So That They May Be All One

John proclaims the Divine presence of God in Jesus in his very first Gospel with the words: In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God… And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us. And now in (John17:20-26as he announces the end of the physical presence of the incarnation of God in Jesus…he prays for their Oneness with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit: 

  Holy Father, I pray not only for them,
but also for those who will believe in me through their word,  so that they may all be one,
as you, Father, are in me and I in you,
that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me.


Once again John relies on mystical words to “speak” to us in that place the soul reserves for dissecting metaphor and non-verbal images of reality and life itself reside in us. John invites us to close our eyes and picture what being in a relationship with God really feels like. Note, I use the word “picture,” not “understand,” in an effort to prompt our imagination and senses to know the words as a palpable, sensory experience, and know what being in a relationship with God actually feels like, tastes like, and smells like. This is at the essence of our being and what we mean when we say “and the “Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” God fully shared our humanity through Jesus as we through Jesus, fully share in God’s divinity. Anything less than that relationship with God would be reduced to mere acquaintance. 

  It is beautiful to hear Jesus pray for his apostles, not alone in a garden or in the desert but right in their midst. What a great model for prayer he provides us. In John there is no “teach us how to pray,” followed by the Lord’s Prayer, but rather it’s a prayer in which he asks the Father to bless us as we are called to follow him now, as we did while he was on earth, and invest our lives and love in one another as we glorify the Father.

Jesus will no longer be in the world as The Incarnation is coming to an end. Jesus will be ascending to the Father. But we are still in the world and Jesus’ earthly mission is now in our hands. He is counting on us to be his presence to one another in his absence.

What if we imagined that the resurrection of Jesus was just the beginning and not the conclusion of the Gospel and that the promises of the resurrection are, in part, ours to fulfill? This prayer before parting is bitter sweet, after all Jesus is leaving his friends, but in many ways the sorrow of his leaving is replaced by the love he shares with us and we share with one another.

In the Name of the Father from whom we have come and to whom we are going, and to the Son who will show us the way, and to the Holy Spirit, who will give us the ability to follow the way, Amen