That They May Be One in Jesus. Sunday Seventh Week of Easter

Sunday Breakfast with the Word Seventh Week of Easter Year C

 

That They May Be One in Jesus

 

Acts 7:55-60, Revelation 22:12-14,16-17,20, John 17:20-26

 

There is this famous story of an elderly man whose five sons do not live together in peace. The five sons would always fight and quarrel with each other. There is never a day that you cannot see them fighting and quarrelling among themselves. The father has continually advised them against this but to no avail until He decided that He will teach them a good lesson. 

 

One day the father called them together in the middle of the night and told them that He has a great gift for each of them. They became happy. They were expecting that something great would come. But the father bought a bunch of sticks for His sons. He asked them to take a stick from the bunch and break it. They did as he said. They broke the single sticks easily.

 

Then he asked them to take just three sticks from the bunch and break them too. They also break the sticks easily.

Then finally, He asked them to take the bunch of the sticks and break them as they did to the one and the three. They tried but they couldn’t. They tried harder, but they could not break it.

 

Then they tried more and more yet they could not. They applied all the force to make sure they break the bunch but they still could not. The Father asked them to apply more force so that they could break them. They did, yet they could not. 

 Then he told his sons, “my sons stop trying any longer. You can break a single stick, two and three even but you cannot break a bunch of sticks. If you continue to stay divided, you will continue to live in crisis and someone can easily hurt and attack you but if you remain together, it is hard for someone to divide you, people”.

 

No one can hurt you all if you stick to each other like these sticks. But if you are divided like one stick, you can be broken easily, always know that unity creates power. Unity is strength. 

 

 

 

That All May Be One.

 

 

The above story is exactly what we witness today in the gospel. Here, we see Jesus’ prayer for His disciples. The gospel today is an excerpt from the gospel of John 17, where Jesus prays for the unity of His apostles and disciples. Jesus prays that they may be one in Him. 

That they may be one in Jesus means that Jesus should be the foundation of their unity, love and togetherness. As Jesus looks up to heaven in prayer, we have to look up to Him as our model. As He unites and loves the Father, we must also unite again and live in love.

 

Therefore, like the story above Jesus understands the importance of unity. He advises them about it, and even prays for it.

 

In the gospel, Jesus prays for His immediate disciples and also includes even other disciples and beyond that may join the fold later. This is where the gospel of today begins. When Jesus prays that they may be One, Jesus declares His intention known for all. 

 

Therefore, He reveals what His truest desire is and what He demands from the disciples when He leaves them. Therefore, unity among the disciples is not even a negotiation. It is a must. Every Christian family or home must be united. There is no If, in it. 

 

When Jesus says “I pray not only for these, only” Jesus means that the prayer He is saying is not just for His immediate disciples. He says “but for those also who through their words will believe in Him’. Which then includes all of us and all of the Christian world. Jesus prays that they may be one. 

 

 

What is Oneness?

 

 

Oneness is the quality of being one, united, indivisible and together. This is when brothers live in koinonia. It is when we come together without division, and put heads together. Oneness means when there is no division or separation of any sort. It means that there is no disagreement among people of the same family or race. 

 

 

Therefore, when Jesus says that they may be one, Jesus is praying that we must be united. There must be a lovely union that binds every Christian who belongs to Jesus. It entails that every Christian union or association must be characterized by closeness, affinity or union.

 

 

When We Live In Crisis and Misunderstanding.

 

 

When we do not live in unity, we live in crisis. Not living in unity is already a decision to live in a crisis. When we easily misunderstand the intention of others or what others do, the next consequence is a crisis. 

 

In the first reading, we can see an example of this. In the first reading, Luke tells us about the stoning of Stephen. When Stephen was captured, Luke explained to us how he gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and saw Jesus standing at God’s right hand.

 

Then, Stephen told His persecutors that he can see heaven is thrown open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.

 

Now because they are already biased toward him, also because they fail to understand him and what He stands for, the members of the council shouted out and stopped their ears with their hands. They rushed at him, sent him out of the city and stoned him. 

 

This is exactly what happened in Nigeria recently, with the stoning of Deborah. The persecutors have hatred already in their hearts. There is already a division in what they believe to be blasphemy. They rushed the little girl and stoned her to death, thinking they were doing the Father’s will.

 

Whenever we do not have a common belief, understanding, agreement, and binding love that binds the people together, there is always misunderstanding and disunity. Hence when we live in misunderstanding, there is a time of crisis that must come in between.

 

 

What Jesus desires that We Do.

 

 

1. In the gospel, Jesus sets His intention clear. He says “‘Holy Father, I pray not only for these but for those also who through their words will believe in me. May they all be one. 

 

In essence, may they come together, may they reason together? Jesus is saying, “let them solve whatever crisis and problems that may arise from their midst together. May they live and understand each other”. Jesus desires us, not just to be a prayer warrior or churchgoer but that the prayer warrior be a love and peace warrior too. 

 

2. In the second part of the prayer, He says “Father, may they be one in us, as you are in me and I am in you”. He says “With me in them and you in me, may they be so completely one”. 

 

In this statement, Jesus reveals that when we truly live in Him, unity and love should not be a negotiation. It is a must.

