John 17:20-26

00:00:00:16 – 00:00:23:17
Clint Loveall
We continue through the Gospel of John. In the 17th chapter, we said it every day. Now, this is a long, the longest prayer offered by Jesus yesterday. We saw in the middle of the prayer Jesus, pray for the disciples. That takes, I think, another fascinating turn today. So let me just jump in here at verse 20 and read through the end of the chapter.

00:00:23:18 – 00:00:44:27
Clint Loveall
We’ll come back and try to unpack this. I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that 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 the glory that you have given me.

00:00:44:27 – 00:01:12:59
Clint Loveall
I have given them so that they may be one as we are one, I 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 I have loved, even as you have loved me. Father, I desire that those also whom you have given me, they may be with me, where that I may be with me where I am, to see my glory which you have given me, because you loved me before.

00:01:12:59 – 00:01:43:14
Clint Loveall
The foundation of the world. Righteous father, the world does not know you, but I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I 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. So again, A lot of repetition in the way that John records the words of Jesus.

00:01:43:19 – 00:02:17:04
Clint Loveall
But don’t let that lead us to miss the I think the pivotal moment here in verse 20 that Jesus prays not only for the disciples, but in, in anticipation of those who will come into the faith through their testimony. This is remarkably far sighted for Jesus. Remember that we’ve been telling you, we we have suggested that John is perhaps the latest written of the four Gospels.

00:02:17:09 – 00:03:02:37
Clint Loveall
And so John reflects a time in which the church is growing. And here we have voiced in Jesus words a prayer for the work the disciples will do and the work that will live after them in those who have not even yet come into the faith, come into the church. And, this I think, Michael, this says a lot about John, about what John imagines the work of the gospel to be the work of the community, to be the the idea that the church will always, in every generation, be handing the baton to the next generation of the faith to continue that work, to evaluate and improve that work.

00:03:02:42 – 00:03:35:21
Clint Loveall
And it would be, I think, very difficult to miss in the middle part of this passage, the word one, it shows up when you felt like a dozen times. I’m sure it isn’t. But the idea of unity that we who come centuries later, are one with those disciples, are one with that first generation of church that there is a a unification of all believers in the one Christ, in the one work of Christ, and in the one kingdom.

00:03:35:25 – 00:03:50:34
Clint Loveall
This is I, I don’t. We said this a little bit yesterday. In the Gospels I don’t know of much like this. You find some of this may be in Paul and other parts of the New Testament, but this is a really interesting moment, I think.

00:03:50:40 – 00:04:15:25
Michael Gewecke
Well, and Clint, I would even argue here that to the people who say that Jesus never imagined that there would be a church, this is in direct contradiction to that, that when we talk about Jesus, his teachings, often we see and we’ve already seen this in this book, how many times Jesus is in conflict with the Jewish religious leaders?

00:04:15:30 – 00:04:40:46
Michael Gewecke
Jewish Jesus finds himself in conflict with them because of the similarities Jesus is teaching. He’s going to synagogue. He’s doing all these things. So the conflict that Jesus is having is because these teachers feel that they can approach him, and that they can have a debate with him. In this passage, Jesus is not external in that way. He’s not looking to the Jewish community.

00:04:40:46 – 00:05:05:18
Michael Gewecke
He’s not looking to have some argument with those who misunderstand the gospel. This prayer is, at its core, I think, a deeply wholehearted connection between Jesus and the father. And we get to over here to Jesus’s heart and concern for the church that is going to come for believers, for those who are going to hear the witness of the first generation of Christians.

00:05:05:18 – 00:05:32:46
Michael Gewecke
And I you’ve mentioned and I think it bears repeating, that the emphasis that Jesus has at the very start is so important that they may be one at the beginning. Here, verse 21 is the absolute linchpin of this prayer, and the oneness is later given, another voice through this idea of love and the idea of connection, the idea of relatedness.

00:05:32:51 – 00:06:09:10
Michael Gewecke
John relates Jesus’s prayer in such a way that we, future disciples, would know that Jesus was aware of how hard oneness would be, that Jesus, in fact, prayed for our oneness, that Jesus understood how difficult and complicated Christian community would be. Jesus knew it, and he prayed for us ahead of time. I think it would be easy to pass over this that Jesus looked ahead and saw, even in his earthly ministry, the everyday face that we’re trying, trying to live today.

00:06:09:10 – 00:06:29:58
Michael Gewecke
He understood that it would require something for people who didn’t see his miracles with our own eyes to come into the community of faith, to be handed the baton as you use that word, and then to seek to live in such a community that would reflect the living Spirit of Christ in the world in which we live. Jesus understood that.

