Make Room for Oneness

John 17.20-26

John 17.20-26: “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. “Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

Jesus’s final prayer for his disciples, for his followers, for all of God’s sheep, is that they be one as the Father and the Son are one. Bishop Andy Doyle has written extensively about the need of the world for Christians to be unified in mission and not uniform in identity. Great Trinitarian theology from the council of Nicaea: God is no more one than three. Somehow, God is one in community, but not even uniform in the Trinity (otherwise the Trinity would be no doctrine at all, just three identical triplets). What if the Father and the Son and the Spirit disagree about stuff from time to time? What if they see different opportunities in events, appreciate different kinds of music, have radically different color palettes? What if the Trinity is unified but not always uniform (Augustine said this, by the way, in different words: The Father is not the Son is not the Spirit). And so what if God did not make us because God was lonely, but because the love that the Father had for the Son and for the Spirit overflowed and Creation itself is an icon of God’s love for God? I definitely loved my daughter before she exhibited much personality, and, in my case, it had something to do for the fact that my daughter was, and is, an icon of the love of I have for my wife, which is how my daughter got here in the first place. My daughter is not me. She has my feet. She has my eyes. Her forehead comes from her grandma and her freckles are somewhere between her mom’s and my own. She has her own fashion sense. She is coordinated where I am not. We have so much in common and are so much apart. And we are one family. If my love for her were predicated on her being like me, we’d both be grossly disappointed with one another, at the cost of unity. Thank God I have moments where I love her for her own sake and not for mine. And we are unified in our difference.

I’ve spent a great deal of time in churches where my welcome was contingent upon my good theological behavior and willingness to lay down any of my own convictions for the sake of unity (this was actually uniformity!). We could have conversations, but the guiderails were really, really close, lest we go out of bounds and lose our community. Brene Brown differentiates between belonging and fitting in: fitting in is when you have to do what other people say in order to be received by them and belonging is when you are taken for who you are. The Trinity has decided that they belong together and do not need to fit in. And Jesus hopes we will make that choice as well.

I once turned my entire professional discernment on a paper. I had spent five years learning languages, reading arcane manuscripts during summer breaks, and bringing theology nerd to new levels in order to pursue a career as a Hebrew Bible scholar. I took a class on a whim called Shame, Guilt, and the Rites of Reconciliation by the Anglican studies prof. I wrote a fifteen page paper the third week of class that had over 115 footnotes. It was great work. I was embarrassed to turn it in because I thought too highly of the teacher. I had written a report, not an extension of my spirit. With three days to go, I started over and ended up with three footnotes on a paper that was, more than anything else I had ever written, me. There was no safety net in research, just a bold and scratchy idea that maybe even the Father felt ashamed of the Son for a minute and that they were able to accomplish reconciliation. Maybe it was heretical. Maybe this entry is. But both ask us to consider what it takes to be one as God is.

How do we include others who do not want to be included and who refuse to include us? What do we choose to include them in? I have known a few self-sabotagers who, the moment they start to feel loved and accepted, hit nuclear launch codes in their personal and familial lives because the chaos somehow feels safer. Do we give the distance they vocally and physically crave, or smother them? How about people who look down on us for being a priest/shirtless runner/tattooed/you name it? How can we live in unity when it takes at least two? When it is easier to self-select and divide tribally among politics, economics, spending habits, etc.?

Maybe the Trinity does this the only way we can: they make room for one another. There is a beautiful idea in the Zohar (the mystical text behind the Kabalistic Judaism) that God, in creating the world, was like a pregnant woman and made room within God’s own Self for us, for Creation to exist. She is One and yet hosts another. God made space for the other and sent nourishment so that we and the cosmos alongside us might grow. Some nourishment is easier to send, especially when it is received. But even when it is not, perhaps we can send the Buddhist mantra:

May you live with ease, may you be happy, may you be free from pain.
Just as I wish to, may you be safe, may you be healthy, may you live with ease and happiness.

I once had a dear friend who viewed pregnancy as a parasite hosting an entity that stole life from a host. I am not sure that way of being will get us to the Oneness that God intends and lives out. Rather I think Oneness is about the radical move of sharing life, even well wishing, especially when it is hard, of making nourishing room in ourselves for another. And I think this kind of Oneness is God’s will for my life and the Church and the world. Who might benefit from a little room in your life and how might you send nourishment, especially when it is hard?