Today’s reading* is the culmination in the Gospel of John of Jesus’ final words to his followers the night before his crucifixion. The mystical language of oneness here is dizzying but the message is clear: Jesus calls us to a life together that realizes our God-giftedness and our God-connection and our God-inspired vocation to be in the world in a way that others will know God’s love.
Jesus may not be here in the flesh teaching and showing us how to love, but authentic Christian community, communities of healing and liberation, can demonstrate the eternal nature of love. Jesus’ prayer on that last night is that the community of disciples then and our faith communities now model a way of being together that grows us into a beloved people of God.
Throughout my life in my desire to be faithful to the way of Jesus and come to know myself and God more deeply, I have searched for and longed for this kind of spiritual community. I need a church that engages me to be a person of integrity–honest, whole, and undiminished in my capacity to love in word and deed. I need a church that humbly asks itself what it means to be a church of God. I need a faith community that holds sacred space for inner transformation and makes space for each member to engage their gifts in Gospel action. How about you?
In reflecting on today’s reading in the context of church and society my prayer is that we all might be challenged to see ourselves as one, not as the same, but in our commitment to relationship and structures that free us to love. Elizabeth O’Connor in The New Community (second edition, The Potter’s House, available in our online bookstore), describes genuine community as “the highest achievement of humankind” that “demands more of us than any other endeavor, and is supremely worth the struggle.” Though she wrote this book in the 1970s, it is no less relevant in 2019. I offer thoughts from The New Community as the Daily Quotes this week.
-Trish Stefanik, Overlook Retreat House at Dayspring
