Union with God

John 17:20-26

…“that they may be one. As you are in me and I am in you, may they also be one in us… I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one. ...so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” -Jesus’ High Priestly prayer as remembered by the writer/disciple John, offered on the night he was betrayed.

Jesus is praying for us, for a relationship of union which already exists between himself and God. How is it that Jesus, fully human, has this relationship of union with God and somehow we do not? Or, is Jesus’ prayer that we reclaim what is ours and we have lost sight and reality of it? Is union with God something that God must grant that has not been granted before? Or is union with God something that we need God’s presence and power within in order to fully grasp what is already ours?

I confess that in the past I have approached this prayer of Jesus as his desire that we later day followers get along with each other; that we don’t allow denominationalism to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, that our disunity with one another does not become a stumbling block - if the world is to ‘come to Christ’ then we need to get along with each other. I confess that I have differentiated union between humanity from union with God, favoring being “like” the Christ/God union with other people. Now I believe this passage goes deeper. While inclusive of our human unity with one another it is the mystic’s prayer of union with God, the Holy One, united and fully present in each and all as all things are united in God and in God’s love. That, is a whole different kind of union.

Is this union something new? or is it something that we have missed all along as God’s intent for us? I am wondering about and leaning toward the notion that union with God is a reclamation of God's intent rather than something new. Our disunity with God and with one another is part of a lost and broken world, part of what some what call a “fallen nature”, the tendency to go away from God rather than toward God.

Our American westernized ‘rugged individualism’ seeks to be so self sufficient. How often I have prided myself on not needing anyone or anything; to go it alone, go solo in the deep woods, to survive the odds and obstacles alone, to be a McGiver or Rambo overcoming the problems and forces that emerge, a god unto myself, ‘I am Woman, hear me roar!’ I am invincible. On the other hand we also live in desperate fear, even when we plaster “No Fear” bumper stickers on our vehicles, reminders more to ourselves than some proclamation to others. While projecting an image of self sufficiency we are long for communion but dare not admit our loneliness. Can we let go of idolizing the images that bear false witness and return to what is given?

I wonder about the story of “the Fall” in Genesis 3. Was the temptation and the sin stepping away from reality; not so much having ‘open eyes’ to see separating factors, but becoming blinded by the thought that the forbidden fruit would enable them to “become like God”, get closer to godness, when in reality they already had union with God? The ability “to see good and evil” was what Franciscan priest Richard Rohr might say was the dualistic start of missing God’s intent for us. Perhaps “the fall”, the first sin, was to think and act on the notion that we are not like God or united with God but somehow have to work at or connive becoming or being God-like, when in reality God’s very likeness has already been implanted from the very beginning, within each one of us in creation (Gen 1:26-27). Did not God come looking for humankind who had separated themselves from God’s presence? God asks, “Where are you?”

I wonder if the whole sacred story of scripture is God’s work at reuniting all things, all people, all creation into oneness in holiness, in love, in God. God’s calling Abram and Sarai, calling a people, a community of faith, calling through prophets and stories, calling through John the Baptizer and Jesus the Christ and the apostles and saints and sinners and mystics everywhere, is it all a long love song, a high godly prayer to us that we might return to our source, the first love, the first life? Does God plead for us to ‘come home’ from Genesis, the prophet Hosea (11), to the Prodigal (Lk 15) and finally in Revelation wherein once again the full dwelling place of God is within us (Rev 21:3)? The Apostle Paul quotes the poets of his own day as he speaks to the Athenians telling them of the “unknown god”, this One “in whom we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). He writes to the church in Colossi reminding them (in similar words found in John’s gospel to be written later, Jn 1:1-5) that in Christ God unites all things visible and invisible, in heaven and on earth. All things are held together in and through him in whom the fullness of God is pleased to dwell (Colossians 1:15-23).

Jesus prays that we might be one in him as he is in God and God in us as in him, that we might live and move and have our being fully in God who is our beginning and end. Christ prays for us. Certainly God hears prayer. Do we? Do we hear Jesus’ prayer and to some degree are we like God and have the ability to answer that prayer, to facilitate its reality? to be who and what we are? united, one with God? In early church theology, this notion may have come close to heresy, considering that we might become God. Well, if God is love and God is life and if God was more, or could be more, fully present on earth, would that be bad? Why do we insist on being separated from God or God being distant and distinct from us? Could we become God's intent for us? Might not the whole world be transformed? Healed? If we are to be that Body of Christ, the flesh and blood of Christ in whom God was fully present and pleased to dwell, what might that mean for us? for our world? for relationships? for attitudes toward all others who are in Christ and God as well? Can I see God in me? Can I see God in all things, visible and invisible? What might happen if all the world would come to see God within themselves and within all creation? How would it effect politics? environmental issues? economics? abuses? Would we be able to continue to separate and divide that which God’s love and life and presence unites? What would it be to live into the answer to Jesus’ prayer that we might all be united fully in God?

Holy God who is closer than our breath,
who is in all things and in all places all the time,
give me eyes and ears and mind and heart to
comprehend the length and depth and breadth and height
and wisdom and grace of your amazing love and life
within each and all.

Going the Way of Love

John 13:31-35

May 2, 2010

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.”

Where are you going?
What is your direction?
Are you going in the way of Jesus?

Jesus was headed toward glory. “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified…. God will also glorify him in himself… will glorify him at once”. What does that mean? What is it be glorified? To win a prize for being the best, the greatest? To stand above and beyond all the rest? Is it to be the grand champion? Gold medalist? Recorder holder ad infinitum? Can humankind be glorified or is glory only relegated to God? Is glory something to be sought, or something that simply is the result of faithfully being and doing what is embedded in one?

