This is Jesus in prayer. A friend of mine calls this the “true
Lord’s Prayer,” not only because it is longer than the “Our
Father” that we all know well, and it is much longer by far.
But it also looks more deeply into the heart of Jesus and
into the life of the Triune God.
Jesus’ prayer for us, quite simply, is that we would be one.
Just as Jesus and his Father are one, so Jesus wants for us
to be one with God and one with one another. It’s a very
simple message, but it’s far from easy.
You may be aware that, besides being Father’s Day, this
is also Trinity Sunday in the life of the Church. The Trinity
is an idea that has baffled simple and brilliant minds for
millennia. Legend has it that Augustine was walking along
the seashore one day, contemplating the Trinity, and
came across a young boy with a seashell that was trying
to scoop up the whole sea in that little seashell and pour
it into a small hole that he’d dug in the sand. Augustine
noticed and said it’s impossible for you to fit the vast and
immense sea into such a small hole. To which the boy
replied that it is equally impossible to understand the
infinite God with the limited capacity of the human mind.
For musician and theologian, Jeremie Begbie, rather
than logic or words, he suggests that music can be
a better way to understand the Trinity, and therefore
to understand the nature of divine love and unity that
the Trinity represents. He noticed that “there is big a
difference between the way we see the world and the way
that we hear the world. In the world that we see, you can’t
have two objects in the same space in the same time and
still see them as different.” For example, “You can’t see
red and yellow in the same space, at the same time, and
still see them as red and yellow. Either one will hide the
other, or they’ll blend together and turn into something
different—orange.”
“In the world that we hear, things are different. We
can hear several notes played at the same time. We
can continue to hear each tone of each note distinctly,
individually. Notes resonate with and enhance each other.”
With a simple chord, you have three notes that you hear
in the same space and time as one chord, yet at the same
time you can still hear distinctly those three different
notes. The notes enhance each other. They color each
other. You move one note up just one interval or down
one interval, and you go from a major to a minor chord.
You change the mood from happy to somber. One chord,
three notes—moving, interacting, united, yet distinct.
This prayer of Jesus paints a picture of an intimate
relationship of a Father and a Son, bound together by
the Spirit of love. A Father who loves his Son, a Son who
loves his Father, each of whom want to share that love
with more and more people outside of that relationship.
Thus, John can say that “God is love, and those who live
in love, live in God” (1 John 4:16).
To continue in that music metaphor, living in love means
living a life that is in the same key as God’s life. That
resonates with it. That harmonizes with it. So what does
that look like? How are we to know whether or not we
are doing that? How can we hear God, in order to be
able to live in step with God’s melody of love in any
given situation?
One more lesson that we can take from music is that
being one does not mean that we are all the same. Not
all the same note. Unity is not uniformity. Just as a chord
has three different notes played in key and in unison,
each of us is meant to be uniquely ourselves, and to be
that in a way that is characterized by and resonates with
God’s love.
Scripture gives us many images and descriptions of what
it looks like to live in love, perhaps none more well known
than Paul’s famous chapter on love in 1 Corinthians. Paul
tells us that living in love means living in a way that is
characterized by patience, by kindness, as opposed to
irritability and arrogance, that living in love is living in a
way that insists on what is best for others, rather than
what is self-serving.
What’s interesting in Paul’s description of love in this
chapter, perhaps the most famous of all chapters on
love in scripture, is that it describes love primarily by
saying what love is not. The ancient church, it seems,
had become tragically well-versed in treating each other
in unloving ways, in unifying around the wrong kinds
of things. We see this in the things about which they
boasted, in the figures or factions of the church that they
aligned themselves with against each other, the jockeying
about who would get the seats and positions of honor,
the arguments about whether certain groups should be
allowed in before conforming to certain human religious
standards. All of this produced division rather than unity
in Christ. Unity existed, but around the wrong things.
Enclaves and silos of unity gathered around economic
status, around race, around ethnicity, talents and
particular gifts over and against other gifts.
I wonder whether and to what extent these kinds of
divisions are still with us today that we’ve inherited. Jesus’
deep prayer for us is that these divisions would dissolve as
we allow the love of God to live within us and among us.
And as we allow that to happen, as we do this, we become
a people through whom God’s love may be amplified and
resound more and more to the people and places in the
world that God loves. As we heard earlier in Isaiah, we are
meant to be a “light to the nations,” a light that reflects the
light of Christ, which “shines in the darkness.”
The way we let our light shine is that we live in love with
God, within and for one another, by practicing love so that
the world God loves may see it in the way we treat each
other. And in doing so, they get a taste of the way, the
truth, and the life of Jesus Christ.
Theologian and missionary, Darrell Guder, points out that
it is the loving character of the church which is at the
center of our faithfulness to God’s purpose and plans for
us. The loving character of the church. “The evidence for
the truth and presence of Jesus Christ in the world is the
visible, observable love of the community for one another.”
If this seems hard, if this seems out of reach—be
encouraged. Before this is a command, it is a prayer.
Jesus prays this for us, for you. This is Jesus’ deep prayer
for each of us and all of us. We are one in Christ. And it is
Jesus Christ who prays this prayer for us, that we would
live in a manner that reflects who we are: children of God,
and therefore siblings in Jesus Christ, joined together in
the Body of Christ.
I remember a time, several years ago, when our two boys
were much smaller than they are now, and they were
arguing. I don’t remember what they were arguing about.
They probably don’t either. Maybe a game. Maybe a toy.
Maybe someone ate the last cookie. But I do remember
the consequence. I remember that Mom and I had
discussed something that we had heard, which is that you
put your two kids in an undershirt for two minutes until
they work it out. So, we did it.
We got one of my big undershirts, when they were
very little. Both of them, one shirt, close quarters, two
minutes, whether they liked it or not. Before long, anger
and irritability began to thaw and melt. Smiles crept up;
laughter burst out. First with them, then with us. And it
just spread.
This may be a parable of how God’s love breaks into our
hearts, breaks down the divisions between us. A parable
of the Kingdom of God, like a small mustard seed that
grows and crowds out all the thorns and the thistles.
It’s been said that “Our union with Christ brings a unity in
Christ that transcends and transforms all disagreements.”
His love alone is sufficient to break through impossible
barriers of unity. Where there is no way, God makes a way.
And so, we join our voices in this great prayer of Jesus.
Amen.