October 22, 2018 — Eugene Peterson died. He was an incredible pastor who wrote The Message: A Bible in Contemporary Language, that has had a profound impact on me. I love reading his version of Romans 12:14-16:
Bless your enemies; no cursing under your breath. Laugh with your happy friends when they’re happy; share tears when they’re down. Get along with each other; don’t be stuck-up. Make friends with nobodies; don’t be the great somebody.
When I heard that Eugene Peterson had died, I read a short biography of his life that recommended a book that he had written, Tell It Slant. I downloaded it onto Kindle. The first half of the book is his version of Jesus in His Stories—especially the stories of everyday life at “home or with friends or while walking on the road between villages.” The second half is Jesus in His Prayers. While I’ve read it more than once, I keep going back to chapter 17, “Jesus Prays for Us,” the prayer in John 17.
This prayer takes place on Thursday evening at the last meal that Jesus ate with His disciples and ends with this longest prayer of his. He has been carrying on a conversation with His disciples and the conversation leads into a conversation with His Father. “We find ourselves embraced in a holy listening. We are in a place of prayer, a praying presence. Our mouths are stopped. We are quiet.
We are not used to this. We are not used to being quiet. We talk a lot. We talk about Jesus and God. We talk to Jesus and God. We witness, we give counsel and advice, we preach and teach, we gossip and discuss, we sing and pray. But we are now in the room that is John Seventeen, in the prayerful presence of Jesus who is praying—praying, as we will soon find out, for us. Yes, for us.”
Now, I pray to God and to Jesus, but here Jesus is praying for me! “He talks, the same way to the Father as He does with His friends, the same way with His friends as He does with His Father… Jesus prays many things for us. We can well imagine that these intercessions include virtually everything involved in making us and healing us, our salvation and our sanctification, our bodies and souls. In the John Seventeen prayer He prays for the Father to give us eternal life (vv.2-3); He prays that we might have His ‘joy made complete’ in us (v. 13); He prays for the Father to keep us safe, to protect us from the evil one (vv.6-15); He prays that the Father will sanctify us in the truth (vv.17-19).
He adds one final intercession and repeats it six times to make sure that we pay attention, “that they may be one, as we are one.” We should be one like the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one. How is that possible? “Given the accumulation of carnage across the centuries—wrecked churches, wrecked families, wrecked souls—it is hard to stay in the John Seventeen Prayer Meeting with the eleven, quietly submitting ourselves to Jesus’ prayer to the Father that ‘they may be one, even as we are one.’
Many Christians, impatient with what they perceive as the inefficiency of Jesus’ prayer, attempt to solve the problem by the imposition of unity, unity by coercion—that is, authority depersonalized into an institution. The style is hierarchical. The methods are bureaucratic. Any person or congregation who refuses to conform is excluded: anathematized, excommunicated, or shunned. Unity is preserved by enforcing an institutional definition. . . Jesus does not evaluate or grade His followers as He prays. He does not lay out plans to settle the controversies that He knows will arise. He is praying us into an easy camaraderie. The longer we stay in Jesus’ praying presence the more we will understand that our impulses toward schism and sectarianism, our rivalries and denunciations, have no place in the room while Jesus is praying for us ‘to be one. . .’
Jesus takes full responsibility for our unity, ‘that they may be one, even as we are one.’ It is significant that Jesus’ intention that ‘they be one’ is expressed in prayer to the Father and not in a command or exhortation to the disciples ‘to be one.’ Being a community of faith in Christ is a complex business. We have neither the knowledge nor the competence to pull it off.
As we submit to Jesus as He prays for our unity, we must also submit to the way He chooses to achieve it. . . An imposed unity is no part of Jesus’ prayer.”
I’m in complete awe as I contemplate being ‘one, even as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit’ are one. May each of us this week pray that God will continue His work in us that we may be one. Perhaps Romans 12 will also help us this endeavor.