Jesus Prays to the Father | John 17:1-26

Transcript is automatically produced. Errors may be present.

Thank you Dean. And thank you JD as well for the phone length. Read scripture at South Fellowship and you get a free phone. And just encouragement to the rest of you. My name’s Alex. I’m one of the pastors here. If we haven’t met, I would love to meet you. And so please feel free to drop by, say hi.

We’re gonna talk about the passage we just heard, which is rich and complex and beautiful, and I hope that we can come out the end of it with something that we can take away. When I was seven. I went through what is the closest thing England has to a ritual experience, like a coming of age thing.

We don’t have one of the great ones across history where people did things like take the kids at around a certain age and put them outside the village and let them see if they can survive together. This real experience of liminality. But we did have. What we had, which was our first experience being coached in the art of soccer, the closest thing that England has to a unifying experience.

And so about seven I was told by my parents, Hey, you’re staying late after school. There’s a guy that’s gonna come by and he’s gonna be your coach. I remember waiting for him on the field as he jumped over the fence behind the school and immediately it was the coolest thing I’d seen an adult do in my life.

He had my respect and so great were his powers of persuasion that even coaching us for just the short time. And his first session. I went away believing that my future was secure. One day my name would be up in lights. I would be playing for one of the great teams in the world of soccer. So great was my confidence.

I went home to my parents and told them I’m gonna be a soccer player or a football player in our language. And I said to them, I wanna go down to the park together. And I want us to play soccer so you can see just how good I’ve become. It must have been pretty persuasive because that day we got together as a family and we went down to the park.

There were the five of us, my parents, I, my younger brother and sister. And so as we got there, the first thing I did was grab a couple of items of clothing and make some goals. And then I turned confidently to my family and said, okay. Me versus you guys, just me on my own. That’s all I need. And you guys will play against each other now.

I felt like it summed up their ability fairly well. My brother had never kicked a ball before. My sister had never walked before, and my mom, although I’m sure must have been a great athlete at some point, was too nice to ever hurt my feelings by, doing anything that would make me feel bad.

But it failed. And to reckon on my father accurately. Not only was my dad surprisingly athletic, having done multiple athletic things throughout his life, he was also delighted to be able to put down the arrogance that his son had recently found in a way that would be devastating. And at six three.

220 pounds. He was also about 150 pounds heavier than I was when we first played. And so things went exactly as you’d imagine. I dribbled the ball for about two, three seconds. My dad knocked me off the ball, took it, and that was the last I saw it until I came up with a new strategy. I turned around to my family and said, how about this me and dad versus you guys?

In actual fact, soccer is distinct in how essential team work is out of all the sports, it’s the sport in which the greatest player makes the least difference to a team. A team with one incredible player and multiple really average players will lose every time to a team of just. Great players. That’s just how it tends to work.

One person doesn’t make as much different. It’s a lesson in the art of teamwork. Teamwork is something that it seems that Jesus is deeply passionate about. When we read this section of John’s. Gospel. John 17 is in an interesting format. It follows from John 14, 15 16, the series of addresses Jesus makes, but it’s distinct.

Not only does Jesus lay out his vision for what life is gonna look like, what the church is going to look like in his view, but he does it only by praying. Never addresses his disciples. His followers wants constantly just him in prayer with his father. But you get this sense that he wants them to hear what he’s saying.

That the words he’s saying are not only supposed to help them understand what comes next, but they’re also supposed to help you. And I. Understand what comes next. But before we get too far, let’s just reorientate ourselves for a second. In the season that we’re in, the church calendar moves in seasons.

The first one starts around December. The season of Advent takes us through Christmas where we celebrate the fact that in the Jesus story, God is with us. The second season of Lent and Easter is where we remember that God is for us. He did something for us. And then the third season, the one of Pentecost is we actually celebrate the fact that God is dwelling within us, empowering us.

And then this final season we reflect on the fact that God works through us. He doesn’t just do it himself. He allows us to participate in his great mission. Actually all. Of this passage connects with every single one of those different seasons. And as we’ve gone through Lent, I’ve tried to describe it in some different ways that will maybe help you connect with it.

The first idea was that it’s the season of bright sadness Lents, a season where we reflect on some pretty heavy things. We reflect on mortality, which you don’t do every day. It’s usually something we try not to think about, and we enter into that fact in Len, but that sadness can never really escape the light.

Of resurrection that comes afterwards. Think about it as a season of renewal, of change. If you love to garden, it’s a season spring where we actually start to see things emerge from the ground. Yeah, last week I rhapsodized for a long period about my beautiful peach tree in my backyard. But it’s just not me.

