Jesus’ Invitation: Come

Gospel Reflection John 17:20-26

In the name of the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen

Friends! We made it to the Seventh and Final Sunday of Easter! But first, as a bit of a Pop Quiz, what other Holidays or Holy Days were last week?

Last Thursday was the Feast of the Ascension; the day when the church remembers the mysterious and wonderful event we proclaim in our creeds, and we hear about in Luke and Acts, where Jesus rises from the earth and is taken bodily into heaven. Taking place 40 days after Easter, and 10 days between Pentecost, Ascension is doomed to forever land on a Thursday, making celebrating it together trickier.

It seems worth mentioning as it is Jesus’ final moments with his disciples; and our New Testament readings are also about Jesus’ other final messages and moments. Our Epistle reading is from Revelation, and is the closing words that Jesus has for John of Patmos. Jesus winds up his tour of the coming new creation with an emphasis that it will be, above all, a place of healing.

Likewise, our Gospel reading is Jesus’ last prayer with and for his disciples before he goes to his crucifixion. As much as I would love to go through this line by line with everyone here today, I worry it would end up looking like that Always Sunny in Philadelphia meme with the fellow looking crazed with the strings connecting pieces of paper on a poster board.

So maybe instead of that, we can see Jesus’ prayer as a sort of three part progression.

Jesus’s prayer begins with a desire that all of his disciples would be one. It is not just the twelve disciples, nor the seventy, or the crowds that Jesus has been teaching. It’s “all who will believe me through their word,” which includes you and me, as well as those who have gone before us, and those who will come long after us. Jesus prays that - in some way - we will be united in spirit. As his disciples, we belong to one another in a way that transcends time and space. The church has many ways of making this reality known through things like the church calendar. Our lives are interwoven with the likes of Joan of Arc, John Calvin, and St. Augustine - all of whom we remembered this past week.

Jesus does not stop there. He then prays that we - as one - would be one with him and share in his glory with him. The chief way we see and witness this is through the Eucharist. In Rite 1 - the traditional language that Episcopal Churches will sometimes use - we pray that in the communion, “our bodies will be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his blood, that we may ever more dwell in him, and he in us.” Our hope is that through communion, in some way, we are grafted into Christ, and Christ is grafted into us.

This is where reflecting on the Ascension is particularly helpful. Christ ascended bodily into heaven. That is, with a human body. The same fleshy body, that was carried by Mary, that worked in Nazareth, and was scared by the Romans. That human body sits at the right hand of God. And it carries all of our humanity.

Which leads us to Jesus’ final request, that we may be in God as Jesus is in God. Jesus is asking that the Father would use him as a sort of bridge, to allow the human experience to become part of the essence of God’s being.

Through the Ascension, and through this prayer, Jesus is showing us that God so loves the world that God took a part of it unto God's-self, and that love for humanity is at the heart of God.

Christian unity is therefore important because it is an outward sign of God’s love for the world. We’re not doing a real great job with being united in faith, given the multitude of Communions, Denominations, and Churches. But it’s a helpful reminder that ecumenicism isn’t just a nice side project, it’s part of the way in which the Spirit works to mend God’s people to mend the creation.

Our reading from Revelation reflects this love that Christ has for the creation. After all the Apocalyptic imagery of the book, and the final inauguration of the New Heavens and the New Earth, Jesus leaves us with these words:

The Spirit and the Bride say: “Come”

Let everyone who hears say: “Come”

Let anyone who is thirsty, who needs healing, who needs liberation, who needs rescuing come.

Let anyone who wishes, hopes, dreams, and yearns take for the water of life as a gift.

Jesus’ final message isn’t one of judgement or condemnation. It’s an invitation to all of humanity to join in the inner life of God. Come.