June 2, 2019
Hope Lutheran Church
Rev. Mary Erickson
John 17:20-26
I in Them and You in Me
Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.
The Lakota Sioux have a simple prayer: Mitakuye Oyasin. It means “all my relatives.” The prayer conveys their belief that all things are interconnected. We’re all related. The earth and its creatures, all humans throughout the world – something joins us all together. We have a commonality in our source. We all come from the Great Spirit.
Mitakuye Oyasin – all my relatives. The Lakota thought is strikingly similar with our Christian understanding. St. Francis referred to Brother Sun and Sister Moon. We’re all creatures of our God and king. This relatedness calls us into a deep respect for one another and for all of creation. We all come from the hand of God. We’re all God’s creatures, God’s children.
Our text today from the gospel of John comes from the 17th chapter. The entire chapter is a single prayer. Jesus knows that he’s about to be arrested and killed. This will be his last occasion to be with his disciples. And he takes the opportunity to pray for them. But also, for more than just them. He prays for those who will come after his disciples – in other words, for us!
Jesus’ prayer is a great, all-encompassing prayer. It’s referred to as his High Priestly Prayer. In praying thus, Jesus is acting like Israel’s High Priest. The priest enters the temple to come before the very presence of God on behalf of all the people. This is what Jesus is doing in his prayer. And his prayer has a theme: Unity.
Jesus prays that we may be one. He prays that his followers may be one, in the same way as Jesus and God the Father are one. The source of our unity is rooted in the unity of the Triune God.
Jesus remains one with God the Father. His mind and heart are totally aligned with God’s will and intentions. That unity fuels and directs Jesus’ focus. It’s his center; it grounds him. This deep tap root nourishes his thoughts. It keeps him firmly planted through times of storm and trial.
His unity with the Heavenly Father is his strength. Archimedes famously said, “Give me a place to stand, and a lever long enough, and I will move the world.” Jesus’ unity with the Father was his firm place to stand. It kept him laser-focused on his goal. The cross became his lever. And Jesus did, indeed, move the world. He moved it in a way that could only come from his unity with the Divine Father.
This is the degree of unity Jesus prays for us! He prays, “So that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be completely one.”
It’s interesting that his send-off prayer should be about unity. Perhaps he prayed thus because he knew the track record of his disciples.
• His disciples, who, when the 5000 were hungry said, “send them away, Lord.”
• His disciples, who rebuked the young children when they gathered around Jesus.
• These same disciples, who were amazed that Jesus would dare converse with a Samaritan woman.
• His disciples, who would compete among themselves as to who was the greatest.
No, his disciples didn’t have a stellar record when it came to unity! Jesus prays for unity because he knew that the chief temptation of the church, the living body of Christ, would be to exclude and divide, to sort and segregate.
This has been the chief threat to the church throughout the ages and into our own. The first century church struggled between Jewish and Gentile believers. Until recently, we’ve harbored deep suspicions between Catholics and Protestants. Entire church bodies have blown up over social positions from slavery to human sexuality. Individual congregations have been destroyed by internal power struggles and chronic bickering. And even families, such as my own, have endured strains and struggles through denominational divisions between Missouri Synod, Wisconsin Synod, and ELCA.
Division is in our DNA. There’s the story of Ole, who was marooned on a tiny island. After several years, a passing ship spotted him there. A rescue team was sent. When they pulled ashore, Ole was beside himself with joy. But before they left, Ole wanted to show them how he had been able to fend for himself so successfully on his island. He showed them his house. He showed them his barn and fields. Finally, he pointed out the little church he had built where he worshiped.
After the tour was done, the rescue team noticed another building. It was a little run down. “What’s that building over there?” they asked. “Oh,” Ole said, “That’s where I used to go to church. But I got into an argument and left and swore I’d never go back.”
Division is our proclivity. Division offers us a sense of otherness. It turns the world into Us and Them. Division reduces our broadness of concern. We need only take care of our own. Those other people can take care of their own needs. Division makes our world a smaller place. Our focus narrows. And narrowness begets more narrowness. Like a woodsman who keeps splitting the same log: we keep on cleaving the distance between who is Us and who is Them. And eventually, all that we have left is a pile of splinters.
But Jesus prays, “Mitakuye Oyasin,” all my relatives. Jesus prays that we may be one. He prays that what binds us together may be more cohesive than our world’s divisions.
And there is power in unity! If you’ve ever been to a horse pull, it’s remarkable to watch those animals at work. Draft horses are amazingly powerful. They’re much stronger and more muscular than race horses. A single draft horse can pull an 8000-pound load. That’s four tons!
So…if a single draft horse can pull eight thousand pounds… then a pair of horses should be able to pull twice that, right? 16,000 pounds? Sounds like reasonable math, but it would be wrong! A pair of draft horses can actually pull up to 32,000 pounds – three times the amount of a single horse!
And the power of draft horses gets even more amazing. If a pair of draft horses have worked together as a team – if they’ve trained and pulled together so that they learn how to unify their efforts – they can actually pull 24,000 pounds! FOUR TIMES the amount as a single horse! *
Unity increases our strength and capacity.
Many people feel a sense of unity when engaging in a team sport, like playing on a basketball team. During the intensity of action on the court, the individual players of the team begin to function as a single unit. They anticipate one another’s moves. They know where they need to get to, where to pass the ball, how to set the block. They cease to think about their own selves and focus into a single mind. The more intense the play grows, the more they become one.
That unity of mind is what Jesus prays for. But that unity isn’t just about us. It’s much bigger than just us. Jesus prays, “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us.”
What joins us together in perfect singularity is our unity with the divine godhead. Jesus prays that our hearts and minds may be woven into the very fabric of the Triune God. Jesus invites the Spirit to draw us into the good and gracious will of God. He prays that we might have the heart of God, the mind of God, and the purpose of God. Jesus prays that we will love what God loves. He prays that God’s desires will be our desires.
This spirit of unity drawing together Jesus with God the Father, this is the golden cord binding us with them. Jesus prays, “may they be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one.”
And why? So that the world may come to know the great love of God through Christ Jesus our Lord! So that the world may see and experience it THROUGH US as we are the living heart of God alive in the world today! Our heart beats as one. They beat with the same love with which God has so loved the world!
Mitakuye Oyasin. All my relatives. Amen.
*From an article by Jim Stovall on www.timmaurer.com
