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| Jesus prayed that "we all may be one." |
He is the “lamb” who saves us through his death and resurrection. He is the “son” who is one with the God of Israel. He is the “Christ,” the long-expected messiah who inaugurates God’s kingdom of justice and freedom and truth and peace and love. He is the sovereign “Lord” to whom we pledge our ultimate allegiance. He is the “servant,” the “light” who illumines answers to questions about life, e. g., what on earth am I here for..
John’s description stands out for me: “Behold, the lamb of God.” John pointed out that Jesus was the sacrificial lamb who would re-establish a right relationship for us with God and one another. In death, there will be eternal life.
The author of Isaiah takes us back to the sixth century before Jesus, to the Jews exiled in Babylonia. This passage is a poem, a song, about a “servant of God” who will bring hope to those who have lost hope in the future. This “servant” will save all peoples, be a “light” to all. The Christian community saw in this “servant” Jesus, whose vocation or calling was to be our way to eternal life, our truth who sets us free from false isms, our light who guides us in our earthly journey toward our heavenly dwelling place.
Paul in his letter to the Christian community at Corinth, a seaport city in Greece, speaks about his own vocation as an apostle. God through Jesus by the power of the Spirit has bestowed his grace and peace upon us. Paul challenges us to live a life of virtue that’s worthy of our calling, to become a holy people.
In the Gospel, John points out Jesus as the Lamb of God, an allusion to the Hebrew Passover meal and the sacrificial lamb in Jewish temple worship. John then saw Jesus arise from the Jordan waters and the Spirit confirming Jesus as “Son of God.” This Jesus, truly human and truly divine, who through his death/resurrection by the power of the Spirit re-established our friendship with God again, is gloriously alive in his community of disciples, the one Church he founded, to continue his saving ministry until he comes again in power and glory to create a “new heaven and a new earth.”
Jesus prayed that this community would always be one. Yet over the centuries it has divided into many communities: Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants: Lutherans, Episcopalians, Presbyterians etc.
And that is why we have a week of prayer for Christian Unity January 19-25. All Christians profess one Lord, one faith and one baptism. But they have split into different and sometimes opposing traditions.
As we pray with Jesus that “we all may be one,” we recognize that Jesus in today’s Gospel is the foundation of our world-wide faith community. And we ought to give thanks to God for this: a community that calls us to a life with God here and now, and to eternal life where we shall be like God and see God as God is.
