Funny how much can be missed in reading the Bible.
I bet when you know your numbered days have become numbered hours or minutes, you get very focused. If you keep your wits and don't go Butterfly McQueen panicky, you would probably do and say only the most important things. The night Jesus is betrayed, the Crucifixion clock starts ticking and He prays - significant right there - and His focus is not on Himself so much but on current friends and friends to come.
He prays that His friends will display a remarkable, almost otherworldly, degree of unity and closeness. Since He can't think of any relationship closer, His personal example takes us inside the mystery of His nature: "That they may be one Father, even as You and I are one." Unravelling the depths of that relationship could break your brain. Probably best to accept it as a, for now, unexplained mystery. They are very close.
Then He jabs hard, saying closeness like Theirs is essential between Christians if the world is ever to believe His words about Himself. "That the world may believe You have sent Me." Crazy, but He subordinates His success as a communicator to our treatment of one another. At present, it appears most of the world is pretty much unconvinced that Jesus is who He claimed to be and it further appears that the intransigence and pride of those who take the name of Christ are to blame. Maybe the petty prejudices Christians baptize as doctrinal and purity battles really aren't the most important things. Rough stuff.
Sandwiched between the peek into God's unity and love within Himself and the perennial failure of Christians to be Christlike, is a notion that should have been sandwiched between the previous two paragraphs: "That they may also be in Us." Jesus invites us into what someone has called the Grand Dance - a dazzling display of dexterity and adoration that exists only within the nature and life of God. We aren't in Kansas and we aren't talking religion anymore. We're invited into who God knows Himself to be. This is wild and unbelievable stuff.
It's not a trip to the altar, living a religious code, going to church, giving in the offering, finding a place of ministry or even pursuing spirituality in all it's varied forms. It's not about prayer, spiritual formation, reading Kierkegaard, Zen exercises or praying a sinner's prayer.
In fact, the cherished phrase that puts rugged American individualism proudly on display, "inviting Jesus into my heart", is shown by Jesus' wild ride invitation to be about as flawed and wrongheaded as anything can be. We don't invite Him, He invites us into the center of His life and nature.
He's calling you into the Mystery and invited you to the Dance. RSVP'd yet?
Note: If you care to read it for yourself, The Gospel According to John - chapter 17 is the place. Unless you're an Elizabethan scholar and are fine with being "hoisted on your own petard", find a modern translation. Don't take my word for anything. I could be all wet.
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