00:06:30:07 – 00:06:55:31
Michael Gewecke
And so I think that it should give us some measure of comfort and hope, and maybe even give us some measure of self understanding as to when we lean into this community, how it is going to require work of us, because at the end of the day, Jesus uses this oneness that he has with the father as a descriptor of what the oneness of the church should look like.

00:06:55:31 – 00:07:23:04
Michael Gewecke
And Clint, I don’t know how you could be a Christian and say that we have unequivocally rose to that challenge. Christians have sought unity and we’ve always struggled to hold on to it. It’s been an ephemeral reality, both in the meta sense, you know, throughout the major movements of history. But even in in smaller, more tangible communities, the church is hard work.

00:07:23:09 – 00:07:30:45
Michael Gewecke
And Jesus has some, comforting words for us and a prayer on our behalf as we seek to do that.

00:07:30:50 – 00:07:55:39
Clint Loveall
I think there are two things that come to mind in that regard, Michael. And for me, they work backwards from the text. And the first is here in the late verses 2526, Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you, and these know that you have sent me, and I made my name. I made your name known to them.

00:07:55:39 – 00:08:26:54
Clint Loveall
I think that’s an interesting. Reference or maybe a an interesting example to this idea that we hold on to and always have in the church that Jesus is the go between the moderator. The world doesn’t know you, but I’ve shown you to those who follow me. I’ve shown you to the disciple. They are going to show you to the world by showing the world me, the the living one, the Savior.

00:08:27:09 – 00:08:53:22
Clint Loveall
And so the first thing I think we have to understand as we come to that idea of oneness, is that we know God through Jesus Christ, that it’s not as though we we are called by God. We, they, the world doesn’t know you, but they know you sent me. And so that unity, then that oneness has to be found in Jesus Christ.

00:08:53:27 – 00:09:23:28
Clint Loveall
And so often where we’ve broken down in unity has to do with doctrine or practices or, you know, you use a guitar and we use an organ or you you let women teach class and we don’t. And, yes, all of those things are within the envelope of faith or the umbrella of faith, but true unity, our true oneness is not found in our practice, not found in our doctrine.

00:09:23:33 – 00:09:51:55
Clint Loveall
It’s found in Jesus Christ. And those who are called to him and through him see God the Father and glorify him. And, I just we yeah, that’s a tough. It’s a tough knock against the church because we’ve struggled with it so often, and we’ve not, of all the things the world knows about the church, unity is, is generally not one of them.

00:09:51:55 – 00:09:59:22
Clint Loveall
And so I there is certainly a note of conviction in some of this, I think, for the modern church.

00:09:59:29 – 00:10:25:30
Michael Gewecke
Well, and if we read carefully, I think that that challenge only continues in verse 23, I and them and you and me, that they may become completely one. And then let’s keep moving. So that and we said this before, we should always perk up when we see us so that, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them, even as you have loved me, I think it is unbelievably challenging.

00:10:25:30 – 00:10:52:25
Michael Gewecke
There may be stronger language that still appropriate there, that Jesus is the sent one. And how often the church has struggled to be allowed to be sent. It is striking how when Jesus talks about unity with the father, it’s for the sake of being moved from one position to a position of witness, to a position of speaking the Word of God.

00:10:52:30 – 00:11:20:43
Michael Gewecke
For Jesus relationship with God the Father is the essential building block. It’s the foundation upon which then he will be sent to give voice and witness to that relationship so that others might know it. And the honest truth is the recurring and constant temptation of church is that we get comfortable in the place that we’re at. And now that could be geographic, that could be physical.

00:11:20:43 – 00:11:59:42
Michael Gewecke
We get comfortable in our own walls, but it can also just be that we get comfortable in our own community, our own relationships. We get comfortable with people who are quote unquote, like us and whatever that comes to be when we fail to understand that Jesus himself was sent for the purpose of making us sent people, then we begin to fundamentally misunderstand who Jesus himself claimed to be and the task that he gave to us as the church, and that then becomes a kind of breaking down of the musculature of the oneness we’re supposed to have.

00:11:59:47 – 00:12:26:34
Michael Gewecke
We are supposed to be the ones who Christian. It’s in the name our little Christ, who follow Jesus, who who live in his way, who look like him in the world. Jesus was sent. Why? So that he could show the oneness of God through the love of God. And we, the church, should be called in our human, our concrete, physical, lived lives to do small versions of what he does.

00:12:26:34 – 00:12:36:00
Michael Gewecke
And whenever we fail to do that, I think it’s not only missing the mark, but it’s also failing to live in to the task that we’ve been given as disciples.

