John 17:20-26

We continue through the Gospel of John.

In the 17th chapter, we said it every day.

Now, this is a long, the longest prayer

offered by Jesus yesterday.

We saw in the middle of the prayer Jesus, pray for the disciples.

That takes, I think, another fascinating turn today.

So let me just jump in here at verse 20 and read through the end of the chapter.

We'll come back and try to unpack this.

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.

As you, father, are in me, and I am in you.

May they also be in us, so that the world may believe

that you have sent me the glory that you have given me.

I have given them so that they may be one as we are one,

I in them, and you in me, that they may become completely one,

so that the world may know that you have sent me

and have loved them, even as I have loved, even as you have loved me.

Father, I desire that those also whom you have given me,

they may be with me, where that I may be with me where I am,

to see my glory which you have given me, because you loved me before.

The foundation of the world.

Righteous father, the world does not know you,

but I know you,

and these know that you have sent me.

I made your name known to them, and I will make it known

so that the love with which you have loved me

may be in them, and I in them.

So again,

A lot of repetition

in the way that John records the words of Jesus.

But don't let that lead us to miss the

I think the pivotal moment here in verse 20 that Jesus prays

not only for the disciples, but in, in anticipation

of those who will come into the faith

through their testimony.

This is remarkably far sighted for Jesus.

Remember that we've been telling you, we we have suggested that John is

perhaps the latest written of the four Gospels.

And so John reflects a time in which the church is growing.

And here we have voiced in Jesus words a prayer for the work

the disciples will do and the work that will live after them

in those who have not even yet come into the faith, come into the church.

And, this I think, Michael, this says a lot about John,

about what John imagines the work of the gospel

to be the work of the community, to be the

the idea that the church will always,

in every generation, be handing the baton to the next generation of the faith

to continue that work, to evaluate and improve that work.

And it would be, I think, very difficult to miss in the middle part

of this passage, the word one, it shows up when you felt like a dozen times.

I'm sure it isn't.

But the idea of unity that we who come

centuries later, are one with those disciples,

are one with that first generation of church that there is a a unification

of all believers in the one

Christ, in the one work of Christ, and in the one kingdom.

This is I, I don't.

We said this a little bit yesterday.

In the Gospels I don't know of much like this.

You find some of this may be in Paul and other parts of the New Testament,

but this is a really interesting moment, I think.

Well, and Clint, I would even argue here that to the people

who say that Jesus never imagined that there would be a church,

this is in direct contradiction to that, that when we talk about

Jesus, his teachings,

often we see and we've already seen this in this book,

how many times Jesus is in conflict with the Jewish religious leaders?

Jewish Jesus finds himself in conflict

with them because of the similarities Jesus is teaching.

He's going to synagogue. He's doing all these things.

So the conflict that Jesus is having is because these teachers

feel that they can approach him, and that they can have a debate with him.

In this passage, Jesus is not external in that way.

He's not looking to the Jewish community.

He's not looking to have some argument with those who misunderstand the gospel.

This prayer is, at its core, I think, a deeply

wholehearted connection between Jesus and the father.

And we get to over here to Jesus's heart and concern

for the church that is going to come for believers, for those

who are going to hear the witness of the first generation of Christians.

And I you've mentioned and I think it bears repeating,

that the emphasis that Jesus has at the very start

is so important that they may be one at the beginning.

Here, verse 21 is the absolute linchpin of this prayer,

and the oneness is later given,

another voice through this idea of love

and the idea of connection, the idea of relatedness.

John relates Jesus's prayer

in such a way that we, future disciples, would know

that Jesus was aware of how hard oneness would be,

that Jesus, in fact, prayed for our oneness, that Jesus understood

how difficult and complicated Christian community would be.

Jesus knew it, and he prayed for us ahead of time.

I think it would be easy to pass over this that Jesus

looked ahead and saw, even in his earthly ministry,

the everyday face that we're trying, trying to live today.