Not just me that feels those things. My son, Jude, constantly asked me to go look at this peach tree in a series of a few hours in one afternoon. He’d say, let’s go see if it’s changed again. And of course it hadn’t. But the passion, the joy in that emergence is there. And lead is also. A season of repentance.

It’s not a season where we necessarily just say sorry for lots of stuff, but it’s a season where we intentionally think about turning around and walking towards God in a distinct way. Maybe recognize some of the ways we’ve gone in our own direction, maybe recognize some of the ways that we get to turn back.

To be transformed. This is my good friend Walter Broman, not actually a friend. I just really like his writing. He says this I imagine lent for you and for me is a great departure from the greedy, anxious anti us of our economy. A great departure from our exclusionary politics that fears the other.

A great departure from self-indulgent consumerism, that devas creation, and then an arrival in a new neighborhood. ’cause it is gift. A gift to be simple. Reminds me of JRR Tolkien. It’s no bad thing to live a simple life, especially in a season like Lent. So to help us track for this John 17 passage, which is dense as many of these passages have been, you’ve done it.

You’ve made it through almost good jobs. This is some of the hardest landscape that we’ll cover in scripture. Jesus’ talk for page, after page, and he’s really just thrown the last message to his disciples. This is the. Thing you say before you walk out the door. I’ve broken this chapter down into three movements.

It’s the third one that I want us to focus on. Verse 20 to verse 26. We’ll drop in on the first two fairly quick, but when we get to the third one, that’s when I really want you to feel what Jesus is saying. First movement. John chapter 17, verse one to two. Jesus said, after Jesus said this, he looked.

Towards Heaven and prayed. John 17 is a prayer. It’s a communication between father and son, one that’s rich and beautiful. We get a sense of Jesus’ confidence in that relationship, how it grounds everything that he does. Look towards heaven and prayed. Father, the hour has come. Glorify your son that your son may glorify.

Cute. Now, if you’ve been tracking with John, you might know that glorify is a code word for the cro, for the cross for crucifixion. Doesn’t seem like how we would understand glory. I just talked about being famous, having your name up in lights. That to us is glory. And Jesus says actually the crucifixion, the cross, this moment of completing his mission to him.

That is the most glorious thing there is the glory of completing the mission, the glory that comes after the mission. And this is the thing that he has been longing for. He has been waiting for. It’s similar to the way in Matthew, mark, and Luke, these other biographies of Jesus’ life. He prays things like, father, your will be done.

Going to the cross is God’s will for him. And he says yes to it here in John. For you granted him authority over all people that he might serve, give eternal life to all those you have given him in the first movement. Jesus praise for himself. Praise for himself that he would have the courage to continue with the mission he’s been given.

Praise that he would be faithful. Praise that the message that he gives would pass on to others. And thus movement is Jesus praying for himself. That he might give eternal life to all those you have given to him. Now, this is eternal life. This is Jesus’ definition of the life, eternal, what it is to be with him forever, that they know you, the one true God and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

It’s a relational experience. I have brought you Glory on Earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. Remember, that’s glory to Jesus. And now Father, glorify me. The resurrection is the second piece of glory with the glory I had with you before the world began. I always wonder how the disciples, here’s stuff like this, these first 12 ordinary guys that follow Jesus.

What does it feel like to find out that the guy you’ve wandered around the countryside with for three years, you’ve listened to teach, you’ve slept in the same field as you’ve eaten at the same table, as what is it like to find out that person was actually the one that was glorified before the world began?

It’s a startling experience, right? Verse six and eight, I’ve revealed you to those whom you gave me outta the world. They were yours. They gave you, gave them to me, and they have obeyed your word. Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. Frank gave them the words you gave me, and they accepted them.

They knew with certainty that I came from you and they believed that you sent me. The one thing that we can say for these guys who have had all sorts of questions, all sorts of doubts made all sorts of mistakes is the thing they have consistently believed is that Jesus came from God, came from his father, that he was on some kind of particular mission, that his life was noteworthy in a way that no other life was noteworthy.

Jesus prays for himself. Second movement. Again, fairly quick through this one. I’m gonna skip a couple of verses 79 through 10. I pray for them. I’m not praying for the world, but for those you have given me for, they are yours. All I have is yours and all you have is mine and Glory has come to me. Through them.