 

Therefore, with Jesus living in us, we will always desire to live in love. Therefore, whoever does not live in love and unity, is not of God. He says in 1 John 4:8 “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love”. 

 

 

3. Thirdly, He says “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, so that they may always see the glory you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world”.

 

Therefore, Jesus reveals the reason He is saying this prayer. He desires that we seek eternal life and then He is saying this prayer so that in the end, nothing will be a stumbling block for the disciples and every Christian to achieve this eternal glory. 

 

In essence, Jesus sees disunity as a stumbling block. Therefore, not living in unity must be avoided and abrogated. In 1 Corinthians 1:10, Paul appeals “I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought.

 

4. Finally, Jesus says “I have made your name known to them and will continue to make it known, so that the love with which you loved me may be in them, and so that I may be in them”.

 

Therefore, the reason Jesus reveals Himself is for us to live in unity and love. He desires that we live in love and not in division. 

 

 

The Only Standard to Live in Love and Unity.

 

 

In today’s priestly prayer of Jesus, Jesus sets the standard or the measure by which we shall live in unity. Jesus says “May they all be one. Father, may they be one in us, as you are in me and I am in you, so that the world may believe it was you who sent me”.

 

 Therefore, the love which exists between the father and the Son must be the same love that must exist in every Christian home. When we see how Jesus is praying to the Father, we will observe that deep affection, intimacy, love, and close relationship. 

 

Jesus wants us to apply the same in our attitudes to others. This includes those people we have been working against secretly. It includes the people that we are praying that would die today and tomorrow.

 

 

This prayer also includes those we hate and do not want to associate with. It includes all those broken homes and families. Jesus wants us to be united and not divided. The prayer that they may be one, includes all and sundry without exception. We must live in love and not in division.

 

 

Conclusion.

 

 

1. In this prayer of Jesus, we will see how Jesus loves us and desires that good things happen to us. After praying for His disciples, he also prays for us. 

 

 

This prayer reveals the innermost being and love Jesus has for us. John 17 offers a unique opportunity to see the nature and heart of Jesus.

 

Also, let us understand that Jesus did not pray just as He told His disciples to pray. “The request of our Lord thus given in John’s seventeenth chapter is clearly not the prayer of an inferior to a superior, but we can see in it the co-equality and love of the Speaker With The Father. 

 

He says “Father, may they be one in us, as you are in me and I am in you”. It depicts unity, trinity, integrity and identity. In identity, we identify God with love. God cannot but love. Therefore, if we truly live in God, we must also live in love.

 

2. When Jesus says “that they may be one”, Jesus has you in mind. The word “they” used there includes you. Jesus prayed that you do not live in wickedness and hatred. Jesus prayed that you do not promote division. He wants you to be with Him at the end of Your Life. 

 

Therefore, he wants you to live in love. Jesus wants to forgive the grudges you are holding in your heart. He wants you to come to love again. Jesus has shown how much He loves us through this prayer and then expects us to do the same. Therefore, If Jesus desired, prayed and expected that we may be one, we have to work towards this unity all the time. 

 

 

3. Before the prayer, Jesus lifted His eyes to heaven. This indicates the physical posture of Jesus as He prayed. Jesus prayed with the customs of prayer common in His day. We can see that in John 11:41, Mark 7:34, and Psalm 123:1. 

 

By pointing to heaven, Jesus shows us where we shall always look up to. When we have problems and issues, we must always learn how to take them to God on High. 

 

By looking up to heaven, Jesus shows us where we shall look up to as our standard of living. Therefore, our model and standard of living must be in the unity and love that exists in God. We have to look up to God. He is our model. 

 

4. In the gospel, Jesus says “I do not pray for these alone”. This shows that Jesus prayed for His eleven apostles, but He also prayed beyond them. He prayed for those who would come to faith by the testimony of these disciples. Therefore, He prayed for us.

 

The implication is that if Jesus has prayed for us, the grace to live together is already there. Therefore, if we have to be one, we have to decide and work to make it happen. It now falls on us to make it happen.

 

Therefore, we must rise above our different backgrounds and understand that we are one in Christ. We have to rise above our pride, hatred and selfish interests. We have to rise above religious inclinations. That they may be one should be our desire just like Jesus desires.

 

5. Jesus says “the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one:” Therefore, As God the Father shared His glory with God the Son (John 17:5), so Jesus also shared this glory to us.

 

Therefore, He has given us access to encounter His glory. We can now encounter the glory of His presence through the Eucharist, we can encounter the glory of His Word through meditation, and we can encounter the glory of His Spirit and the glory of His power when we visit Him in the Blessed Sacrament.

 

 Here, we can encounter His radiance or the shining of His presence. When we encounter Him daily, He will live in us and then our lives will change. Our hearts will become like Him. We will then desire to live in love, holiness, peace and unity. 

 

 

6. So, when we live in unity, we become stronger. When we live in unity we become indivisible, we will not be easier to penetrate. Also, when we live in unity, we obey what God truly desires from us. He desires that we do not live in hatred. He desires that we do not live in the division. Can we? Can we now come back and make peace in our homes? It is time to be back again. Unity is power, unity is strength. it is the secret of breakthrough. Can we come together and raise our homes?

Psalm 133:1 says “How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity! 

 

 

May God bless and give us the grace to be One.