The Gospel writers do not seem to imply that Jesus was a glory-seeker. John’s gospel seems to imply that glory was 'laid upon' Jesus as a result of living fully in the intention of God. Jesus fully embraced and lived the God-life within him and that resulted in glory or praise to God and glory and praise to Jesus. How did he live fully in the intention of God? In the writings attributed to the disciple John, ‘whom Jesus loved’ (13:23), a mystic of the first century, the good news of Jesus the Christ was simply and profoundly about love. God’s intention from the beginning was love (I John 3:11-24). Living fully in the intention of God was and is living love fully. The result is glory, but the way is love, the focus is love, the intent is love.

In todays scripture Jesus is speaking of glory, and then says to his disciples that they can not come where he is going just as he had said to “the Jews” (that is the pietistic hold-outs) that they were not able to go Jesus’ way. (Perhaps they were not able because they were seeking glory rather than seeking love?) When Peter, however, questions where he is going, Jesus responds differently, “you cannot follow me now; but you will follow afterward” (13:36). We know from the resurrection account in the 21^st chapter (15-19) that Jesus indeed “commands” Peter to come and follow him by nurturing Peter's love to be beyond friendship and brotherhood to a willingness to enter God’s sacrificial love. So it seems that Jesus’ followers would be going Jesus' way also, going toward glory by the way of love; loving God and loving God’s people even in the midst of betrayal and denial. That is selfless love. That is God love. That is what agape` is all about (the Greek word for love that is written in John’s writings).

Going where Jesus has gone is following the commandment to love one another. The intention of this kind of love (agape`) is selfless, sacrificial, steadfast love (hesed – Hebrew - Ps. 136), the kind that can only come from God. This is not the romantic, sentimental, smitten-love of infatuated lovers (eros>erotic), nor the love families and friends share because they are bound together by blood ties or mutual fondness (philio>Philadephia). This agape` love Jesus is a command, not a suggestion or invitation, but a command to those who would go where he is going, the laying-down-your-life-for-another-love; love that willing goes through pain, suffering, even to the point of death in behalf of the other; love that only God-infused presence can offer (Jn 15:12-14; I John 4:7-21).

This is a “new” command; a new kind of love. The word, “new” from the Greek is a “brand new”, a never-before-new. This is not a remodeled command. It would seem that what is new here is that previously people would love those they liked or were associated with and did not need to love those beyond their own kin or choosing. Only God had to love everybody and everything. In Hebrew scriptures God’s love was from everlasting to everlasting, was able to pardon, was pure grace. That love was common for God but not expected of people. Jesus, however, says if we are to go where Jesus goes we must love like God loves, we must love like Jesus himself has loved. “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another”. Jesus fully embraced and lived the God-life within him, which from the beginning was love. Now it our turn to do the same.

If you want to know if people are related to one another, you look for resemblances; family of origin, nationality, race, even geographic regional influences. My twin daughters don’t look like me. They share all their father’s physical features and coloring. They have even been asked if they were adopted. Appearances can be deceiving at times and so one has to look deeper, for even adopted children can become more like their adoptive parents as they choose to live within those same values and patterns. Jesus said that the way in which those who followed him loved one another would be the resemblance, the indicator, the identity card attaching them to him, just as the way Jesus loved united him in God. If we are go the way of Jesus, if we are to look and act and be like Jesus, the way in which to go is love, loving as God loves. It’s that simple and that hard. God love looks and is different than what is seen in this broken world. It’s the only love that can transform the world and save the world, the whole cosmos.

This new command of Jesus as written by John is given on the night of Jesus arrest, on the eve of his death. Jesus has washed his disciples feet and given them an example of servant love. His command to love one another is sandwiched between his telling of Judas’ betrayal and of Peter’s denial. God love isn’t about loving those who are perfect. Going the way of love is loving the other even when the other inflicts deep pain, the pain of betrayal and denial, the hurt of disappointments, lies, disregard. It is loving the other because one is still able to see the God-seed planted in the other beyond the broken places. Going the way of love is forgiving and not holding wrongs against the other. Going the way of love may even require death. Going the way of love seems impossible for mere humans to do and yet that is exactly what Jesus commands, to love like God does.

How does God love this world, all its people, all its creatures, all its substance? How can I love like God? How does God love me when I fail to live fully and intentionally as God desires for me? How do I love myself when I fail? How do I love when others and even the world fails and falls down. If God so loved the world and if Jesus commands us to go the way of God-love, do I have a free pass to love less than God? Thank God I am given lots of opportunities to practice God-love. I am given lots of people and occasions– my husband, my children, our families, friends, neighbors, a community of faith, The Church, the world, strangers along the way, leaders, teachers, offenders, warriors, homeless, the self-absorbed, and the selfless, one and all, who allow me to practice God love. And what of enemies, those far away and those within? Yep, Jesus said to even love them as God would. (Peter and the Early Church learned this inclusive love in the story of Cornelius, also the lectionary passage for today. Acts 11:1-18. God’s Spirit gives all people the “turn around”/repentance/metanoia that leads to life. Love.)

If we want to go the way of Jesus, if we want to live fully in the intention of God, we must look like Jesus, look like God, and be clothed by God love.

O loving God, who beckons us to love
in the same way we have been loved,
help me to always have your love in
heart, mind, and in every act.
Love was the beginning.
Love will be the ending.
God is love. Love is God.
Help me to be live and be
fully united in Love.