One of my favorite biblical scholars is Karoline Lewis.  She is one of the hosts of a preaching podcast I listen to, and through listening to her over the years I have found her to be insightful, funny, passionate, and deeply attuned to where the Word of God meets our daily lives.  Lewis is a New Testament scholar whose expertise is especially in the gospel of John.  In fact, her commentary on the Gospel of John is my go-to commentary anytime I am exploring John’s gospel.          

The irony in my deep appreciation for Karoline Lewis is that her passion and love for the gospel of John is almost in equal balance to my dislike for the gospel of John.  Where she finds deep beauty and meaning in John, I often find a jumble of words that are so repetitive and circular that I get lost.  Even when I have prepared a sermon for and studied a passage of John for the entire week, when I get to the moment of holding that gospel book and proclaiming John, I find myself second guessing myself, “Wait.  Didn’t I just read that sentence?  That sounds like what I just said a second ago – did I repeat a line?” 

Today’s gospel from John is a classic example.  We find ourselves at the end of Jesus’ farewell address to the disciples before his crucifixion and death, and within that address, at the end of his high priestly prayer.  In this prayer, Jesus prays several phrases in that typical Johannine circular language, “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us…so that they maybe be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one..”  The good news is that Lewis and other scholars seem to agree that what Jesus is praying in his circular, convoluted way for is unity.  As scholar William Herzog suggests, “What matters most for John is that the experience of the indwelling remains available to the community, for the unity of the Johannine community is based not on dogma but on a communal experience of indwelling that is analogous to the relationship between Jesus and the Father.  This is what the community witnesses to the world.  Their mission is to keep this experience of faith alive in the community, so that they can offer it to a broken and fractured world.”[i]

Now, while unity is a theme we can get our heads around, unity is a practice we seldom live or experience.  Disunity is our lived experience.  One look at the deep, seemingly irreconcilable differences between political positions would be enough for any of us to understand how fantastical unity sounds.  But disunity is not just in the wider world.  Just this week in Discovery Class we were talking about how theological differences around the sacraments are what created the array of denominational differences within the Christian body – the reason why some of us are not welcome at the communion table in other denominations.  And that does not even address the differences of opinion the various churches hold on the role and place of women, LGBTQ members, and people of color.  But the lack of unity gets even closer to home right here at Hickory Neck.  I have long touted the unity of Hickory Neck across political and theological differences.  The unifying symbol of us of gathering together around the table has instilled in me a deep belief that if we can be one in communion, surely unity is possible in the world.  But even I, in the last six months have wondered if external pressures would prove that our unity is not as a strong as I think. 

That is why, for this one time in particular, I am grateful for John’s repetitive circular language.  Jesus’ final words of prayer today are, “I made your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”  As one scholar says, “The last word is love.  Jesus does not call for doctrinal unity, organizational unity, or political unity.  So often, Christ’s prayer for his disciples has been used to sanctify those ends, and even to justify the harsh imposition of artificial unity.  Yet this prayer is for unity that grows out of the love of God, received and shared among his followers, leading to an experience of unity in love between Jesus and his followers, and with the one from whom Christ comes.  In moments of communion, surely the debates about the nature of God and humanity, the questions of whether divine grace or human will is the means of unity, all of these must fade away, leaving only the burning vision of a cross and the words, ‘For God so loved the world…’”[ii]

My fear that the unity I have witnessed at Hickory Neck would unravel was perhaps based on the idea that we could humanly will our unity to stay together.  But John’s gospel today reminds me that the only reason we are not unraveling is not because we have willed our unity, but because the love we have found in Jesus – the same triune love experienced within the three persons of the trinity – is what holds us together.  Jesus’ prayer today is not a prayer for those disciples who heard the prayer.  Jesus’ prayer today was for us – the future generations who would exist only through the love that the divine has given us – that circular, sometimes confusing, but ever convincing love in us and through us.  Our work is in that last part – that love going through us.  The love of Jesus for us in this prayer is not just for us – but is the gift that emanates through us out in the world.  As Lewis says of this prayer, “Jesus is no longer in the world.  The incarnation is over.  Jesus has been resurrected.  He ascended to the Father from whence he came.  But we are still in the world.  Jesus’ works are now in our hands, and Jesus is counting on us to be his presence in the wake of his absence.”[iii]  That charge would be daunting if not for Jesus’ prayer of promise – we can be that presence because the love that was in Jesus is now in us, breathing, transforming, and blessing the world through love.  Amen.

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[i] William R. Herzog, II, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 545.

[ii] Peter J.B. Carman, “Theological Perspective, Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 544.

[iii] Karoline M. Lewis, John:  Fortress Biblical Preaching Commentaries (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 2014),214.