John 17:20-26 (NRSV)
Read John 17:20-26 on biblegateway.com
Verse 20"I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, Verse 21that 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. Verse 22The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, Verse 23I 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.
Verse 24Father, 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. Verse 25"Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. Verse 26I 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."
Devotion
Loren Eiseley, the great naturalist writer, tells in his memoir, "All The Strange Hours," how when he was a graduate student in 1936 in Philadelphia he and his best friend, a Japanese-American citizen, decided to visit our national monuments in Washington D.C. along with a carload of other international residents. Minor car trouble caused them to seek overnight lodging, but they were rudely refused hospitality at the YMCA and private rooming houses when the receptionists looked over Eiseley's shoulder and saw his companions. So they drove through the night ending up back at their favorite Chinese restaurant. At that point Eiseley said to his friends, "If one man can apologize for his nation, I apologize." We now know the violence and hatred that was soon to burst upon our world after 1936.
When Jesus prays for us to his Father that we may all be one, as he and his father are one, we are saddened by the violence and racial hatred that still threatens to consume our nation and world in 2016. Can we as Christians make a difference in our communities by building conversational bridges with those who are different in race and religion and gender?
Prayer
May the oneness and unity that is gifted to us as the body of Christ, across all ethnic and political divides, become more real to us than our lingering tribal identities. In the prayer of Jim Wallis, let our Christian faith be more real than our ethnic identity. Amen.