Easter 7 – 2022
John 17:20-26
Marian Free
In the name of God who dwells in us and promises to be with us always. Amen.
During the week I saw a cartoon drawn by someone who goes under the name The Naked Pastor. You may know the writer. This particular cartoon features a number of people holding placards that read: “I believe I am right.” They are marching forwards as if they are part of a protest march and, as they march, they trample over Jesus whose own placard: “I believe in love” lies on the ground beside him.
In the light of the recent General Synod meeting and of the deep divisions within the Anglican Church of Australia, this cartoon captures something of the current zeitgeist and gives us pause for thought. In particular it challenges us to ask – are we marching holding the placards that state our particular view of the Christian faith or are we trying to hold back the tide with placards that read: “I believe in love”?
Who and what is being trampled as we busy ourselves arguing about interpretations of scripture or heatedly defending one or other particular viewpoint? Are our views on same sex marriage, our position on the doctrine of atonement at the centre of the Anglican version of the Christian faith, or is our relationship with God and with one another sets us apart?
As I have said before, today’s reading from John’s gospel can (and has) been used as a tool of abuse. That is there are those who use it to argue that unity is paramount and that therefore anyone who holds differing views from themselves should abandon their positions and capitulate to the opposing position.
“That you may be one as the Father and I are one” is indeed a call for unity, but what sort of unity is Jesus urging?
Our scriptures, written by men who were culturally bound and who were writing for a particular time and place are not consistent and nor are they always helpful when it comes to finding common ground with regard to what we believe or how we interpret the word of God.
Most Christians would recoil at the God-authorised acts of genocide recorded in the books of Numbers and Deuteronomy and very few today would practice polygamy or use the bible to justify slavery. In the New Testament, not only do we have a variety of accounts of the early church (Paul’s letters and the Book of Acts), but we have four gospels each of which present Jesus’ life and teachings in different ways. To give just two examples. There are numerous differences in the retelling of the parable of the talents/pounds in Matthew and Luke (Mt 25:14-30, Lk 19:11-27). The most startling of these is the degree of violence in Luke’s version of the parable in which the king says: “as for these enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them—bring them here and slaughter them in my presence.” In another parable – that of the wedding banquet, the situation is reversed (Mt 22:1-10, Lk 14:15-24) and it is in Matthew’s gospel that: “the king was enraged and sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city.” Fortunately, there do not appear to be Anglicans (of any persuasion) who take seriously the suggestion that those who displease, offend or hurt us should be utterly destroyed or indeed that God is condoning such violence.
We can agree then that wholesale slaughter is not an appropriate Christian response to provocation (unless of course it is in defence of the defenceless). Where we cannot seem to agree relates to the matter of love – in particular whom God loves and from whom God’s love is withheld. Nor can we agree on the limits of love – does love mean loving a person as they as, or loving them only if they conform to those boundaries that have been set around God’s love?
In today’s gospel Jesus prays: “That they may be one as you and I are one.” In order to grasp the meaning of Jesus’ prayer, we have to remember when and to whom Jesus was speaking – or perhaps more importantly – to whom Jesus was not speaking. Jesus was not speaking to the institutional church of his day, nor was he speaking to any one of the sub-groups that existed that within the Judaism of his day. He was speaking to his inner circle of friends with whom he had shared his fears and his hopes and on whom – in just a short while – he would breathe his spirit. Likewise, Jesus is not speaking to the institution of the church today – a church with set formularies and codes of behaviour. At the time at which Jesus was speaking, and even at the time the gospel when was being written, there was no such thing as church – just a smallish group of people who had hoisted their petard to Jesus’ teaching.
Jesus’ prayer does not envisage a structure with rules and restrictions but rather a group of people who, having been touched by his teaching, would seek to replicate the union between himself and the Father, who would open their lives to the indwelling of God and Jesus, and who will endeavour to form relationships with each other that mirror that indwelling.
If we see/hear Jesus’ prayer in that light, we will come to see that seeking unity with God takes precedence over all other aspects of our faith lives and we will come to understand that details such as whom we do or do not marry are trivial in the overall scheme of things. In an ideal world, prioritising union with God would ensure that everything else would fall into its proper place. If we learnt to put love first, we might learn to be less worried about everything else. If we, and all our fellow Christians were less concerned with what we believed and more concerned with loving our brothers and sisters in Christ, the union that we seek with God would be the unity that we would have with one another.
We will not be one, until we, like Jesus are one with the Father. What are we prepared to do to make that happen?
Swallowsrest 