He understood that it would require something for people

who didn't see his miracles with our own eyes

to come into the community of faith, to be handed the baton

as you use that word, and then to seek to live in such a community

that would reflect the living Spirit of Christ in the world in which we live.

Jesus understood that.

And so I think that it should give us some measure of comfort and hope,

and maybe even give us some measure

of self understanding as to when we lean into this community,

how it is going to require work of us, because at the end of the day,

Jesus

uses this oneness that he has with the father as a descriptor

of what the oneness of the church should look like.

And Clint, I don't know how you could be a Christian

and say that we have unequivocally rose to that challenge.

Christians have sought unity and we've always struggled to hold on to it.

It's been an ephemeral reality, both in the meta sense,

you know, throughout the major movements of history.

But even in in smaller, more tangible communities, the church is hard work.

And Jesus has some, comforting words for us

and a prayer on our behalf as we seek to do that.

I think there are two things that come to mind in that regard, Michael.

And for me, they work backwards from the text.

And the first is here in the late verses

2526, Righteous Father, the world does not know you,

but I know you, and these know

that you have sent me, and I made my name.

I made your name known to them.

I think that's an interesting.

Reference or maybe a

an interesting example to this idea that we hold on to

and always have in the church that Jesus is the go between the moderator.

The world doesn't know you, but I've shown you to those who follow me.

I've shown you to the disciple.

They are going to show you to the world

by showing the world me, the the living one, the Savior.

And so the first thing I think we have to understand as we come to

that idea of oneness, is that we know

God through Jesus Christ, that

it's not as though we we are called by God.

We, they, the world doesn't know you, but they know you sent me.

And so that unity, then that oneness has to be found in Jesus Christ.

And so often where we've broken down in unity has to do with

doctrine or practices or, you know, you use a guitar

and we use an organ or you you let women teach class and we don't.

And, yes, all of those things are

within the envelope of faith or the umbrella of faith,

but true unity, our true oneness

is not found in our practice, not found in our doctrine.

It's found in Jesus Christ.

And those who are called to him and through him

see God the Father and glorify him.

And, I just we yeah, that's a tough.

It's a tough knock against the church

because we've struggled with it so often, and we've not,

of all the things the world knows about the church,

unity is, is generally not one of them.

And so I there is certainly a note of conviction

in some of this, I think, for the modern church.

Well, and if we read carefully, I think that that challenge only continues

in verse 23, I and them and you and me, that they may become completely one.

And then let's keep moving.

So that and we said this before, we should always perk up when we see us so that,

so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them,

even as you have loved me, I think it is unbelievably challenging.

There may be stronger language that still appropriate there,

that Jesus is the sent one.

And how often the church has struggled to be allowed to be sent.

It is striking how when Jesus talks about unity with the father,

it's for the sake of being

moved from one position

to a position of witness, to a position of speaking the Word of God.

For Jesus relationship with God the Father is the essential building block.

It's the foundation upon which then he will be sent to give voice

and witness to that relationship so that others might know it.

And the honest truth is the recurring

and constant temptation of church

is that we get comfortable in the place that we're at.

And now that could be geographic, that could be physical.

We get comfortable in our own walls, but it can also just be that

we get comfortable in our own community, our own relationships.

We get comfortable with people who are quote unquote, like us

and whatever that comes to be when we fail to understand that

Jesus himself was sent for the purpose of making us sent people,

then we begin to fundamentally misunderstand who Jesus himself

claimed to be and the task that he gave to us as the church,

and that then becomes a kind of breaking down

of the musculature of the oneness we're supposed to have.

We are supposed to be the ones who Christian.

It's in the name our little Christ, who follow Jesus, who

who live in his way, who look like him in the world.

Jesus was sent. Why?

So that he could show the oneness of God through the love of God.

And we, the church, should be called in our human,

our concrete, physical, lived lives to do small versions of what he does.

And whenever we fail to do that,

I think it's not only missing the mark, but it's also failing

to live in to the task that we've been given as disciples.

