A Sermon Based Upon John 17: 20-26 , NRSV
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin.
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Seventh Sunday of Easter, May 8th, 2016
A classic, tear-jerker, country music song recorded by Hank Williams goes:
“Last night as I lay down to sleep, I heard someone begin to weep.
Then I got up to see, I heard my mother praying for me.”
She was kneeling by her bed and tears of pain were being shed
She said dear God please hear by plea I heard my mother praying for me.
I must admit, I’m not much for tear-jerker, country songs. But these songs can be honest and earthy, having more truth than we want to admit. While it may be more in vogue these days to think of a soccer mom than a praying mother, I still believe there are some praying mothers around. In fact I found one on a Huffington Post blog site recently. She wrote that when you are an elementary school teacher with three children and another on the way, you have to either give to God or go insane. Children will even make an atheist fill the need to pray!
Today’s text is not specifically about praying mothers, but it does offer us a picture of Jesus at prayer, who is the source of all Christian prayer. Think for a moment, why was it important for the early church to have an image of Jesus in prayer? As someone has asked: would you have Jesus talking to you or to know that Jesus is praying for you? It’s not a trick question. The Bible portrays Jesus as our Great Priest, who has ascended into heaven at the Father’s right hand, now interceding for us. But have you ever thought about what kind of prayer Jesus might be praying? You don't have guess. John’s gospel gives us an idea of the concern of Jesus in prayer.
THAT THEY MAY BE ONE
The most obvious concern of Jesus is the unity or oneness of his disciples. Three times in this text, Jesus prays to the Father that ‘they may be one’.
There is certainly a great need for ‘oneness’ among Christ’s disciples and the church. One only has to have been in a church scrabble, or made observation of how many different Christian groups or denominations there are, to realize how needed such a prayer is, and perhaps how unanswered Christ’s prayer has been. What do you think it says about us as churches that we are so fragmented? Are we so hard to get along with? Perhaps you've heard the joke about Simon Peter showing some new arrivals around heaven. He went by one room and the folks were standing, then sitting, then standing. ‘Those are the Lutherans, they like rituals. Next, they went by a room where people where shouting and dancing in the Lord. ‘That’s the Pentecostals, they tend to get a little emotional.’ Then, they go by a room where all are very still and precise. ‘Here we have the Presbyterians’. They go by a few other rooms and then suddenly Peter tells the arrivals to walk softly and be quiet: ‘in this room we’re now passing, we have the Baptists, they think they are the only one’s here.’
Finding unity has never been easy for religious groups who think they have ‘the corner market’ on the truth. As most of you know most denominations have been founded based on differing viewpoints on church doctrines or particular ways of interpreting certain Bible passages. When I was studying Church History in Seminary, I learned that when the great Protestant leaders, Luther, Calvin, and a Zwingli, who lead the much of the great struggle against Roman Catholic corruption, all agreed on the major issues of grace alone, faith alone, Scripture alone, and Christ alone, still were not about to agree when it came to interpreting the meaning of holy communion. Was it Transubstantiation, Consubstantiation, or only Sacrament? We Baptist added another word, Ordinance. Just think, the reason we have Lutherans, Presbyterians, Reformed, all came from differences about how they understood communion.
I'm sure that most of have had some experience with church division, differences, or difficulty. When I was still in my home church there was once a heated discussion about the cemetery. The cemetery committee had decided that it was time to sow grass rather than continue to have sand hauled in. But some people did not want the grass. After a heated discussion, several families who wanted the cemetery to remain sand left the church when they didn't get their way. Our neighbors, one of those who left the church, stand away for 20 or more years, until they got old enough to need a burial plot, and came back in the nick of time.
Churches, especially those who are congregational in polity, can be difficult places to find unity and oneness. When baptist Rick Warren was planting his Church in Saddleback, California, one of the major ways he insured his new church would continue to grow was to have only one church business meeting per year. He said that most baptist churches ruined their unity and growth because of church fights over small matters that powerless people made major stinks over. He wanted to make sure his churched stressed unity over disunity, and togetherness in great purposes, rather than continual disagreements over small matters.
