So That the World May Know

February 25, 2024

Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek

Scripture Reading

John 17:1-26

1 When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, 2 since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. 3 And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. 4 I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. 5 And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.

6 “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 7 Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you.8 For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. 9 I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. 10 All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. 11 And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. 12 While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.13 But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. 14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15 I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.

20 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. 24 Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. 25 O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. 26 I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

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As we’ve been saying, half of the book of John covers three years of Jesus’s ministry. The other half, the half we are currently preaching, covers one week—and mostly just one evening and one morning and one afternoon. So, each week when we gather, another hour or so moves forward in that evening. So far on this night Jesus has washed the feet of the disciples, shared the Passover meal with them, spoken truth to sustain them, and now he prays what has been called the High Priestly Prayer. Jesus’s last words with his disciples before he’s arrested are a prayer for them and, as we’ll see, for us.

Just a heads up about the end of the service. You can see the communion tables. We’ll have communion. But before we do, we’ll have a time where you can pray with those around you here at church. Let’s pray before we look at this passage. “Dear Heavenly Father . . .”

Ben Bechtel was a pastor here for eight years. Since October he’s been pastoring our Midtown church plant in the city. For years many times I would go into Ben’s office and I would look at a particular book on his shelf and laugh. We’d make jokes about it together. It’s not so much that we were making fun of the book or the author. Really we were in awe of the undertaking. The book is a 672-page book with small textbook font. It’s a series of sermons on John 17 by one of the greatest preachers of the 1900s.

This week I realized that if instead of laughing about the book and the massive undertaking, if years ago I had started reading that book, then it might have helped us as we come to John 17. It’s such an epic passage. You got that sense as we read it, right?

As I studied it for the last two weeks, I did all my usual steps and more. I translated it from the Greek. I took pages of notes. I read commentaries and listened to sermons. I even printed out the passage and used all sorts of colors to link words and ideas. You’ve probably been on a text thread before or seen on social media when someone shares a GIF of a detective. It’s the ones where some guy is standing in front of a giant board with all these pictures taped to the board. There is all this red string connecting certain people. Then the detective starts looking out in this deep stare and math equations with symbols you’ve never seen before start swirling around his head, and then the top of his head starts to explode. That’s might as well be video footage of pastors trying to get their minds around wording of certain phrases in this passage.

To put it another way, if you only have thirty minutes in an art museum, your best chance of seeing something meaningful is not to put on your running shoes and race through every exhibit hall. Instead, you’ll probably be most helped by taking a seat and looking at just a few paintings or a few sculptures, and really looking closely.

Which is what we’re going to do. A common outline for the whole of John 17 is to see the beginning of the passage as Jesus praying about his relationship with this Father. Then in the middle, Jesus praying about his followers who are there with him at that time. Then, in the final verses, Jesus prays for his future followers. You can see that begins in v. 20.  I’ll read it now. “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word.” The phrases “for these only” and “their word” refer to the disciples with him and their word, meaning their collective witness. “I do not ask for my disciples with me only, but also for future disciples who will believe in me through these disciples’ word.”

The Holy Spirit would cause these disciples to remember the words of Jesus to write the gospel accounts and write letters to churches on behalf of Jesus. And there would be those who would, like us, come after those disciples and believe those words. It’s such a neat thought, isn’t it? Here Jesus is praying on the most epic night in the history of the world, and he takes time to pray for you. These few verses at the end of the prayer are the corner, so to speak, of the museum where we’ll take a seat.

And what do we see Jesus pray for when he prays for us? First, he prays for our unity.

1. Jesus prays for our unity.

Let’s look at these verses again. I’ll read vv. 20–23. Listen for the repetition of unity themes with the language of being one.

20 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one . . .

The unity of the church matters to Jesus. We often speak of the church as “the body of Christ,” so, based on these verses, we could say that Jesus hates to see his body working against itself, hates to see his body fighting against itself, his body destroying itself.

As Protestant Christians, there are many ways we can be thankful for the Reformation. However, so much disunity is one of the unfortunate consequences. In the 1500s, the Roman Catholic church had many problems, some of which continue to this day and others that do not. When the Reformers began to name these problems and seek reform (hence the name Reformation), it began a process that gave us our Protestant churches. But we don’t simply have one split from the Roman Catholic church; we have a split that then led to constant splintering. That’s an unfortunate consequence.

I feel this personally, even within our denomination. A few years ago, I went through the process of ordination in our denomination. It’s actually a process with several steps that take a few years. And I finished all that in the fall of 2019. In the final step, you go before an ordination council, where you’re examined for four or five hours by a team of pastors on any question they want to ask you about the Bible and theology and your lifestyle. Sometimes we describe it as being examined on your creed, your competence, and your character.

