That They May Be One

Reflections on the Sunday Lectionary — John 17:20-26

It’s one of the last things Jesus prays before the cross.

Not for protection.
Not for power.
But for unity.

“I pray… that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.”

It’s such a vulnerable prayer.
Jesus isn't laying out a strategic plan here.
He’s praying from the heart, for His disciples then, and for us now.

He’s not asking for agreement or niceness or sameness.
He’s asking for oneness.
The kind of deep, relational, spiritual unity that mirrors the very life of the Trinity.

This is Jesus saying: I want them to share in the love we’ve shared from before the beginning of everything.

That’s wild. That the Creator wanted to share this unity and love that ultimately led to the birthing of creation.

This is the ongoing work of formation. Helping to align our head and heart with God.
It’s not just becoming a better version of ourselves; it’s becoming people who live in communion.
With Jesus.
With each other.
With the world.

And that kind of unity doesn’t come from forcing uniformity.
It grows out of ‘abiding’.
Out of being with Jesus long enough that His heart begins to shape ours.
Out of learning to love people who are different than us—not by pretending we’re the same, but by choosing to stay connected anyway.

Jesus prays, “I in them and you in me, so that they may be brought to complete unity.”
And then He says this:
“Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

Jesus isn’t asking us to create unity out of nothing—He’s inviting us to remember the unity that already exists in God, and to live from that place.

John Philip Newell puts it this way in Christ of the Celts:

“We are not essentially separate from one another but one with each other in the one Life. We have come from the same beginning and are journeying to the same end.”¹

This isn’t a sentimental kind of unity; it’s deeply spiritual and deeply practical.
It reminds us that we are connected not because we always agree, but because we are held together in the love of Christ.

So maybe this is the vision:
A community of people so rooted in the love of Jesus that they live differently.
Love differently.
Forgive differently.
Disagree differently.

Not perfectly. But faithfully.
Not because it’s easy, but because it’s true.

Because when we really live like we belong to each other, the world notices.
And it starts to look a little more like heaven.

Photo by Gary Butterfield on Unsplash

1. John Philip Newell, Christ of the Celts: The Healing of Creation (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008), 8.