00:12:36:00 – 00:13:00:28
Clint Loveall
I think. I think it was during Covid, you and I, I put together a message that I held on to, and I there’s a sense in which maybe this is beyond the text, but I think the text at least points us in this direction. And as I remember, we tried to make the case that Christians are called to be unified but not uniform.

00:13:00:43 – 00:13:30:31
Clint Loveall
And that is, we are called to find our oneness, our unity in Christ. We are called to find connection at the cross, but we do that from different genders and different cultures and different life experiences and that’s okay. We we do that with some opinions that don’t always line up with one another about things that aren’t essential matters of the faith or as what the book of Romans calls disputable matters.

00:13:30:36 – 00:14:05:17
Clint Loveall
And I think that’s that’s hard, because sometimes the church has wanted uniformity. We’ve wanted people like us who think like us and act like us and have all of our same preferences, but but that’s ultimately what I not what I hear behind this at all. It is this sense that no unity means that we understand that all of our path to God goes through Jesus Christ, that the way that we access God is to see His Son, to be called to follow Jesus.

00:14:05:22 – 00:14:32:29
Clint Loveall
And as we do that, we are made one with all those others who are trying to do that as well, so that we live together. And in that activity, in that action of living together, we demonstrate Christ. We demonstrate the father to the world. That really is the purpose of the church. And I, you know, we think of the book of acts as kind of the evangelism book.

00:14:32:29 – 00:14:55:07
Clint Loveall
But this is this is right up there with anything. And, you know, I, I’m sending you and those who come after you that they may see me. And I think that’s a that’s a sobering but beautiful calling and a good reminder of what our purpose is to be as we live out our faith together.

00:14:55:12 – 00:15:24:31
Michael Gewecke
Clint. It’s also a really small wrinkle in the text, but I just want to point out verse 25, righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you, and these know those people who learn from and believe the future disciples. They know that you’ve sent me. Isn’t it striking? I it just hits me. Clint, how with all of the adversarial language that Jesus has in the book of John, Jesus does not levy that at the world.

00:15:24:36 – 00:15:53:42
Michael Gewecke
Jesus just takes as matter. Of course, the world doesn’t know. That’s what makes them the world. The world has not seen yet the witness of the gospel. And to be clear, this sounds like rubbish. An absolute rank foolishness to the world, right? I mean, Paul literally says that it’s just at the end of the day, the world is the, the, the place of being and the way of encountering that does not see the glory of Jesus Christ.

00:15:53:42 – 00:16:22:35
Michael Gewecke
That reveals God’s plan and intention for the world. Jesus is not particularly hostile to that world. In fact, John 316, the idea is that God so loved that world, that unknowing world that God sends a sends a witness to give voice and testimony to God’s intention for that world. I think what we often get out of order is whenever we have friction with the world, we want to get it back.

00:16:22:35 – 00:16:45:47
Michael Gewecke
But the reality is the world is our mission. The world is our task. The world is our job. Jesus, that is the master. The servant will not be greater than the master. And I think there’s something to learn with the softness of how Jesus treats this. This world, and gives the church a task that is for the sake of that way.

00:16:45:47 – 00:17:04:23
Michael Gewecke
But we shouldn’t miss that. Jesus has in mind the whole in his picture of what needs done. And he has words for what the church’s role is in that equation. I think it’s important that we make sure to keep all of those lines clear, so that we understand what’s happening.

00:17:04:28 – 00:17:24:57
Clint Loveall
It’s a bold proclamation, but essentially the Christian idea is that what we need to know in order to live a godly life, we will never learn from the world, right? We have to turn to Christ to know what that life looks like, and to be empowered and set free to live that life in a world that doesn’t understand it.

00:17:24:57 – 00:17:50:19
Clint Loveall
And then we get the privilege of trying to live in such a way that gives the world a reflection of what that looks like, and points others to truth. That’s again there. Not everyone would be on board with that, but that’s how Christians understand the purpose of the Christian life is to make that truth known.

00:17:50:24 – 00:18:14:45
Michael Gewecke
I’m not going to spend a lot of time repeating this, a dense prayer. There’s a lot, and we certainly understand that as we go through it at this pace, it may feel a lot like just sort of wave after wave, but we now transition to narrative again. This is a big transition that we’ve come up to, and I think that it’s important that we slow down to hear these important and many ways concluding teachings of Jesus.

00:18:14:45 – 00:18:34:01
Michael Gewecke
It’s not that’s not totally fair, but, an important transition for sure. In this gospel into a new era of action. So certainly I hope you’ll subscribe because there’s a lot more that come the way that Jesus teaching is going to now move into the story itself, and we’re going to have a lot to learn and explore the gether.

00:18:34:06 – 00:18:35:11
Clint Loveall
Yeah. Thanks for joining us.