It Starts With Us
The more divided our world gets, the better news John 17 appears. Discovering John 17 is like spotting a lighthouse when you’re at sea and being battered mercilessly and perilously by a storm.
If you have a red-letter version of the Bible, where the words of Jesus are in red, the reddest section anywhere is the thirteenth through seventeenth chapters of the Gospel of John. The only black-letter parts are questions that the befuddled disciples kept asking. All of it took place Thursday night before Good Friday. The entire evening is surreal, starting with the Master donning a towel and washing the feet of his own followers, including Judas, who Jesus knew in advance would betray him before the evening was up. Jesus and his followers had gathered to celebrate the Jewish Passover, which Jesus reinterpreted that evening, heightening its urgency. Later Peter would boast that if Jesus couldn’t count on the rest of his buddies, He could certainly count on him, to which Jesus replied that before the night was up and the rooster crowed, Peter would cowardly deny that he even knew Jesus (*1).
In previous months leading up to this night, when Jesus had predicted His upcoming betrayal and crucifixion, the gang of twelve in response started arguing about which one of them was the greatest. Aye aye aye… Add in the differing political backgrounds and personalities of the disciples, and perhaps it shouldn’t strike us as such a surprise that Jesus would pray what he did. Read John 17 even once, and you can’t miss its central theme – that we, his followers, would be united.
If it was easy, Jesus wouldn’t have prayed for it.
Keep in mind that Jesus could have prayed about anything He wanted to. He knew exactly what was coming, why it was necessary, and what the result would be. His prayer begins, “Father, the time has come.” So it’s not like John 17 catches Jesus daydreaming. Further, there are three times in the prayer where He specifically points out what He’s not praying. I’m rarely if ever that disciplined or intentional in my prayers. Jesus was intensely focused on His central theme, what He thought would be most important for future generations. Who could guess that our unity as His followers was that important?
If we accept that Jesus is more than just a man, then we acknowledge that He could have been thinking about America coming apart at the seams in the 21st century as He prayed,
Make them one, Father, as You and I are one.
Accessing the divine ability to step outside of time, Jesus could have been as concerned about countries torn apart by tribal conflict of any stripe in our day, as He was intimately aware of the tribal and political conflicts within His twelve (now 11) followers in the Garden of Gethsemane that Thursday evening. He didn’t pray about the Romans and their barbaric empire who would crucify Him before His next meal, just like He’s probably not focused in prayer on all the government leaders who mock Him today, either. Jesus’ strategy for positively changing the world is simply to pray that those who know Him, those who claim affinity and love for Jesus, would simply show that same listening, honoring, self-sacrificing love for one another that He modeled every day of His life.
One of my favorite spots on my wife’s and my recent (and first) trip to the Holy Land was a Church called St. Peter in Gallicantu, or “St. Peter of the crowing rooster,” marking the spot of Peter’s prophesied denial of Jesus.