Jesus prays not just for himself but for his first disciples. Pray for them that in the midst of all they’re about to experience, that they would have courage, that they would be a team, that they would be bonded in some kind of unity. And if you know anything about them, for the most part, they’ve been in it for themselves up until this point.

Jesus prays for his first followers. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world, but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am. Not of it. Sanctify them by the truth. Your word is truth. Have you ever heard someone say something? This sounds like an oversimplification, something like trying to be in the world and not of the world.

It’s this idea that maybe you can live a life following Jesus where you’re still living here. But you are living like a follower of Jesus. You’re living in a way that looks like him. It’s the thing that we say on the wall when we come in. The thing that we all tacitly agree to, those of us that call self home, we are living in the way of Jesus with the heart of Jesus.

Sanctify them by the truth. Your word is truth, which brings us to the third movement. Jesus prays for himself. Jesus prays for his first follow us. And then he does this. My prayer is not for them alone. My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me. Through their message.

Jesus prays for every single person across history, all the meandering, 2000 years, every person that’s believed from father to son, from mother to daughter, everyone who’s picked up the message from a friend, everyone who’s passed the message on down over the years, every missionary that’s gone all over the world, he prays for every single one of them all the way down to us.

Jesus prays for you and for me. Jesus prays for you, prays that in the midst of your journey, you would stay connected to him. Stay connected to this bigger thing Jesus prays for you. For me now, one of the things I’d love to do with scripture, it’s actually my favorite thing about reading scripture is to ask it questions to try and figure out what’s the heartbeat to this.

Now, on the surface, that question of why or what or where can sound like, you’re expecting scripture to give you something other than the, just the black and white. And I actually am, I’m hoping for something more. I think there’s the black words and then the white words, and we’re trying to get the heart of God from these words that were written thousands of years ago.

And this tradition of asking questions has a long history. There’s a famous story of a rabbi who has three disciples, three students, and he asks ’em to read a passage of scripture and says, I want you to go away and come back with the questions that you have about this text. And so the students go away and they come back and the rabbi says, so how many questions do you have?

First rabbi, first student confidently says, I have five questions. Second student says I only have three questions. And then the last student says I only have two questions. And the Rabbi responds, how dare you insult the word of God? I have 97 questions about this text. It seems like the text is supposed to draw questions from us.

It’s supposed to make us curious, not assume that we know what’s going on. Why does Jesus say this? Why does Jesus pray in this way for you and for me, and for every follower of Jesus in history, what does he want us to remember? What did he want those first readers of John’s biography of Jesus’ life?

Maybe 95, 96 ad maybe 60 years after Jesus died and rose again. What’s he want them to remember? What does he want them to know? What does he want you and me to know all those years later and maybe it’s as simple as this to start with. Maybe the first thing is he wants us to remember that he thought of us, that he saw all of these 2000 years of history, saw all the struggles over the years, all the constant arguments, the battles back and forth.

Saw all the ways that church life would be hard. Saw all the ways that the world would be difficult, a hard place to be. Think of a moment in history, and people that followed Jesus in it, and Jesus thought of those people in the midst of the darkest of times. Think about the Christians that opposed the Nazis.

Jesus thought of them. Think about the Christians persecuted by the Roman Empire. Jesus thought of them. Think of us in this moment now, and Jesus sees history and he prays for people just like you and me. I pray for them. Father, my prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message that all of them might be one father.

Now that seems a stretch, a reach. That we might be one, but what comes next is even further out there. I pray that all of them might be one father, just as you are in me and I am in you, I pray that those follows of mine will be as close. Father as we are close. That sound like a optimistic, audacious kind of prayer to believe that you and I would be that close, as close as Father and son.

My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through the message that all of them may be one father, just as you are me and I’m in you, may they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. Jesus says that the thing he’s talking about here somehow will have an effect on how well the church does the job of reaching the rest of the world, that something about them being won will be a game changer for how the world sees the church.

Jesus is gonna say the same again and I’m always curious when he does that, it feels like we’re supposed to take note of that. Watch the next few verses 2223. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are, one I in them and you in me, so that they what may be bought.

Complete unity. Jesus there uses the same language, uses about his work on the cross. On the cross. He says it is finished. And this is the same kind of word he says here, that something will be finished in a, some kind of connection, some kind of relationship across everyone who calls themselves a follower of his.

His plan for us was unity. His plan for us was that we would be close, that the thing that he did would draw us together in a particular way. Jesus is a pretty incredible teacher. I hope you’ve gathered that seems redundant, but things he say just seem to track all across history. Even for people that don’t call themselves followers of his.

