Easter 7 (john 17:20-26) “Grant that they may be one.”

Unity in Christ is unity in love.

Our destiny is not to merge into God and lose our identity. Neither is it to so submit our will to divine will so that we lack our own will. Unity in Christ is the unity of pattern, plan and purpose.

Christ himself is the pattern.

In Christ God unites His divinity with our humanity in a single unique and particular person. Someone once commented to me that they believed that when Jesus ascended into Heaven he merged back into the unity of God the way a drop of water falls into the ocean and merges back in the vastness of the sea.

This is not what Jesus taught. The co-eternal Son became a particular human being in a moment of time. That incarnation is permanent and irrevocable. The Beloved Son of God is now forever in union with our humanity through a unique and particular person: Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the pattern. When we reunite to the Father through the Son by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit we lose nothing. We become more of who God created us to be. We discover how unique we really are as we grow in grace in union with God and with each other.

As the pattern is Jesus so the plan is Jesus. God the Father always intended our species to enjoy the forever friendship of His Beloved Son. The Father designed us for unity in diversity.

We are all part of the greater whole of humanity. We are each unique as the personal friends of the Beloved Son of God. Our choice as a species to separate from God breaks the original unity in diversity God planned for us.

We no longer have the awareness our first parents shared. We no longer have the awareness of the Real Presence of God with us. Secular people assert that we just don’t need God. We don’t need God to explain nature. We don’t need God to provide an ethical system. We don’t need God to live well and happy lives.

This is a curious assertion from a civilization that endures massive disruptions through addictions, crime, violence, fear, frustration, anger, hatred and death. St. Paul wrote that the evidence of God’s real presence can be clearly observed in nature. St. Paul also writes that most people most of the time miss the obvious.

People then and now miss the obvious reality of God for one very simple reason. We chose to separate from God. In the state of separation we choose not to perceive the evidence of the reality of God. We actually redefine the parameters of the issue by speaking in terms of evidence for the existence of God.

Moses, the prophets and the apostles do not address the issue of God’s existence. They all report their personal experience of the real presence of God. In the context of that experience they reflect on how they, too, once wandered lost in the question of God’s existence. In the context of their personal experience of the real presence of God, they observe and record the many ways many people over the course of thousands of years miss the reality of God as they debate the existence of God.

God is. God is the uncaused cause of this universe of matter, energy, time and space, of this realm of cause and effect. What keeps people lost in fruitless religious, philosophical and ideological debates about God is the choice our species made and continues to make to separate from God.

Moses, the prophets and the apostles do not debate the existence of God. They report their experience of God. They record their observations about the human condition. And, they offer a consistent set of principles to explain their experience and observation.

The great culmination of this project is Jesus.

Jesus reunites God and Man in his own being. He is fully God. He is fully man. He is one with the Father in love. He is a unique personal and particular individual in love. His reality is the plan to restore each of us and all of us to the Real Presence of God with us.

Jesus is also the purpose. And, as with the pattern and the plan the purpose is love. It is the three fold manifestation of love that becomes real as we chose to make Sabbath worship, compassionate service and personal transformation the priority of our lives.

God always intended for there to be many different ways for us to express our common humanity. God never intended us to use that diversity to create division and conflict.

As the problem starts with separation from God so the solution begins with reunification in God. Jesus is that perfect unity in diversity that reveals and manifests the pattern, plan and purpose for us as a species and as unique and particular members of that species.

Since the pattern, plan and purpose is love the activating principle is choice. Since choice is the key Jesus prays for each of us to hear his invitation, believe his invitation,  receive his invitation and then experience his real presence.

The invitation Jesus offers to all people everywhere is the glory of man fully alive in the infinite and eternal unity in diversity of the Trinity and of the incarnation.

It is that unity in diversity Jesus reveals when he prays to the Father: Grant that they may be one.