Joining Jesus in the Spirit - John 17: 20-26

“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 you have loved me. 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. “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.”

Commentary

I have been reading a book by Howard Thurman, titled Jesus and the Disinherited. It is his analysis of how the message of Jesus is good news to those who live with their backs against the wall. In the process of his analysis, he gives a very clear view of the life confronting the Jews of his time.

The Jewish culture believed they were the chosen people of God. They believed they were to be obedient to God alone. That they were to hold themselves apart from the corruption of other societies. For them there was no separation of church and state. For them the synagogue was everything.

Now over the top of this proud culture is imposed the power of Rome. In the Roman empire, you were either a citizen of Rome, or you were nothing. The Jews were nothing. Jesus saw this tragedy at first hand. He knew the difficulty of living as a conquered people. Of living a life where your choices were to either fight and be crushed in the body, or concede and be crushed in the spirit. He saw his mission to his people as preventing them from being crushed. The stiff necked Jews who could not accept his message lead to Jerusalem being destroyed in AD 70. So Jesus' message would have to be to the spirit. His message, “My kingdom is not of this world!”

I think this perspective is relevant to our reading from John. I have tended to see John as the wonderful poet with his head in the clouds. But if you accept that Jesus' message is about the spirit, then John's gospel may in fact be the most realistic of them all.

Jesus asks that we ALL may be one in the same manner that he and the Father are one, and that WE be one in them . He asks that WE be with him WHERE HE IS. He asks that We may behold his glory.

This is either nothing but beautiful poetry, or it is a statement that we too are NOT OF THIS WORLD. Jesus asks that we accept the fact that we are spirit, that we may live with Him and the Father in the spirit. In the process we inherit an eternal life in which there is no fear of being crushed by the oppressor, no need for fear at all, because in the spirit we are free to be LOVE just as God and Christ are LOVE.