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Live Your Life in Unity
Fr Chris Thomas, who belongs to the Emmaus Family of Prayer, and heads up the Irenaeus project in the Liverpool diocese, draws out the meaning for us today of Jesus' prayer for unity in chapter 17 of John's Gospel.
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God wants intimacy with those He has created. Jesus invites us to mirror the relationship that he has with His father, a relationship of mutual indwelling. In John's Gospel Jesus says "! am in the Father and the father is in me." It's the most beautiful expression of the heart of God, and an invitation to restore what has been lost. That we be deeply and fully united with God. In order to enter into this intimacy we often have to face the images of God that we've been given and the image of ourselves that we've accepted and let them go. There's a sense in which we are to reach a place of emptiness so that God can awaken within us an awareness of the deep and overwhelming presence that is life in its fullness. Most of us experience fragmentation At some level deep within ourselves most of us experience fragmentation. We push away those things within ourselves that we don't like or that others have told us are wrong or bad. Sometimes the deep insecurity that dogs all human beings causes us to wear masks and play games so that others don't meet 'the real me'. If we do that successfully then we can even kid ourselves that the image we portray is authentic. Instead we just become more fragmented inside. The pain and brokenness that we all pick up on our journey through life shatters us still more. When we meet the risen Lord, however, He invites us to integrate within ourselves all that has become fragmented. He loves us into wholeness. John Donne wrote the famous line 'No man is an island' or in today's politically correct terms 'No one is an island'. We are in relationship with one another whether we like it or not. We are connected with those who have gone before us and those who will come after us and those who share this planet with us. Those who allow the reign of God to begin to happen within them recognise the call to enter into deep intimate vulnerable relationships with other people. That's why Jesus invites us not to judge or condemn one another but rather to treat one another with real reverence and respect. We have to enter the issues that are threatening to destroy our world There are some fundamentalist groups that seem to think Christians are to remove themselves from the world. The world is seen as a bad place that we have to endure in order to get to heaven. Sometimes that can creep in to the Charismatic scene. We have our eyes so fixed on the heavens that we don't recognise the gift that the world is. It's a schizophrenic understanding that thinks God puts us in one place simply so that we can get to another. We aren't called to be removed from the world but to enter into it and love it passionately. It seems to me that we have to enter into the issues that are threatening to destroy it. A person who wants real unity will be concerned about global warming and the destruction of rain forests, and the way in which we plunder natural resources for our own selfish needs. It's right to be concerned about the nuclear issue and the need to live simply so that others can simply live. We are to live in this world showing others the truth of humanity and the beauty of the world and sharing with others the invitation to live our lives for the sake of unity. As we enter into relationship with ourselves, others and the world we will begin to sense the call of the divine to enter into real intimacy and connectedness. We'll begin to get in touch with the God who is in all things. We've just celebrated Christmas, the coming together of the divine and the human. It's all about integration and unity. Call to integration and unity You'll find all of this desire for integration and for unity in chapter 17 of John's Gospel. If we read it carefully we can find that it's a call to us to live our lives for the sake of unity. John wants us to know that only the presence of God can draw us into unity. The world cannot produce unity. To live a fully Christian life is to give your life for unity. It will turn our lives upside down as it smashes our image of God, our understanding of ourselves and the world and calls us into deep relationship with others. If you take the call seriously it will shatter your political ideologies, your social ideologies. It will revolutionise the way that you live and your understanding of life. The prayer parallels the "Our Father" in the other Gospels in that it is addressed to the Father and it is prayed that the Father be glorified, hallowed, here and now. It's concerned that the kingdom come on earth and that the disciples be protected from the evil one. Unlike the 'Our Father' it's not a teaching on how to pray but an invitation to enter into prayer with the Father and the Son. It's an invitation to enter into relationship with them. It's a glimpse of the intimacy between them and a reflection of the love that they have for us in allowing us to share in that intimacy. It's all about unity. In January the Church invites us to celebrate the week for Christian Unity. There can be no better way to celebrate it than to take John's Gospel and pray chapter 17 reflecting on the different levels of unity that it calls us to. Better still, why not invite others to come together and to pray through it with you? Especially people of other Christian traditions. It might just turn your world upside down.
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