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Sentence

Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved. Acts 16:31

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Collect  

Almighty God,

whose blessed Son before his passion prayed 

for his disciples that they might be one, as you 

and he are one: grant that your Church,

being bound together in love and obedience to 

you, may be united in one body by the one Spirit,

that the world may believe in him whom you have 

sent, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord;

who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the 

Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Amen.

Readings

• Acts 16:16-34
• Psalm 97
• Revelation 22:12-22
• John 17:20-26

next week

• Acts 2:1-21
• Psalm 104:26-36
• Romans 8:14-17
• John 14:8-17, (25-27)

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A Thought to Ponder

Easter 7 – John 17:20-26

“Father, I pray . . . for those who will believe in me through their word, so that all may be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you . . . ”

In John’s account of the Last Supper, after his final teachings to his disciples before the events of his passion begin, Jesus addresses his Father in heaven. He begins praying for himself, that he may obediently bring to completion the work of redemption entrusted to him by the Father. Next, he prays for his disciples, that they may faithfully proclaim the word he has taught them. Finally (today’s Gospel pericope), Jesus prays for the future Church – us – that we may be united in the “complete” love that binds the Father to the Son and the Son to his Church, and that in our love for one another the world may come to know God.

In his “High Priestly Prayer,” Jesus pleads with the Father that the unique sense of “oneness” that exists between the Father and Son might exist among us, as well. It is a unity of complete love embracing all, from Genesis to the Gospel of the empty tomb to our own parish family.  

Christ calls us to work for that sense of “oneness,” that sense of “connectedness” and “completeness” within our own Church by recognising and honouring the essential dignity every one of us possesses as children of God and in seeking ways to tear down the barriers that divide and alienate us from one another.

Christ’s prayer the night before he dies is that we realise his hope for the Church he leaves behind: a Church of welcome and acceptance that refuses to trap one another by labels and categories, a faith that seeks to find and honour what unites and binds us together as the people of God.

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Sermon

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