Collect

Triune God, Jesus prayed that we might be one: help us transcend our differences and find our unity in Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever . Amen.

Eucharist Readings:

Acts 20:28-38                      Psalm 68:28-35                      John 17:11b-19

Here is a passage close-packed with truths so great that we can grasp only fragments of them for example the:

• The disciples were given to Jesus by God and it means that the Spirit of God moves our hearts to respond to the appeal of Jesus.
• Through the disciples, glory has come to Jesus, the scholar whom he has taught brings honor to the teacher. The people whom Jesus has redeemed bring honor to Him, the bad person made good is the honor of Jesus.
• The disciple who is commissioned to a task. God sent Jesus so, Jesus sends out the disciples and Jesus knew that the world was busy organizing themselves without God , hence sending out the disciples into the world in order to lead the world back to God and to make it aware of God.

Jesus offered his disciples joy but also a warning. A warning in the sense that they should be aware that they are different from the world and that they could not expect anything else but hatred from it, but there is a joy in battling against the storm and struggling against the tide; it is by facing the hostility of the world that we enter into the Christian joy. Sometimes we are also battling against the storm and we feel we are not winning , we are not coping , sometimes  struggling with the sense of nothing is going ‘my’ way, sometimes we are only doing what we are suppose to do but in doing that we are fighting a storm, we pray for the storm to calm and then like Henri Nouwen said in his book ”Here and Now” it is in our most troubled moments, our struggles , our battles, pains  that we become aware of a spiritual reality much larger than ourselves, a reality which allows us to live the pain with hope.

Jesus prayed for his disciples but the interesting thought about this is that Jesus did not pray for his disciples to be taken out of this world. On the contrary he prayed that they may find victory, he advocates for them with his Father. He also prayed for unity amongst his disciples because he knew where there are divisions, exclusiveness, competition the cause of Christianity is harmed, and the prayer of Jesus frustrated. The Gospel cannot truly be preached where people are not united. Jesus prayed for his disciples to be one as he and his Father are one. Jesus also prayed to God to protect the disciples from any evil. He also prayed that they might be consecrated by the truth and that they are set apart for a special task.

We must always remember that God has chosen us, dedicated us for His service. The service where we should love and obey Him and bring others to do the same. God did not leave us to carry out this great task on our strength but out of His grace, He fits us for our task, if we place our lives in His hands.