This is something he says in Matthew, different biography, 1225, every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined. Every city or household divided against itself will not stand. Jesus says that if you’re on the same team and yet don’t think you’re on the same team. In the end, the thing falls apart. And this phrase is it is in its own way, rumbled on through history.

It’s been picked up by all sorts of writers. This is Alexandra Dumar. All for one. One for all United. We stand, divided we all fall. Sounds like Jesus, right? The sense that when a team is together, it has to function like a team to do what it’s supposed to do, unless of course you’re Chuck Norris. God rest his soul, who apparently was a one man team who could spell team with an I in it, I’m told.

And all those other wonderful memes, 2223, I’ve given them the glory you gave me. That they may be one as we are one, I and them and you and me, so that they might be brought to complete unity and watch this ’cause there’s two big competing ideas here, and I tend to focus on one and miss the other. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them.

Even as you have loved me, isn’t that hard to believe? Isn’t it hard to believe that God loves you as he loves his son? Jesus. To go back to my coaching analogy earlier, the experience of playing soccer. Imagine a bunch of parents stood on the touchline and they’re all watching their kids play, and they all have this sense of love because they’re all their kids.

But then there’s one kid who’s just shining, who’s just doing everything right, who’s the star of the show. Maybe that’s your kid and good for you. That’s fine. And maybe you watch them and you’re filled with this incredible sense of parental love. And I always imagine the father watching Jesus do life as a human.

And just having that sense of pride, every decision, the right one, constantly doing the right thing, constantly loving people where they are constantly teaching truth in a beautiful way. And then think about the way I live life and wonder how I might fit into that wider analogy. ’cause when you watch kids play soccer at that young age, there’s always the kid that’s the star of the show.

And then there’s always the kid that sits down in the middle of the field that forgets is a game happening, has a finger up his nose, potentially eating whatever he pulls out. I’m not saying I was that kid, but I knew that kid. And then I wonder how his parents feel watching him. Sure, they love him, but the pride feeling must be a little bit different for them.

And maybe you parent that kid as well. I don’t know. I always assume Jesus sees me. That God the father, sees me different to how he sees Jesus. And yet to read this idea that you have loved them even as you have loved me. It’s easy for every idea to get lost in that idea, but look at the other thing that’s hidden there under the service.

Then the world will know that you sent me. Same idea again, somewhere there’s this idea for Jesus that the way we do life together, what unity looks like for the church is the single big mark of how people see the message of Jesus in the world. Sure, there are other ones, the stories of resurrection.

There’s all this history that’s connected to Jesus. Jesus was a real person who really lived, and the evidence that he rose again is wonderful. But Jesus says that the church will be a huge part. Of that evidence too, that when we do life together, it means something. Why does Jesus think that unity matters so much?

And here’s what I think it is. Few weeks ago we were looking at John 14, the second half, where Jesus uses this word for transformation. He talks about change and he talks about change in this incredible soaring way. He talks about change for you and I as Jesus followers in the same way that we use language for this change here, metamorphosis.

In the same way that a caterpillar breaks down into a cocoon, its body disintegrates, and it becomes a butterfly. A brand new creation, one that didn’t exist before. He says that transformation is happening in people like you and I. And Jesus seems to suggest that he brings a message of transformation and that transformation, that change should draw us together like nothing else in the world.

Can think for a moment about how you choose friends. How do you choose people that you connect with, people that you choose to do life with? Not family. You don’t choose them, but friends. How do you connect with people? We usually find people that have had a similar experience, people that like the same stuff.

People that connect on all of those terms. You talk to them and you find out that no, they’ll, they’re like me. Jesus says that his story. Should be more important than any of those other stories that we create, that the story he has in us should pull us together like no other story in the world. It’s why I can go out to Haiti and meet a pastor and find, there’s just some connection that I don’t find always, even with.

People, my own country, my own language. There’s just something there. It’s why you can go off all over the world and find followers of Jesus. And even when there’s a language barrier, even when there’s a culture barrier, there’s a Jesus connection that’s beyond all of those things. Jesus says, I deal in transformation and transformed People tend to glue together.

I think Jesus knows that unity. Gives credibility to the message that a group of transformed people living life together should look particular, should look distinct, should live a particular way. It’s what Paul, this other writer, this follower of Jesus sketches out a few years later. This is one of my favorite chapters, two Corinthians five.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old is gone. The new he is here. All of this is from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, reconnecting people, that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them, and he’s committed to us.