Anyway, another key member of the ordination council was so frustrated by me and the denomination, that he refused to come to my ordination. That story has a surprising ending, which I’ll save for the end. But I just share that as one little experience of disunity that wasn’t so little to me. I’d actually say that much of my job here at the church is working with people struggling toward unity together.

You probably feel how difficult unity is without me pointing it out. Certainly you can feel the disunity as you look across the broader landscape of American Christianity, even specifically American evangelical Christianity. A few weeks ago when I preached I mentioned an article by a man named Aaron Renn. The article recently became a book about our world, specifically the changes in America with respect to the experience of being a Christian. If you were here when I brought this up, you might remember the framework of what he called a positive world, a natural world, and a negative world. I tend to think there are some helpful ideas in that article, even as I’ve seen some people take the ideas and do less helpful things with them. Regardless, to give you a sense of the kind of splintering and disunity, let me read the opening paragraph of Renn’s long essay. I had wanted to read it the other week, but it didn’t fit so well, but I think it actually fits better this week anyway. Renn writes,

American evangelicalism is deeply divided. Some evangelicals have embraced the secular turn toward social justice activism, particularly around race and immigration, accusing others of failing to reckon with the church’s racist past. Others charge evangelical elites with going “woke” and having failed their flocks. Some elites are denounced for abandoning historic Christian teachings on sexuality. Others face claims of hypocrisy for supporting . . . Donald Trump [and his marriages]. Old alliances are dissolving. Former Southern Baptist agency head Russell Moore has left his denomination. Political pundit David French has become a fearsome critic of ­many religious conservatives who would once have been his allies. Baptist professor Owen Strachan left an establishment seminary to take a leadership position in a startup one. Some people are deconstructing their faith and leaving evangelicalism, or even Christianity, behind. Where once there was a culture war between Christianity and secular society, today there is a culture war within evangelicalism itself.

You might not recognize the names of the people mentioned. If you don’t know who they are, you might be a better Christian for being less aware. Regardless you can probably feel the disunity Renn describes, can’t you? You feel it when you talk with other Christians at work or school, other Christians who go to different kinds of churches and share different kinds of posts on social media. Actually, they might not be at different kinds of churches. If you’ve been here for any length of time, if you’ve been in Bible studies, or if—as a few of you were—you served on the pastor-elder team during the first year of Covid, you probably know that working toward unity ain’t easy, not only out there but in here.

This was all a long way to say that just because unity ain’t easy, that doesn’t mean Jesus doesn’t want it for us. That’s why he’s praying for it. Again, note his words: In v. 21, “that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us.” Then in v. 22, “that they may be one even as we are one.” Then in v. 23, “that they may become perfectly one.” As I said, we often speak of the church as the body of Christ, and thus, here we could say that Jesus hates to see his body working against itself, hates to see his body fighting against itself, his body destroying itself.

As we go to the last point, we’ll see how our unity is for more than just us. Certainly we enjoy church better when we all have more unity. It makes church better. It makes life better. It makes my job easier. But the next thing we notice is that this unity that Jesus prays for and dies for is for more than us. Our unity is for us but also for our witness.

2. Jesus prays for our witness.

I’ll read some of the same verses again. This time notice the “so that” clauses. There are two “so that” clauses.

21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. . . . 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.

Did you see them? “So that the world may believe” and “so that the world may know.”

As we sit in this corner of the museum and linger over just these words, we see the purpose of our unity more clearly: God has unity in the Trinity, and invites us into that unity, so that the world will believe in him and know him. In other words, God has done everything needed so that we would have unity, so that others could also have unity with God. To say it one more way: God has bound up his reputation with the unity of his church. The stakes are that high. Our unity is not only for us. You can’t be interested in God’s glory and disinterested in our unity.

And I use the word “us” intentionally. In Aaron Renn’s article, he’s writing about broad trends in Christianity, so it makes sense for him to name the different names in Christianity who have different ways of going about cultural engagement. This person tends to engage culture this way. And this person tends to engage this way, he writes. That’s fine, I guess. But these people and groups are huge national groups.

I don’t think God is making it our responsibility this morning to fix everything that’s fractured out there. It’s not our fault that Christians out there don’t get along. I don’t say that because the gospel isn’t big enough for that; the gospel is big enough to heal any divide. But when I talk about unity, I’m more talking about unity here among us. I’m talking about the unity that you have a responsibility to pursue.

To be more concrete, the people in this neighborhood—the people who look at their windows when we park in front of their houses and who watch us get out of our cars and walk into this building—God wants our neighbors to see diversity in age and income and color and clothing and parenting and other ways. And he wants that diversity to cause them to ponder how in the world these people could come together. He wants them to wonder how people so different could love one another so much. One person, they notice, drives a sports car while another person gets off at the bus stop on Jonestown Road and walks. How do they all get along?, they wonder.

