Trust Me - Week 6: That The World May Know

It’s Still Easter!  He is risen!

The Season of Easter offers us a chance to experience the implications of the Resurrection and to trust Jesus as we follow him.  

Today, we will conclude our series with a reading from Jesus' final discourse with his followers: a prayer that is difficult to understand, but one that gives us a glimpse into what it means to choose uniformity of belief over love.  

Guess how many Christian denominations there are in the world?  

The number exceeds 47,000, which is a substantial amount.  You might be shocked by this number, I know that I was.  I would have guessed much lower.  The fact that it is so high speaks to the capacity of human beings to be complete jerks. 

What causes these divisions?  Why are there so many? 

It ultimately comes down to a few key factors, but in the end, it's largely about how people choose to interpret the Bible.  

The fundamentalist movement in the early 1900s resulted in numerous schisms and subsequent offshoots, which seem to occur at every cultural shift, including the suffragette movement, the wider acceptance of evolutionary theory, the Civil Rights and desegregation movements, equal rights for women, the legalization of abortion, LGBTQ rights, immigration, and more.  

Do you think that this was what Jesus had in mind when he declared to Peter that upon the "rock" of his teachings about who he was, and what he came to accomplish?

And yet, as we learned last week, the Holy Spirit was sent to be at work in the Church, leading it to be the very hands and feet of Christ.  

So while it is often necessary for there to be different expressions of the Church, when we divide ourselves over issues of uniformity of thought, we deny the Resurrection and hold the work of the Spirit at arm's length.  

The Spirit of Christ in the Church leads us to unity, not uniformity. But when we require uniformity, the Church fails to show Christ’s love. 

WE CAN TRUST THAT CHRIST’S PRESENCE EMPOWERS US TO LIVE OUT CHRIST’S LOVE

John 17:20-26

The Final Discourse and the group it was intended for will be the source of our discussion today.  The name scholars have given to this group over the years is the "Johannine" sect, a group of early Christians who were very concerned about who was in and who was out.   

The author of John's Gospel utilized what is known as Antilanguage - insider language that maintains inner solidarity.  In some cases, the author invents new concepts for words and phrases that have different meanings in the "outside" world. 

This part of the Final Discourse is a word salad of some of those phrases: 

20 “I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their word, 21 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. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, 23 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 you have loved me. 24 Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, 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.

25 “Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you, and these know that you have sent me. 26 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.”

One of the features of John's use of antilanguage is the concept of relexicalization, which involves completely redefining words like “glory” and “sent” - key terms in John’s ideas about Jesus. 

While "glory" and "sent" might seem straightforward words, for the Johannines, they referred to Jesus' death on the cross and his divine origin as the Logos or Christ, respectively.  

The author of John also practiced overlexicalization, or the repeated use of a word or phrase that signifies its importance.  In this case, you may have picked up on the phrase  “being one.”  The frequency indicates importance. 

We are viewing this passage as outsiders, but there is a valuable lesson to be learned from it. Even though the Johannines were a very insider-focused group, we can learn from them what it means to take things way too literally.  

Ultimately, it all comes down to this.  The concept of unity in the Church is based on “oneness” with Jesus, who is “one” with God. The love of God and the world is the result.  

When we become so obsessed with uniformity over unity, we mess everything up.  

What Do We Learn From This?

1 There are many ways to be the Church, as long as the vision is pure. 

2. When we demand uniformity, we become resistant to the Spirit of Christ. 

3. Christ’s love is shown most fully when we seek to become “one” with Him and with one another. 

The Spirit is still at work in the Church if we are open to trusting where the Spirit is leading.  If we move without love, we can be assured that it's not the Spirit leading us, but our own desire for uniformity.  

WE CAN TRUST THAT CHRIST’S PRESENCE EMPOWERS US TO LIVE OUT CHRIST’S LOVE