The message of reconciliation. He says, the church is in that reconciliation business too. Inviting people in to that story. And then he says this just the top line. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, we represent him. Came across the story a while ago and just interested me and then I started pushing into it a little more.

I just was curious about it and it’s reflected in this picture here, focuses on a couple of major centers in the world, London for. New York is another, and it looks at how diplomats come into those spaces, come to live amongst people, but to work for the country that they came from and how they interact with the laws of that place.

It turns out they don’t interact very well. They’re all around London, and all around New York parking fines have amassed to such a degree that there’s now hundreds of millions of dollars owned to the United States and to the UK from countries all over the world. People come and say, I’m an ambassador.

It just doesn’t matter. I don’t need to pay. But as you look into it, more something’s reflected in who makes that decision? On the chart, the list of countries from the most corrupt to the least corrupt. The people that come from countries that are really corrupt are the ones that don’t pay the people that come from countries where corruption is frowned upon, where it’s not acceptable.

Those people pay their tickets and their fines just fine. Somewhere that speaks to what it is to be the church. That if we live a life that looks out of sync with the life of Jesus, we start to question the value of that place, that country that they come from. Start to wonder whether the message is really real.

Jesus says, there’s something going on with our role as ambassadors and that division when we don’t look like the church. It undermines the message. It takes it away. It damages. It. This is SIUs, a writer, second century, few years after Jesus, about a century after Jesus was born. Now, little clue on SIUs.

He didn’t like. Christians, didn’t really like the faith, and so some of the stuff he writes is a bit of a stretch, bit of a reach, but to write it, there had to be some truth behind it. This is what he says about the Christian faith. Remember just about a hundred years later at the start of their movement, they were very few in number.

And unified in purpose. Since that time, they have spread all around a now number in the thousands the various parties have taken to condemning each other so that today they only have one thing if that in common. The name Christian. He goes on, there’s more Christians. It is needless to say, utterly detest each other.

They slander each other constantly with the vastest forms of abuse, and cannot come to any sort of agreement in their teaching. Just a hundred years later. The church is so fractured. There’s no con, there’s no connection between them. Turns out that unity Jesus dreamed of hoped for is super fragile.

Super easy to lose. Andy Stanley, the pastor writer once said, imagine telling Jesus that the word most associated with church is hurt When Jesus dreamed of this church that would do the maximal good in the world, that would be this agent for change. That would be his ambassador. And at times we allow it to become something so broken that it does more harm than good.

That’s why one of the things we talk about at South a lot is how do we come become a place that people that have been hurt by church want a landing can become healed and can become transformed and confined? That Jesus message? Again, I still believe this, the local church is the hope of the world, but only if we believe what Jesus believed.

And live what he asked us to live. Dallas Willard writer philosopher said This many people will be drawn in without any special strategy, but simply by the health of the people. A few years ago, I used to work with an organization in Romania called Camino Felix. A beautiful organization that put the lonely into families, took orphans and didn’t just find them houses to live in, but gave them homes to live in forever.

All sorts of amazing stories came out of this place. Relationships that have lasted beyond 18 into the twenties and thirties. Lifelong parenting relationships. And the last time I was there, I sat with one of the founders talking about this place that they’d created. This is Village one. This was created by Swedish people.

So the houses are really close together. Village two is American and it’s really far apart just how things work. And I said to him, what are you really proud of? What has happened to you? That’s really good. And he said to me, you know what, in 300 years. We’ve never had two people in the orphanage marry each other.

And I said, why? Why is that important to you? What’s special about that? And he said this, it tells me the world doesn’t see them as broken. The world sees them as people that have been healed. Broken people tend to attract broken people. And he said, the world meets these people that have experienced Jesus here and says that they are valuable.

It says that they are good. The church is supposed to be like that. A place that says you can be whole here, you can be healed here. And we’re supposed to be the evidence that thing’s, that thing works. So here’s a question. How do we find unity when differences exist? How do we find unity? When the person sitting next to you in a seat might believe the church should work completely different to how you think it should work?

How do we find unity when the person sitting next to you thinks that a certain group should be in power and another group should never be in power? How do we operate when there’s real differences between us? How do you keep unity if there’s differences? I guess is a way of summing up that question.

And there’s a few things I would say there. First, unity is not uniformity. There’s nothing about what Jesus says that suggests. We should always think the same about everything. The reality is we may not think the same about everything. We may all be trying to figure out what we believe about what Jesus says and what Jesus does, and there may be people in the room that believe all sorts of things different to you.

