Progressive reflections on the lectionary #66

Monday 26th May 2025

John 17: 20-26 - what's all this 'oneness' stuff?

I don’t really think that the writer of John helps himself, very much, when it comes to being understood. He mixes complexity with irony, humour with elipticism, and as a result produces looping texts that defy straightforward interpretation.

What perhaps helps the reader is to remember that John has an enduring set of themes, around which he whirls - sometimes tightly, sometimes loosely. Principle among them, as we have previously seen, is the core idea of love.

In this week’s passage we’re given a report of a prayer of intercession that Jesus makes, and again the apparent density of John’s thinking makes this hard to interpret. As a result people look at it through different lenses, and see different things - the urgent necessity of evangelism, perhaps, or a call to ecumenical unity.

My view is that this diversity of thought has merit, but it has obvious drawbacks too. I don’t happen to think that there is one ‘correct’ interpretation, though, rather I think that all I/we/anyone can do is seek to offer our best sense of what is being said.

So here John starts off with Jesus making a request that all of those who ‘believe in’ (put their trust in) him might “…be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us…”

He then gives a reason for this request: “…so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” (John 17:21)

Ok - so this is an echo of a verse that we have previously heard:

When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13: 31-35)

Is the same theme being revisited here? Does the ‘the world (kosmos) may believe’ and ‘everyone (pantes) will know’ mean, effectively, the same thing? Apparently so, because next John has Jesus continue to revisit his themes, this time looking again at the idea of ‘glory’:

“The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (22-23)

John has an obsession with the theme of love, it is one of his key ideas, and here is no different. This talk of ‘oneness’ is, again, about loving.

If that were not already quite clear, our passage ends with: “I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them."

Some people are put off by the difficulty of the language here, those who aren’t bring to it their own preoccupations, these have included the priority of evangelism, and the necessity of ecumenism, for instance.

I don’t pretend to come to this as a clean slate, here my own presumably distorted view is that John merely continues his focus on the priority of love, albeit using different phrasing.

The thing is that for John, Jesus’ main concern is that his disciples love one another - the Johanine tradition will go on to claim that God IS love, after all. Oneness with God, and love, are not separate ideas then - rather they are the same.

All the talk of oneness here is, for me anyway, talk of love. That is the priority, that is the mission, and that is the ultimate goal.

What it means for the disciples to be one, is that they love one another - it’s as simple, and as complicated, as that.

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