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John 17:20-26
A Sermon for the Seventh Sunday of Easter
The text for today is the famous text for Christian unity: “That they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that may also be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me” (John 17:21).
Probably a million or more sermons are being preached on this text today. What are pastors saying about it? Many probably are saying the church is one, and therefore, the oneness needs to be made visible, and the oneness is to be found in the majority, therefore we need to be with the majority wherever they are said to be.
The lectionary committee puts this text at the culmination of the Easter season because they are invested in church unity, even though there are other texts that are surely more important and could have and should have been put here.
What do we say about efforts for Christian unity?
First, we remember that after Vatican II (1962-65) there was a huge opening of the churches to each other and that lasted about 25 years, but that momentum has since dissipated.
It is commonly said today that the ecumenical movement is in a deep freeze. In an ice age. We don’t know what’s going to happen. Is it over? Is it coming back in this century?
Today we don’t hear much ecumenical news. To be sure, the election of a new pope, Pope Leo XIV, has generated a lot of news and speculation about what kind of pope he will be, but that’s different than news about churches working together on their differences and commonalities as they did after Vatican II.
We should not say that the post-Vatican II ecumenical movement accomplished nothing. Most importantly it got rid of stereotypes and caricatures on both sides.
For example, before Vatican II Protestants often thought that Catholics held that everything the Pope said was infallible. That’s not the way it is. He is only infallible for the Roman Catholic Church when he intends to speak for the whole church on matters of faith and morals and uses the words: “We define.” In Latin, of course.
And there are those who think the whole ecumenical movement was a mistake in the first place. Principally these are people on the evangelical conservative side who look upon efforts toward Christian unity as a sign of the anti-Christ. They sometimes mention Revelation 13:14 which talks about the beast who “deceives those who dwell on earth.”
What is said here is that people are deceived by this anti-Christ because he is so much like Christ, which they think of in terms of doing miracles. As we mention often, there is a big difference between miracle faith and cross-centered faith. That’s what is at stake here.
Revelation 13 is really talking about those who are led astray by miracle-faith.
What about the movement for Christian unity in more modern times beginning in the 1800’s?
Back in 1846 in London there was a meeting called the Evangelical Alliance. At the same time in those years there was the founding of the Red Cross, the founding of the YMCA, the founding of the YWCA, the founding of the anti-slavery movement.
What was going on was really the establishment of new forms of communication like the telegraph and new forms of travel like the steam ship. Since then, there have obviously been vast improvements in communication and transportation. In short, the world had shrunk, and Christians can work together and be in touch with each other more readily. That’s more of a this-worldly matter.
What really is at stake in the ecumenical movement is that it was founded on the lowest common denominator, and that isn’t very useful.
You can see it already in 1925 when they got together after World War I. After the War, the churches started to do things together. In the World Council of Churches, they divided themselves into two working groups, “Faith and Order,” and “Life and Work.” Basically, they said it’s O.K. to disagree about Faith and Order, meaning church structure, but what holds us together is that we work together. They featured their outreach, their good works. Ultimately it fostered the view that Christianity is based on salvation by works.
We shouldn’t be surprised. The basic religion of most people is: The important thing is to be good enough for God. And that means do your best, try harder. It means trying to be as good as you can. That’s the religion today of the Western world, if not the whole world.
It’s terribly amusing when you stop to think of it. When you think of that section in Matthew called the Sermon on the Mount, at the end of the first of those three chapters, Matthew 5:48: “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
It doesn’t say: “Just do the best you can.” It says: “You have to be perfect.”
The second problem with “Just do the best you can” is that, as the saying goes, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Of course, that’s not in the Bible, but it’s a useful saying.
The common religion says: “Whatever is good enough for you is good enough for God.”
That’s very different from what this text in John is saying: “I pray . . . that they may be one, as you and I are one, so that the world may believe.”
What do we say about this?
First of all, it doesn’t say what kind of oneness is meant. Some will say that this oneness means that Christians around the world have to be united in a big structure like the Roman Catholic Church. But the text doesn’t say that.
Second, it’s important to note in John 17 that the oneness is produced by God alone. In John 17:11 it says: “Holy Father, keep them in thy name, which thou hast given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.” The Lord is the one who establishes unity.
Third, oneness is not for the sake of oneness. It’s not the oneness that leads people to believe. This is spelled out in the beginning of this seventeenth chapter where it says: “And this is eternal life, that they know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.”
This oneness of God the Father and the Son, from the Jewish point of view, is blasphemy, and it is summed up in that verse which is key to the whole Gospel of John, John 1:14: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. . . .” The oneness is the oneness that is found here and more directly in 1 John 4:2-3, a section which is in the Johannine tradition which says:
“By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God. This is the spirit of the anti-Christ. . . .”
The oneness between the Father and the Son is the oneness of Jesus Christ coming to us, dying on the cross and rising again. That’s what it’s about.
Luther sums that up remarkably: “The cross alone is our theology.” And Luther is echoing Paul in 1 Corinthians 1:22-25 and 2:2: “ . . . Jews seek signs (miracles) and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified . . . I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”
If you visit Christian churches around the country and around the world, there are crosses all over the place. But the difficulty is that it becomes the cross PLUS something else.
The cross plus a pope, the cross plus a certain kind of bishop, the cross plus congregationalism. In this way they add to the cross and thereby diminish the cross.
Or they’ll say: It’s the cross plus certain things you have to do or certain causes you have to support. The cross plus a certain political or social stance. It’s the cross but also these things.
More commonly among us, it’s the cross plus a certain feeling, or the cross plus a certain kind of good works. That becomes what is necessary and that diminishes the cross and makes it less than all-sufficient.
We have then the great gift of the Gospel which spelled out in this 17th chapter of the Gospel of John which is that the Lord does it. He is the one who brings about his kingdom and makes his church one, and he does it through what he has done through Jesus Christ on the cross and in the resurrection.
Amen