One of my most profound experience of oneness in God with other believers, came about when I was in Rome, leading a week-long course on female leadership in the Anglican Church. We were sharing in the weekly Eucharist service at the Anglican Centre in Rome. Participants in the course filled the room, as we sat and worshipped in a circle. Women had come from every continent and from many countries with different languages and different expressions of faith. We were invited to say the Lord’s prayer in our own language, and the celebrant then repeated the prayer singing it softly, gently then more strongly, in Maori, as we then joined in, again in our own languages. The power of the Spirit blew around the room that day as we were one with each other in all our glorious diversity and one in the Christ as the Christ was in us. God’s powerful Spirit was blowing through the room.
Jesus’ great prayer, written in John’s gospel (Chs 14-17) is spoken to God, after his last supper with the disciples has finished and they are listening and talking with Jesus. It comes after he has washed the feet of his disciples and after Judas has left and there are only a few short hours left before he is killed. Jesus says to God:
‘The glory you have given me I have given them, so they may be one as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so the world may know you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.’ (John 17:22-23)
There is something about the way Jesus talks about unity, oneness, completeness and trust which upends our thinking about what this means or doesn’t mean for each of us personally and as the body of Christ. For example, I don’t think it means:
· the unity arising from unquestioning obedience and fear of punishment if we disobey; or
· the unity coming from demanding everyone believe exactly the same thing.
To be honest, the certainty to demand compliance with what someone else has determined is ‘right thinking and behaving’ is terrifying; and it always leads to death of the ‘other’ in some guise or form, as we revert to scapegoating when it fails, and authoritarianism and tyranny. Such unity does not lead me to a God of love, of hope and peace. I can’t find God in such a manipulating, controlling, abusive power.
God’s unity, described by Jesus is something much more precious and hopeful. I think it manages to gather up the mystery of God’s love which is poured out in abundance as we experience it as hope, love, compassion, patience, kindness, joy, peace, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. All the fruits of the Spirit in fact.
It is seen in the way we gather in community, offering a warm welcome to all who come, a sense of belonging, accepting the gift of faith. The courage and power of love hold us together in oneness. There are other descriptions, but if we imagine all this being woven together in a unique, distinctive God-filled creation, it draws us always in love into completeness in God, just as God is, in us. Our unity joyfully, expresses the flourishing diversity of God’s creation, knowing all is good, God made it, and in our celebration and joy we find unity as a sacred, healing, restorative whole, always emerging, creating and drawing us in together, even when we disagree, or find how different we are. Such discovery becomes a joy.
In the face of the world’s apparently increasing oppression, violence, hatred and fear arising out of the demand for a controlling power of submission over others and without any difference being recognised or tolerated, we discover it is only God who can change this human dynamic, this human rejection of God’s love and hope. Our capacity to trust God, and know there is love holding us safe within God, as God is within us, means we can be courageous and let go our fear of losing our identity, our personhood, our rights, privileges and entitlements, and we can celebrate instead the unity and oneness of being in God, a truly sacred way of living and dying to the world and to God. We are called to show the way to God peacefully, joyfully, faithfully and lovingly. We do this in God.
Jesus is also, showing his disciples the price of oneness, of unity, as he asks them to accompany him to the cross, to stay the course and to witness to his death and resurrection, to see the glory of God in God’s loving response to the hate of the world. The Christ, who was with God and in God before the foundation of the world, is the Word made flesh as God’s son, now incarnate, living among us, in all creation so ‘the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.’ It is an extraordinary gift of faith and love from God in Christ to all people.
How then do we respond with hope and love? Are we able to let go the world’s demands and work and love and be in love with one another as we are with God? Are you praying about this and living out in your faith, as you abide in love, and love abides in you?
This magnificent prayer by Jesus with God and with his disciples enables us to know beyond all doubt, God is love and God loves us. Hope springs eternal in the face of such a gift. I hope and pray you can let yourself hear the great chorus of heaven and earth, as we sing with voices from every corner of creation of every language, race and tribe, every gender, seen and unseen, heard and unheard in one great statement of love and faith, for all time, to all people in God’s name. Amen. There is no darkness which can put out God’s light.
The Lord be with you.
