Year C Easter VII Acts 16:16-34 John 17:20-26

Jesus prayed for his disciples, and then He said. "I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. . .

Today’s Gospel reading contains the climax and culmination of what is known as the “Farewell Discourse” or “High Priestly Prayer”. In this scene we heard today, John has Jesus and the disciples (minus Judas Iscariot) in the room after the washing of the feet and the last supper. Here, in the longest recorded prayer of Jesus, He prays to the Father, asking that His disciples enjoy the unity shared between the Father and Himself. He prays not only for those in the room with Him, “but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word.”

This Gospel reading speaks of a divine unity. Jesus prays that His followers may be one as He and the Father are One. Reflecting on Jesus’ prayer gives us space to examine what divine unity looks like. This vision of unity is a powerful challenge. In our shared world today, it’s easy to look around and spot disunity. It’s easy to point to the world, seemingly fracturing around us, and see only polarization, inequity, and asymmetry.

We need only turn on the local or global news to be struck by a lack of unity, even among Christians. The damage of division is all too well known on individual and institutional levels. Schisms and separations have become a painful part of the story of the Church these last decades. War and conflict have raged between groups of Christians. Where is the unity prayed for by Jesus? Have we as Christians simply failed to live out this unity imagined in Jesus’ prayer?

Throughout church history, humanity has seen glimpses of this divine unity. Stories are passed down of saints dwelling together in community that is not defined by tolerance or mere acceptance, but by much deeper bonds. To borrow a nautical metaphor, they row together in the same direction, overflowing with God’s love. From a theological perspective, divine unity is not uniformity nor sameness, but rather flows out of right relationship with oneself, others, creation, and God.

It’s interesting to note that Jesus does not command unity. Earlier in John’s Gospel, the new commandment Jesus gives to His disciples is to love one another. This is lived out in the story presented in today’s first reading from Acts.

Paul and Silas have been thrown in jail for exorcising a demon of divinization from a slave girl, abruptly cutting off her owners’ source of income. Paul and Silas are thus beaten and jailed. But then, the story does not become just about escape, but an inverted story of rescue. Paul and Silas are singing hymns and praying into the night. Then, suddenly there is an earthquake, and miraculously, the doors fling open, and the shackles break apart. But instead of fleeing off into the night, Paul and the other prisoners remain.

The jailer, about to kill himself, is stopped by Paul, who calls out letting him know that the prisoners are all still there. This grace that Paul and Silas show to the unnamed jailer is an act of invitational love. Paul does not coerce or threaten the jailer into joining their team or converting to their beliefs. No, he responds with unnatural grace and love. From there, the jailer takes them to his home where they eat together and rejoice, falling into this pattern of early Christian community painted throughout the rest of the book of Acts. God’s unity is not coercive but invitational. In this story, disruptive love comes first, and only then do unity and community follow.

Throughout history, unity has been manufactured by power through coercion, propaganda, and elimination of dissidence. But the unity that is born from God’s love is not about control but about liberation.

The ending of this story of Paul and Silas stands in stark contrast to the story of Peter’s jailbreak just a few chapters earlier in Acts 12. In that story, an angel led Peter out of prison, and Herod subsequently had the jailers executed. Here we see that God’s redemption and liberation are not just for the prisoners, but indeed, the invitation extends even to the jailer.

The jailer’s place in society is complicated, for he carries out the coercive violence of the state against the prisoners, but he is also subject to the violence of the state as seen in his hopelessness when he thinks the prisoners have escaped. On the one hand, he is the oppressor, and yet on the other hand, he is simply caught up in a larger system of oppression. And this reflects the reality of the world around us.

While it would be so much easier to cast each and every person as villain or hero, the world is more complex. We see that God’s unity is not a top-down coercion, but emerges wherever it will. Though our first reading starts off with the liberation of the clearly oppressed slave girl and then the prisoners, even those who stand in for power, oppression, and coercion are included in the invitation of God’s love. It is clear that God’s unity is grounded in love and liberation.

Divine unity is divinely “other”. In other words, the unity that is born from God’s love and liberation is not human unity. It is transcendent. Humans have used tools like empire, invasion, and colonization to force a false unity upon others. Cult leaders have suppressed difference and dissent by molding followers into subordination. Nation-states have waged propaganda and reeducation campaigns to align their citizens to singular visions of power.

God’s unity, divine unity is different from these pictures. But that does not mean that Christians and churches are immune to these very human impulses. We are human. We worry about whether people will like us. We don’t always play nice. We get grumpy. We don’t like to share our toys. We live from two lists: the things that Jesus said that others should follow because we do; and then there are the things that Jesus said to do that we intend to dutifully ignore because they frighten us, or they inconvenience us even as they apply to us.

It is no longer possible to distinguish a Christian from other “nice” people or even some down right “mean” people in the world. The church has struggled with living out the unity of which Jesus speaks for as long as the Church has existed. A huge percentage of the epistles are written because of human differences emerging within the church. Even Peter and Paul have their moments of bickering and disagreement. But there is no forcing divine unity. Christians are not one for the sake of being one but are united in the love of God.

We not yet Fully Human ones were to be gift to the One that makes possible the fullness and the wholeness that we are unable to achieve on our own. God has joined God’s own Creation in the project of creative Love. By grace we have been given a role and yet, it is a complicated model.

“It is the Lord!” was all too soon replaced by a new kind of longing and a new kind of wondering. Hope had died. Hope was Risen. Hope would come again. They heard it. Given the happenings of the past 40 days – they believed it. The question for them – as for us - was what would they do with it? Jesus had the first part answer. Wait for the “clothing.” You don’t do this alone. Wait for the Spirit. Then be witness to all that you have seen – all that you know - all that you will come to know in the Father and in Me.

Soon Pentecost will come where once again the Holy Spirit will remind us that we are dressed in Hope. We are clothed in Christ. Better things are possible.

Come Holy Spirit! Come!

Let us pray:

Let us pray:

Be present, be present to us Lord Jesus, as you were present with your disciples, and be known to us in the community that we share, and in the faces of all we meet. Fill us with Your Spirit. Help us to be one in You. In Jesus Name. Amen.