My brain is particularly active this morning. I have much to get accomplished before I leave for the weekend and yet, all I want to do is sit and knit! So I take a few deep breaths, still challenged to breath and type at the same time. It works. I do slow down, but at the bottom of the breath as I start to inhale again, I feel the thoughts scramble about again. But the scrambling is less on each breath.
"I ask for the grace to pray and meditate regularly. I ask for patience, tolerance, gentleness, empathy, and compassion. I ask to abstain from anger, anxiety, compulsive behaviour, discouragement, arrogance, and self-importance. I ask to know and follow Jesus more closely, seeking justice, loving kindness and walking humbly."
John 17:21-26
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. 22The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, 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. 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.
25 ‘Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. 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.’
1) "...that they may all be one;" "...believe;" "...glory;" "...they may be one;" "...we are one;" "...I in them and you in me," "...completely one;" "...the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them."
2) "I in them and you in me, that they may be completely one." John, of all the gospel writers is the most explicit about the difficulty in explaining the experience of God/salvation/the kingdom of heaven/new birth/truth/light. Everywhere else in the gospel, John has Jesus saying something, someone trying to understand him literally, then Jesus explaining, no, I'm using a metaphor, I mean something else: Jesus is not a loaf of bread, Jesus is not water, Nicodemus was not expected to crawl back in his mother's womb and be born a second time. But here, John is struggling to be explicit about the experience of loving union offered to the disciples. As Jesus has union with God, he has union with the disciples, and the disciples can have with each other, and Jesus and God. Glory. There is a parable from the Talmud, I believe, in which the rabbi asks of his disciples, when is the Night over? various disciples describe different signs of dawn: silhouettes on the hill, the fading of stars, the break of the sun above the horizon. But the star pupil speaks up and says, "When I look into the eyes of a stranger and see a lover." "completely one"
3) What is the invitation in all this. To receive the offer of union when it is offered.
"Holy One, receive me."
Breathprayer: "You in me... completely one."
NB: I will be off grid for the next two days so will not be posting again until Monday, May 1. Peace be with you.
And also with you, Rev David. Have a great weekend
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