I think Jesus thinks that’s okay as long as he is the center and that you’re moving towards him, that is exactly where he wants you to be. Unity isn’t uniformity.

But second question, I wonder whether when you find yourself in that place is disagreement to you about winning an argument or becoming more like Jesus? I wonder whether Jesus doesn’t love it when we find ourselves in a space with people that disagree with us. I wonder if he doesn’t know that’s the best possibility for us to become more like him.

If you watch Jesus operate in the world all through the stories about his life, there’s multiple times where Jesus comes across people that disagree with him, and he seems to be able to debate, yes, seems to be able to hold for doctrinal truth, yes, seems to be able to make a statement, but he never seems to lose this love and care for the person he’s talking to.

Even talking to his disciples, he knows that will betray him. He’s still distinctly loving, distinctly caring. I would suggest if we want to pursue unity and make that important, because Jesus says it’s important, then the heart of unity is actually grace. It’s this generosity towards the other person that wants the best for them.

It gives, it doesn’t take all the time. We have to find a space for grace. Maybe you find that you’re in the midst of debates all the time and debate, trying to move people in your direction, trying to win them over to a specific way of thinking. And maybe I’d ask you this question, are you fighting for something Jesus valued less than the unity he desires?

Seems to Jesus. This is so important and yet we, I. Tend to make other things important. Couple more things that he says, I think help us on this journey. This is verse 24. Father, I want those you have given to me. To be with me. With me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you love me before the creation of the world.

It seems to me like when we get into those kind of spaces, we need to remember that everything is determined in eternity. There’s this invitation to this eternal space that God gives and it’ll invite who he wants to invite, and we don’t get to decide all of those pieces. We don’t even need to know how that works.

Some wise person wants said this. When I get to this eternity that God has planned, I think there’ll be some people there that I’m surprised to see there. There’ll be some people not there that I thought I would see there, and perhaps most of all, I’d be surprised to find myself there. There’s this trust that God will figure things out and we don’t have to have every.

Single answer. The poet John Chavez said this, the heavenly table, the banquet table is open to everyone who is willing to sit down with everyone. Doesn’t mean everyone gets to go, but it means that if you have specific rules about how, who you find to be acceptable, you may be the one with the problem.

And then finally, Jesus says this, I have made you known to them and will continue to make you known. In order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them. This, to me, is the most amazing part of this chapter. Jesus says, not only is it that you that Jesus, that it not only does the Father love you as he loves his son, but it’s possible for people like you and I to love like Jesus loved.

Think about that love that was for everyone. Think about the love of that father who gave his son for the world. Jesus says, you and I might get to live lives that look like that. The love that in the midst of the cross can say, father, forgive them for they don’t know what they’re doing. Even when, to us as outsiders, it looks like they really know what they’re doing them in the midst of, ah.

Disagreements, fights battles with those that we feel know what they’re doing. We get to say things like Jesus said here, seems like the heartbeat of grace of unity is grace, but the grace is the root, the center and forgiveness is the fruit. And I wonder what forgiveness means for us as communities that follow Jesus.

And how we into our interactions with each other. Forgiveness is a center peace, everything that we do, a central calling of a life following Jesus. Rhonda Rohe said this, as we age, we need to forgive. Forgive those who hurt us. Forgive ourselves for our own mistakes. Forgive life for having been unfair, then forgive God for seemingly not having protected us all of this so we do not die bitter and angry.

Which is perhaps the greatest religious imperative of all? Is Jesus calling you on a forgiveness journey? Are the people that you’ve determined are on the outside that have got it so wrong, that they should be treated badly, perhaps pushed to the outside, perhaps? And is Jesus working forgiveness into your heart as he does with so many people who followed him over the years?

His or I would say as a final piece. If you’re determined to defend what you think the real message of Jesus is, you can’t defend the gospel without the kind of love that makes the gospel possible. That if you want to defend God, you need to be able to love like God as well. Jesus, as we come to a end of this journey through this upper room narratives.

These conversations you had 2000 years ago, they’re heavy and hard to process. You ask a lot, help us to experience you in the middle of these. Maybe some of us are in a place where forgiveness is hard. Maybe there’s a thing in church, a thing in a family, a thing in a relationship. It always seems to come up.

Always causes tension. Always causes hardship. Help us to be forgiving, people forgiving, not because forgiveness is deserve but forgiving because you’re the sort of God that for forgives those that don’t deserve it, and you began with us.

Thank you, Jesus for your example of love and care. Amen.