I think.

I think it was during Covid, you

and I, I put together a message that I

held on to, and

I there's a sense in which maybe this is beyond the text,

but I think the text at least points us in this direction.

And as I remember, we tried to make the case

that Christians are called to be unified but not uniform.

And that is, we are called to find our oneness, our unity in Christ.

We are called to find connection at the cross,

but we do that from different genders and different cultures

and different life experiences and that's okay.

We we do that with some opinions that don't always line up with one

another about things that aren't essential matters of the faith

or as what the book of Romans calls disputable matters.

And I think that's

that's hard, because sometimes the church has wanted uniformity.

We've wanted people like us

who think like us and act like us and have all of our same preferences,

but but that's ultimately what I not what I hear behind this at all.

It is this sense that no unity

means that we understand that all of our path to God goes through

Jesus Christ, that the way that we access God

is to see His Son,

to be called to follow Jesus.

And as we do that, we are made one with all those others

who are trying to do that as well, so that we live together.

And in that activity, in that action

of living together, we demonstrate Christ.

We demonstrate the father to the world.

That really is the purpose of the church.

And I, you know,

we think of the book of

acts as kind of the evangelism book.

But this is this is right up there with anything.

And, you know, I, I'm sending you

and those who come after you that they may see me.

And I think that's a that's a sobering but beautiful calling

and a good reminder of what our purpose is to be as we live out our faith together.

Clint.

It's also

a really small wrinkle in the text, but I just want to point out verse 25,

righteous Father, the world does not know you,

but I know you, and these know

those people who learn from and believe the future disciples.

They know that you've sent me.

Isn't it striking?

I it just hits me.

Clint, how with all of the adversarial language

that Jesus has in the book of John, Jesus does not levy that at the world.

Jesus just takes as matter.

Of course, the world doesn't know.

That's what makes them the world.

The world has not seen yet the witness of the gospel.

And to be clear, this sounds like rubbish.

An absolute rank foolishness to the world, right?

I mean, Paul literally says that it's just at the end of the day,

the world is the, the, the place of being and the way of encountering

that does not see the glory of Jesus Christ.

That reveals God's plan and intention for the world.

Jesus is not particularly hostile to that world.

In fact, John 316, the idea is that God so loved

that world, that unknowing world that God sends a sends

a witness to give voice and testimony to God's intention for that world.

I think what we often get out of order is

whenever we have friction with the world, we want to get it back.

But the reality is the world is our mission.

The world is our task. The world is our job.

Jesus, that is the master.

The servant will not be greater than the master.

And I think there's something to learn with the softness of how Jesus treats

this.

This world, and gives

the church a task that is for the sake of that way.

But we shouldn't miss that.

Jesus has in mind the whole in his picture of what needs done.

And he has words for what the church's role is in that equation.

I think it's important that we make sure

to keep all of those lines clear, so that we understand what's happening.

It's a bold proclamation, but essentially

the Christian idea is that what we need to know

in order to live a godly life, we will never learn from the world, right?

We have to turn to Christ to know

what that life looks like, and to be empowered

and set free to live that life in a world that doesn't understand it.

And then we get the privilege

of trying to live in such a way that gives the world

a reflection of what that looks like, and points others to truth.

That's again there.

Not everyone would be on board with that, but that's how Christians understand

the purpose of the Christian life is to

make that truth known.

I'm not going to spend a lot of time repeating this, a dense prayer.

There's a lot, and we certainly understand that as we go through it at this pace,

it may feel a lot

like just sort of wave after wave, but we now transition to narrative again.

This is a big transition that we've come up to,

and I think that it's important that we slow down to hear these important

and many ways concluding teachings of Jesus.

It's not that's not totally fair, but, an important transition for sure.

In this gospel into a new era of action.

So certainly I hope you'll subscribe because there's a lot more that come

the way that Jesus teaching is going to now move into the story

itself, and we're going to have a lot to learn and explore the gether.

Yeah. Thanks for joining us.