Our Family Tree

Scripture John 17:20-26. Common English Bible

“I’m not praying only for them but also for those who believe in me because of their word. I pray they will be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. I pray that they also will be in us, so that the world will believe that you sent me. I’ve given them the glory that you gave me so that they can be one just as we are one. I’m in them and you are in me so that they will be made perfectly one. Then the world will know that you sent me and that you have loved them just as you loved me.

“Father, I want those you gave me to be with me where I am. Then they can see my glory, which you gave me because you loved me before the creation of the world. 

“Righteous Father, even the world didn’t know you, but I’ve known you, and these believers know that you sent me. I’ve made your name known to them and will continue to make it known so that your love for me will be in them, and I myself will be in them.”

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I usually select the title of each message a month or more in advance.  For this one, though, I kept waffling between Christian DNA and Our Family Tree right up until Wednesday of this week.   As you can tell, the tree won.  I kept running into tree imagery all week as I researched this passage.  So, Family Tree it is!   The Tree of Life is an image that spans from the beginning of the Bible until the very end.  It is found in both the Garden of Eden and in New Jerusalem.  If you have ever been to my house you may have noticed a tapestry of the Tree of Life, that I glued onto a Japanese screen and which stands in my living room.  I was ever so tempted to bring it today as an illustration, but it’s too big to fit in my Smart Car.   It’s kind of cool.  It’s a Celtic design, so it’s all interwoven curved lines.  Adam and Eve stand at either side of the tree and in its branches are birds and fish and all kinds of creatures that one doesn’t normally see in a tree.  The Tree of Life is our family tree.  It’s where our story starts - and ends.  

Today’s Gospel story takes us back to the days right before Easter, continuing John’s description of all the things that happened on that last night, the night when Jesus ate his last meal with his disciples, and washed their feet, and prophesied his betrayal and death, and Peter’s denial.  At the very end of the meal, he prayed.  He prayed for his disciples.  He said, in verse 9, “I’m not praying for the world, but for those you gave me.”  Not for everyone, but specifically for those who follow him.   And not just those who were in the room with him that night or even his followers who were not present that night.  But also “for those who believe in me because of their word”.  For those who have not yet heard of him, but will over the course of the next couple thousand years.  For us, in fact.   And his prayer is this, “21 I pray they will be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. I pray that they also will be in us, so that the world will believe that you sent me.” 

Jesus was pretty serious about his followers being united. Over and over he exhorted them - us - with words that spoke of how we should treat  each other.  “Love one another.”  “Love your neighbor.’  “Love your enemies.”    In the 10th chapter of Luke we find a story he told in which a man from Samaria helped an injured Israelite, even though they were enemies, and described that Samaritan, that enemy, as “neighbor.”   He was really serious about this.  And here, at the Last Supper, he says, “21 I pray they will be one, Father . . . so that the world will believe that you sent me.“  

Why is it so difficult for us to get that right?  I mean, back in 1809 the Reverend Thomas Campbell got himself in serious trouble with the Presbyterians because he insisted that everyone should be welcome at the Lord’s Table.  He didn’t see anywhere in the Bible where Jesus said only people who were baptized in a particular tradition or who believed in one of the creeds used as tests of membership in existing denominations, could share the Lord’s Supper together.  So he and some others, including his son Alexander, started a movement that proclaimed “no creed but Christ,” baptized by immersion, and celebrated the Lord’s Supper every Sunday.  (Sound familiar?) Their dream was that all Christians could worship together in love.  That is why Disciples of Christ say things like “Unity is our polar star,” and call ourselves “A movement for wholeness.”   We believe, strongly, that everyone should be welcome at this Table.   It’s part of our DNA.   Alas, even a movement that stands for unity couldn’t keep it together.  We have split several times, over slavery and organ music and the authority of Scripture . . .   Even though we say,  “Where the Bible speaks, we speak.  Where the Bible is silent, we are silent,”  we can’t seem to agree on what the Bible says when it is speaking!   It is, I fear, the nature of humans.  

Jesus said, “I pray they will be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.”   If it is in the nature of humans to disagree and split and fragment over details, Jesus’ prayer is for us to do something unnatural.  Because, let’s face it, even when we say something as seemingly innocent as “Loving all children of God,” (which is what the sign out front says today) someone is going to find something wrong with that.  They will think that the phrase “all children of God” is code for a particular group of people.  It doesn’t seem to occur to folks that it means just what it says . . . loving all children of God.   You know, because Jesus commanded us to “love your neighbor.”   There are T-shirts that list a whole lot of different kinds of neighbors, but seriously folks, all really does mean ALL.  We shouldn’t even have to discuss who “all” means!  

How awesome is it, though, that Jesus prayed for us, before we believed?  Before any of us heard the Good News he said, “I pray that they also will be in us, so that the world will believe that you sent me.  I’ve given them the glory that you gave me so that they can be one just as we are one.”   Like the prayer of a parent overheard by the child for whom one intercedes, what this prayer reveals is Jesus’ deep love for the disciples, even knowing that Judas would betray him and that Peter would deny him.  This prayer reveals Jesus’ deep love for us, his followers, even knowing that we are stubborn and contentious and argumentative  and disobedient by nature. This great prayer evokes a longing in us to be fully “one” with Jesus, so that his prayer of love for us and his desire for us to be one with him and with one another becomes for us a guide to living.   

Immediately after Jesus prays this prayer, he goes with his disciples to the garden, where he is arrested and taken away to be tried, and ultimately executed.  That cross, now empty, is the trunk of our Family Tree, which is rooted in Adam and Eve, in the Garden, in sin and disobedience, and whose branches, filled with all kinds of unlikely creatures, stretch up into the New Jerusalem, into forgiveness and eternal life.  Our Family Tree is not just the story of humanity as a whole, but also our own individual stories.  For we, humans, are error prone, like Adam and Eve and all who came before us.  But we Christians make a decision to change our lives, and, if already baptized, renew our dedication to serving Christ.  Or we present ourselves for baptism, so that we may become one with Christ and with each other, so that we may begin life anew, knowing that we will still make mistakes, but also knowing that ours is a forgiving God, that we can turn back to this new way of life any time we fall.  And through our unity with Christ and with each other, the world may see the fulfillment of Jesus’ prayer, “Then the world will know that you sent me and that you have loved them just as you loved me.”

Let us go from this place today dedicated to being in Christ, fulfilling his prayer, so that the spark of his love may fall from us onto everyone we meet, and that all the world will know that God  loves them.