Today is the Seventh Sunday of Easter, the last Sunday of the Easter season before we begin the Pentecost season next week. We are in the period of time between the Resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit. But even though we are in this Easter season, the Gospel reading today, and, in fact, the Gospel reading for the last several weeks, have been taking us back to Holy Week. It takes us back to Maundy Thursday and the period of time between the Last Supper and the Garden of Gethsemane. In this time frame, which was probably only a couple of hours, Jesus washes the Disciples’ feet, and then has a really long speech, although it was interrupted a few times by the Disciple’s questions. And then there is a long prayer at the end of the long speech. The whole thing takes five chapters, which is almost one quarter of the entire Gospel. It indicates the importance that John placed on these last words on Maundy Thursday, the final teachings and final prayer that Jesus had for the Disciples. Jesus, in essence, is saying this is the most important stuff. I am about to go, and when I do you need to make sure you remember these things.
So what are these things? One of them, the most important, is love. From the beginning to the end of this section of the Gospel, Jesus keeps coming back to love: God’s love for us, our need to respond and reciprocate, and love for each other in this world. It is, in the end, all about love. That is the central message of Jesus’s life and his teachings.
Also in this section, Jesus is concerned that the Disciples will be in despair after he is gone, and he wants to offer them comfort. One of the things he offers them, as we heard last week, was peace. My peace I give to you. As we have talked many times in the past, that peace is not just the absence of violence. That peace is a sense of wholeness. Jesus is concerned that when he is gone the Disciples’ lives might be ruptured; they might feel incomplete. So he gives them his peace, his shalom, his wholeness to make sure they are whole and complete without him.
Jesus also promises that they will be together again someday. He tells them he is going so he can get ready for them, and that they will be there someday and be reunited. He also says you are not going to be alone. I am going to give you the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, the Advocate to be with you. God will still be with you even when I am not here. Jesus also comes back to some of the most important messages of his teachings, like joy and truth and life and hope; about doing good and bearing fruit in this world by serving and caring for others.
Today’s reading is the very end of this section of the Gospel, at the end of the final prayer. In this section Jesus is talking about unity. He wants, he hopes, he prays that the Disciples will be unified, and he prays and hopes for unity in this world. Why does he want unity? That is an obvious question: unity is good. It is a truism. Unity is good. How can you argue against that? It is a major theme in literature and movies. Almost any movie has a theme of unity: Lord of the Rings and Bug’s Life are about unity. Together we are more than the sum of our parts. It is a basic and simple message.
However, there is a danger in unity. There is a way in which unity can become malformed, and that is when unity becomes uniformity. When unity isn’t about uniting who we are, but us changing to become all the same, that is not the kind of unity Jesus is talking about in the Gospel. What he says in the Gospel is that the unity he wants for the Disciples and for all who come after them is a unity rooted and grounded in love. When unity is rooted and grounded in love, that means it is going to honor and respect the differences that we hold. That is a true unity, when we are united across our differences rather than forced into cookie cutters. That cookie cutter vision of unity, which is the vision of unity that is out there, is a totalitarian vision of unity. But Jesus’s vision of unity is love. Unity that offers dignity and respect to every single person, because every single person is worthy of dignity and respect. Why? Because every single person is made in God’s image. It has nothing to do with what we have done to earn that dignity or respect. You, in your very being, because God made you and because God made you in his image, are worthy of dignity and respect. And so is your neighbor. God’s vision of unity offers dignity and respect to people, not trying to conform them into a mold, but offering love and respect and dignity to them. That is the true unity that Jesus is praying for in the Gospel, and the true unity that we are meant to strive for in this world.
The reality is that there is a lot of disunity in this world. There is a lot of division, and a lot of voices that want that division. There are also voices that want unity, but some of those voices are hoping for that totalitarian form. It is our work to try and have unity, yes, but it must be the unity that Jesus wants that is rooted and grounded in love.
So, my friends, work for that unity. Root and ground your life, the wholeness of your life, in that love, and this work of unity in that love, your relations with others in that love, offering dignity and respect to every person because every person is the image of God. Root and ground your life in that love. If we do, we can embody this prayer that Jesus has for us.
AMEN.