While it is essential for churches to find unity of purpose, Jesus’ concern was not simply about those who already believe getting along, but Jesus’ prayer for unity was ‘in behalf of those who would come to believe’ (17:20). There were many reasons the early church was concerned about unity, but they already understood that without maintaining the integrity of their fellowship and unity, the church would not only flounder, one day the church could fail at its mission and cease to exist. Recently, the importance of unity was made clear to me by a young chair of deacons. I had asked him why a certain member had left the church. They had left because of a difference of opinion over the youth ministry, he told me, moreover they did not agree with the youth leader. He had made mistakes, the deacon admitted, but they wouldn't forgive him, or give him a chance. The youth ministry is thriving now, but he said, I guess they just had to have their way.
MAY THEY ALSO BE IN US
There can be no oneness when Church is only about yourself, only your own wants or opinions. Unity cannot be established only around human need or want. Jesus prays that the church ‘be in’ the Father and Son as they ‘are in each other’.
Here we see that the source of the church’s unity is in the unity and communion which exists between the Father and the Son. The point here is that God’s self provides the foundation for oneness in the church. The people in the church don't have to have uniformity----they don't have to be exactly alike, just as the Father and Son may differ---- but they are one because of their singular purpose and shared desire to be in community together. Unless people have something bigger than their differences, unity will be impossible. Since the Father needs the Son, and the Son depends on the Father, unity becomes a necessity, not a mere option. When our own need of God remains greater than our need to express ourselves, unity will be our common experience.
Years ago, in my first pastorate, I realized the need for finding unity at church. One great story came to me about how a disagreement was once settled over the color of carpet in the Sanctuary. George Smith had built the fine, massive Lutheran style pulpit, but when they were discussing carpet colors, George wanted red, as was customary in Lutheran churches. George had been raised Lutheran before he married Rosie. But after the church went with Blue rather than red, many were amazed that when time came for the members to put down the carpet, George Smith was the first one there with his tools in hand. He was not going to let a small thing like carpet come between him and his relationship with God and his church.
Again, the source of unity is in God himself, not our wants, desires, and not even our own needs. If a church ever hopes to find unity and oneness, this oneness must come from the three in oneness of God. Our relationships with each other must flow from the relational nature and unity of God within himself. Our unity with each other is the proof of our life in him. You only find life in him when you are one with others in him.
AS YOU HAVE LOVED ME
Finally, it should come as no surprise that this hope for unity comes out of the experience of God’s love. This hope of unity is not based upon mere human desire. We are brought together at Christ’s invitation, through his love for us, and his command that we love. As Jesus prayed at the end: “I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them (v. 26).
In his Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis says that it is God’s desire that we come together around the Lord’s table at church, because God wants us to be with “the same neighbor we did not want to be around all week.” (C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, p. 12, as quoted by Earl Palmer, in “The Intimate Gospel, Word Publishers, 1978, p.146). The reason for such a challenge to love, is not just for our own benefit, but it is “so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. (Jn. 17:23 NRS). God desires and even demands, that his disciples have unity, so that God’s love will be known outside of our own family of faith, for the sake of the whole world.
E. Stanley Jones, the great Methodist missionary to India of another generation used to have a favorite saying, “You Belong to Christ; I belong to Christ; we belong to each other.” This is the kind of ‘oneness’ that should flow out of our experience of Christ’s presence, which is an experience that God wants to the world to know. But how will they know; how will the world know what God’s love is like, unless they see and experience in through us? How will your neighbors, my neighbors know that we have God’s love in us, unless they see and hear about our love for each other?
A young man from one the churches I pastored, became a campus minister with Navigators and works on a college campus in Tennessee. He says that many years ago, when he was a student at NC State, involved in a student Bible study, a friend introduced him to another guy who a kind of ‘in-your-face’ Christian. After he met the fellow, named Dan, he really didn’t want him in his nice, quiet Bible study, and he really didn’t want to go and have a ‘coke’ with him, when he asked. But he did it out of courtesy anyway, and he said, meeting with Dan changed his life. It started him on a ‘deeper’ journey of faith that eventually became full time ministry. In the newsletter, he just sent to me, he went on to say that that ‘in-your-face’ fellow name Dan had just died. When that young man attended the memorial service, up on the screen were photos of his life and work with students. There on the screen was a picture of himself and Dan. As he wiped tears sadness and joy from his eyes, then he remembered something Dan taught him, “People don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care!” He thought, as young college student, he would have never learned that great lesson unless he had gone to have a coke with a fellow Christian that he didn’t even like.
That’s why we are called to unity, so that we will learn from each other things we never dreamed , so that we might learn from each other how to care. This is the very kind of lesson that the world still needs to see and learn from us, so that ‘they may know the God who loves and cares for all of us’, not just through Jesus, but now also, through us. Amen.
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