gospel reading also features after Jesus’ ascension because our risen and ascended Lord continues to pray these words for his church. In Romans 8 the Apostle Paul says it this way: Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. One of the amazing things about this passage is that Jesus didn’t only pray for his first disciples, but for us today. Jesus also prays for you the words in John 17: “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.”
We tend to speak of ‘our congregation’ but this is God’s church. Here on the corner of Brighton and Jetty road is the local representation of his communion of saints of all times and places. And everyone here is a gift from the Father to Jesus his Son—those next to you in the pew, those sitting behind and before you. Through baptism you now have such a close relationship with the Father in Heaven that it is just as close as Jesus has with the Father—a relationship that is not just to be an individual one, but communal. Jesus continues to pray to his Father that we all would share in the very life of the Father and the Son together, in a reciprocal community relationship of life, love and care is so close that it is just as close as the relationship he has with his Father.
Jesus prayed for the disciples to know a unity that is grounded in the unity of love between Father and Son. Jesus prays, “Father, just as you are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us.” He says it in several different ways, with the repetition making the point “that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me.” This unity has its source in the Triune God who is the initiator and chief actor in his mission to bring reconciling communion.
Although Jesus ascended into heaven, he has not absented himself from us. He is truly everywhere present, as only God can be. He is present here too, at work with the Father and the Holy Spirit, going to work through his life giving word and sacraments to strengthen us in love toward one another and the world. But the life he gives us he calls to work out in love in our relationships with others, so that the blessing and peace that comes from this oneness is not just for us to possess and protect, but share in serving and giving to others, all those who Jesus is working to draw to himself.
“See how they love one another,” was a famous pagan observation of Christians from Roman Empire times. In the end that is not about warm and generous feelings, but about the intentional willingness to discover in each other God’s blessing and put one another first, and care for each other as bearers of God’s grace. Do we see Jesus in every sister and brother we are sitting beside, before, next to? What about those who come and go through the door? What about those who come to Community Care, or the homeless who camp on our doorstep? Don’t we pray for God to bring people here? Could it be that these are the people God is calling us to be Christ to? By the way…there is only one answer to that.
If we looked to each other in this congregation whom God has brought before us as holy bearers of a divine encounter, chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, to know, live in and share the life and mission of the Triune God, how different might the picture of our relationships and our community be?
What differences might we spot? What differences would the world see?
Jesus prayed to his Father: “I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.” The love of God is the only reason why any of us belong to Jesus’ church. It is only because of God’s love for you that you know the Father and have his love through the presence of Jesus.
Only the love of God can reconcile us, restore us, keep us united, and enable us to put the care of his people first, living like the one body God has called us to be, seeing others as gifts to the church from God the Father.
May his love be clearly seen in how we live and love one another, so that the world itself may spot the differences that living in the life of the Triune God brings, come to believe in Jesus, and join with us in seeing his glory in heaven forever. Amen.
