That They May Be One – John 17:1-11
I have no
idea what motivates people to participate in the life of a church or what brings
someone to a place of worship. We are beyond the years of traditional church
attendance and, life in Southern California where I live, simply offers too
much for church attendance to be high on anyone’s Sunday agenda.
An easy answer
may be “God”. And although that may be a general truth, it does not suffice for
even God cannot overcome one’s resistance when one turns one’s back on the
church or for that matter, on God.
However, you
may remember a time in your life when you heard a voice and you unmistakably knew that it was the voice of God. To you it
WAS the voice of God. But you may also remember times when the voices you heard
did not bring you any closer to God; instead they caused confusion and
sometimes lead to emotional distress and spiritual damage.
If you ever felt this way, if you found yourself in a spiritual wilderness, you
were not alone.
May I
comfort you with stories from the Bible: Even in those days there were many
voices. There were followers of the monotheistic and ritualistic Orthodox
Judaism, there were followers of a pantheon of Greek mythological gods and
goddesses, and there were devotees of the military regime of Rome, with its powerful
arm of imperial expansionism. Then there were smaller groups, for example the
Zealots, and the tribal and fertility religions or cults of the lands
surrounding ancient Palestine.
It is against
this backdrop that the voice of Jesus sounded and, little by little, ordinary
folks came under the impression of a message in which they unmistakably recognized the voice of God.
So, do we
still meet God in our worship services? Do we still hear the voice of God in
our churches and our religion? Hearing the call of Christ to gather as
communities is not enough to hold us together. Our history proves that the search
for understanding and fulfillment oftentimes pulls us apart rather than binds
us together. There is great diversity among us and the glue that keeps us
together is sometimes just not strong enough.
As a glue to
keep the community of believers together, Jesus offers a benediction prayer
before he launches his disciples into the world: “Holy Father, protect them in
your name that you have given me, so that
they may be one” (John
17:1-11). No longer students in college, now
ministers of his message, he confirms their eligibility to serve God fully with
their lives. He passes the mantel of responsibility on to them; he caps them in
God’s grace to graduate from mere students of Jesus’ teachings to full participants in God’s works.
Regardless of our understanding of faith or whichever
voices dominate our antennae, we are launched into this world to perform
Christ-like acts of courageous ministry in God’s name. The church may never
regain the place it once had as a prominent force in culture and society. But a
church that hears and responds to God’s voice is a force to reckon with. It
does not lie in numbers, buildings or the size of the annual budget. It lies in
Jesus’ teachings and whether we hear God’s voice in those teachings. – Thank you for reading.