Jesus' Essential Prayer

Some years ago, I visited Bulgaria, and was invited to speak at a local church in Sofia. Unfortunately, I had not realised that Bulgarians traditionally nodded for ‘no’, and shook their heads for ‘yes’. I wish someone had told me this before I was due to preach. I struggled through my sermon with the congregation shaking their heads; the more passionately I preached, the more vigorous the shaking!

Most of us will find it very difficult to nod and say ‘no’, or shake our heads and say ‘yes’. It takes a fair effort of the will, and, in most cultures, we would be sending out two contradictory signals at the same time. But this is exactly the confusion generated when Christians talk about unity. We affirm a huge ‘yes’ – that we are all one in Christ – but at the same time we are furiously shaking our heads: our disagreements and our tribalism communicate a very different message.

Non-Christians can hardly be blamed for criticising what they perceive to be a massive credibility gap. In 1656, Richard Baxter expressed the point in a way that unfortunately still resonates today:

‘The public takes notice of all this division and not only derides us, but becomes hardened against all religion. When we try to persuade them, they see so many factions that they do not know which to join – and think it is better not to join any of them. Thus thousands grow in contempt of all religion by our divisions.’ 

More recently, the same concern was raised by Old Testament theologian John Goldingay, in a comment about the prayer we are about to examine. In the context of describing the beautiful expression of unity in Psalm 133, he refers to Jesus’ prayer as ‘the most spectacularly unanswered prayer in world history’. He continues, ‘Christian kinfolk live in breathtaking disharmony. This devastates their witness as it removes the goodness and loveliness from them; it removes their joy and surrenders their blessing.’

 
In his Gospel, John frequently speaks of God’s purpose of drawing people together. Whilst he does not use the word ‘church’, he is demonstrating a deep concern for unity. Jesus is the one shepherd of the one flock (John 10:14-16). Then John comments on the words of Caiaphas, that Jesus would not only die for the Jewish nation, but also for ‘the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one’ (John 11:51,52). Then Jesus speaks about the kind of death he was going to die: ‘And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself’ (John 12:32). And further, there is the intimate description of our shared life, with Jesus as the vine to which we are attached, and on which we depend for our life (John 15:18).

But perhaps the most famous passage on this theme in John’s Gospel is Jesus’ prayer in the garden, recorded in John 17, where there are several petitions relating to the unity of believers:

‘Protect them, by the power of your name, so that they may be one as we are one’ (17:11);
‘that all of them may be one’ (17:21);
‘they may be one as we are one’ (17:22);
‘so that they may be brought to complete unity’ (17:23).

Jesus’ prayer helps us understand why unity is possible and why it is necessary. It expresses the characteristics of the unity for which we must strive.