“Holy Father, protect them in your name… so that they may be one” (Jn. 17)

If you knew you were going to die tomorrow, what would you say to your friends? How would you say it? The last words of Jesus in the Gospel of John are not a linear argument building to a logical conclusion. Instead they have the form of an ancient rhetorical device called amplification.

This speech and the three letters of John share a similar style of cyclical repetition. They use the same vocabulary of hyperbole and exaggeration. They draw stark contrasts between light and darkness, life and death, love and hate, good and evil, truth and falsehood. The goal is to make God’s love really live in our hearts.

This is Jesus’ prayer to God for the sake of his friends who do not feel ready to go on without him. He says, “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one” (Jn. 17). Different followers of Jesus have different ideas of what it means to be one. You will certainly encounter many who believe that being one means thinking and believing all the same things.

But I believe we are one in the way a family is one. My mother’s family first immigrated to North America when her oldest brother decided to go to Princeton instead of Oxford. That was where he learned to play the ukulele and Fats Waller on the piano. He married the daughter of an Anglican bishop and had a long successful career in finance. In retirement he went sailing and took up photography. My mother’s sister on the other hand had an entirely different personality. She married a working class man. The two of them were converted in Northern England by Mormon missionaries who convinced them to move to Heber, Arizona where she was passionate about dietary supplements.

Three totally different people – one family. That for me is what it means to be one. The calendar of saints shows this, as does the art in our Cathedral. In here we have everyone from the vast lancet window in the apse of Queen Margaret of Scotland to the tiny plate on the step below the baptismal font honoring the former Dean’s wife Janette Limmerick Bartlett. We have stained glass windows with Mary Magdalene and Bridgid, the soldier Martin of Tours along with Walter Rauschenbusch and the Christian Socialists.

Today I want to talk about three figures at the bottom of the Theological Reform Window: a Lutheran, a Roman Catholic and a Jew. This is the first sermon in the history of the world about Paul Tillich, Karl Rahner and Martin Buber.