John 17:11b-19 To be one with the other
7 Easter

Some of my deepest insights into Scripture came about only after I became a parent. Now, this is not to say that one has to be a parent in order to understand Scripture in a more profound way. For most people, Scripture gets interpreted for people in the light of human relationships they have, because that is how God very often chooses to reveal Himself to us. And for the last 18 years one of my primary reference points in life has been that of a parent and a wife. So, naturally more often than not I read the Scripture within that context of relationships. For the past few Sundays we have been reading from the last discourse that Jesus gave his disciples just before his crucifixion and death. One may wonder why we should be so caught up with the somber words of Jesus before his death during this glorious Easter season.  The fact is that often death has an uncanny ability to bring back to life forgotten or taken-for-granted words and conversations of our loved ones, and relationships get build, strengthened or broken on the basis of words and conversations shared between people. Our Lord is risen from the dead, but even so he is not with us in quite the same way as he was present physically before his death. And like in most of our relationships, his words, and especially his last discourse begin to make much more sense only after his death and resurrection.

The reference point for Jesus when it came to understanding his relationship with the world and especially with his disciples was always the relationship he had with God, The Father.  And that is the model he has left for us to look at and draw strength from when we navigate our way in the relationship we have with God. I want us to recall some of the verses we have heard all through this Easter season:

Jesus said, “If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

Jesus also passed on the life-giving relationship he had with the Father to his disciples when he told Peter, “Feed my lambs.”

Jesus also said, “I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.”

And if ever we are in doubt of our relationship with God, Jesus said, “On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.”

And last week we read, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love.”

Today we hear Jesus say, “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one… They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth."

One of my dearest friends and mentor told me something when I was in middle school, which I have never forgotten. She said, “If you learn to be friends with your siblings when you are young and together, you will be friends for life. Don’t imagine that you can build relationships with them later on in life, the time is now.” The deep friendship I have with my siblings is what I long for my two girls to share with each other too. Nobody has to tell me that my siblings and I are all very distinctly different from each other. We know that we have differing ideologies, there are many things that we disagree on, spouses that not everyone loves, and often we have lengthy arguments, but at the end of the day, the bond and richness of the relationship we share with each other far outweigh our many differences.

Relationships that don’t challenge us or demand some level of commitment and sacrifice are really no relationships at all. As a daughter, as a sister, as a wife, as a friend, and as a parent I know that it takes plenty of effort, patience, magnanimity, and empathy to nurture a loving relationship with anyone I happen to be in relationship with. There are more than enough times when I cannot see past the presenting difficult situations of differing viewpoints, but there is one commandment that is crystal clear from our Lord,  

“Love one another as I have loved you.” Our call is to love not to judge. This simple enough but very difficult command of our Lord is at the core of his desire and prayer for his disciples, “so that they may be one, as we are one.”

For most parents one of the greatest pains in life is to see their children not developing a relationship with each other. The degree of closeness that siblings share usually determines how they will fare in a crisis, so parents know just how important it is to be united in love. Jesus’ prayer for unity, protection, joy, and sanctification came out of his complete identification and understanding of our human condition. He understands our foolish tendency to drift away from each other because we do not have the patience and the humility to listen and hear each other.  Jesus too experienced a sense of abandonment from His Father, and he was betrayed by his closest friends, and he had plenty of disagreements with his family and friends, but he was very clear about his commitment to love and to forgive. Jesus longs for the same kind of sacrificial love he has for all of us to be shared amongst ourselves.  If you notice, Jesus’ prayer was not that his disciples should know and love Him better; he knew that his love for the disciples was not dependent on their love for him, rather, his prayer was for unity amongst the disciples. Isn’t it interesting that all our fights regardless of which church we belong to are about how much better we know Jesus, or how we just happen to know the true Jesus! No wonder, he had to pray for our sanctification in the truth, and as we all know, sanctification or purifying involves pain.

My dear brothers and sisters, we cannot claim to love and know God if we are unable to go through the painful but purifying process of learning to embrace and love those that are not like us. For that is exactly what Jesus the holy and sinless one did to us, he embraced and loved us sinners. At the core of unity is not “sameness” or uniformity, rather true unity can be realized only in the co-existence of differences. If in our lives we find that all our friends think like us, live like us, eat like us, enjoy the same things like us, and if we find ourselves seeking out only people who will affirm everything we do and say, maybe it is time we ask ourselves if we have truly understood God’s endless grace and his unconditional love for us. Maybe it is time we ask ourselves if we have truly taken the challenge and the risk to love like God. Amen.