And then imagine if our neighbors venture in here on some Sunday, as perhaps even happened this week. Perhaps you’re visiting from this neighborhood or some neighborhood. And perhaps you join a Bible study and get to know us better, I hope you’d come to see that even when some of us understand aspects of Christianity differently, you would, I hope, see the way we work to find places of humility and peace and joy and warmth toward one another. I hope our gathering would cause you to wonder if that same kind of peace and joy and warmth is actually what it’s like to know God. Because it is.

We certainly have work to do. I know that. But I will also say that I can see the growing unity among us. While I’ve been one of your pastors, I’ve seen friends who lost friendships become friends again. While I’ve been one of your pastors, I’ve seen marriages blown apart by mistrust come back together again. I’ve seen small group Bible studies work together to love people who are hard to love until they were less hard to love. And I’ve seen our church even partner with another church—not in our denomination—to plant a church in the city just because it was the right thing to do. I’ll tell you that in the process, Liberti Church (a church across the River that sent people and money and expertise to the Midtown church) didn’t make demands. They didn’t want glory. They didn’t want credit. Liberti Church and their pastors and members just wanted to help another church plant a church because it would bring God glory. As I said, we have work to do in the area of unity. But as your pastor, I also need to say that God is at work among us. The prayers of Christ are coming true.

Conclusion

I’ll close by coming back to the story I mentioned about my ordination and a pastor named Andrew who would not come to my ordination. Andrew pastors a church about an hour from here, coincidentally his church is also named Community. Andrew was mad at me and didn’t come to the ordination. And this goes back a long ways. In fact, back when I was licensed almost ten years ago, which is the first step in the process, Andrew was the only person on the council who gave me a “no” vote.  

Then something happened a few years ago. I’m in Philly on a Thursday afternoon in a church for the ordination of another pastor. About three or four hours into the process, we come to the particular part of the exam where Andrew and I have such disagreement. I don’t want to bog this story down, but our denomination has made a slight update to the statement of faith around this point of contention. Anyway, the person being examined had not updated his paper to reflect the new statement of faith. This guy’s name is Jason, and I know Jason pretty well, so near the end I say something like, “Jason, what are you doing, man? I know there is an option to keep the old wording, but if you take the new wording, you can believe exactly what you believe, and I can believe what I believe, and yet we all can be in the same group, unified. Why are you excluding me?”

I wanted to say it without passion and to be neutral. But everyone in the room could hear how hurt I was and excluded, including me—this had been years in the making. Jason speaks up and says it was a mistake. He’d cut and pasted the wrong one, and he didn’t mean it at all. And that was that. Except it wasn’t.

After a long pause, Pastor Andrew leaned in. He said to the room, “Let’s stop for a minute.” And he apologized for the way he had treated me, and he wanted my forgiveness. I could hardly believe it. I, of course, apologized for my part in the rifts.

I don’t know how exactly you rank your top five ministry moments, but that moment for me, and the moments that came after, are some of my favorites in ten years of being a pastor here. When Andrew and I now see each other at events, we almost always end up sitting together and catching up. He’s become a friend.

I share this story for a few reasons. It’s fresh for me because our denomination asked Andrew and me to tell that story, which we did, and that article will be posted on the national website in the next week or two. I also share it because stories like that can break us out of our cynicism. We are prone to believe the lie that nothing ever gets better, people always only fight, and Christians never reconcile. It’s not true.

Here’s the main reason I share this story. As Andrew tells his part of the story, he would say he knew he needed to reconcile with me. He had things going on in his own church and his own life at the time and all of that. But then he got to a point where he knew we needed to be in unity but he simply didn’t know how. And I knew it too. But I had no idea how to get there. And so I’m telling this story because Andrew would say—and I would say as well—that neither of us were loving enough or smart enough or godly enough to fix our disunity on our own.

That’s the encouragement of this passage. I’ll explain more.

I’ve been preaching this passage about unity as though it were a series of commands. Sow unity in your hearts, not disunity, I’ve said. Have a good witness to the watching world, not a bad witness, I’ve said. Commands.

But these are not actually commands. They are the prayers that Jesus prays for us. Which is a long way to say that you can have hope for the broader church and hope for own local church, because Jesus lived and prayed and died and rose and does all that so that his church could have what we could not earn. Becoming friends with Andrew again isn’t so much, in my mind, as story about how great we are but how great our God is. We can have hope for unity because God loves unity more than we do. As we’ll celebrate in communion, Jesus he died to bring unity.

Let’s pray as we close and invite the music team back.

“Dear Heavenly Father . . .”