I and the Father are One.

The Good News for the day, April 23, 2024

Tuesday in the Fourth Week of Easter (280)

The celebration of the Temple Dedication was happening in Jerusalem. (It was winter.) Jesus was walking around on the Portico of Solomon in the temple area.

It happened that some Judeans gathered around him in a circle to press:  “How long are you going to keep our very lives in suspense? If you are the Messiah, just say so!” “

Jesus answered them, “I have told you who I am, and you don’t believe me.” What I do as part of my Father’s family—that tells people what they need to know about me.

But you haven’t come to believe because you’re not among my sheep. The sheep who are mine listen to what I say. I have known them well, and they are coming along after me.

I give them a permanent life, and they’ll never die. No one can pry them out of my hand.

My Father, who has given them to me, is the Most Important One and no one can take them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”(John 10).

The great revival crusades of Billy Graham in the 40s and 50s and 60s led people to commit their lives to Jesus – to feel saved and feel a closeness to the loving Savior of their souls. These authentic preachers who call on people to commit themselves have influenced very many people and changed lives. This gospel builds on that commitment.

Those of us who have come to a sense of the presence of the risen Lord in our lives have committed ourselves to the way – to the cross and resurrection as the rhythm of our lives. Well aware that we are not “saved” until we die, we realize that we are among the flock of those beloved by God and Jesus. The way of Jesus involves growth.

“I and the Father are one.” This is less a doctrinal statement, then a call to involve ourselves in the mystery of the Trinity not as doctrine but as the growth of our experience, committing ourselves to our role in the faithful flock in Father’s world.

Building on our experience of the reality of Jesus in our lives, this statement pulls us to the life of the whole universe, to all our fellow human beings, to involvement in ecology, generosity, and creativity. “The Father of Jesus” is the universe’s creator. God is the timeless author of all life, the one involved in every rule and law of physics, and every leaf and cell of animals, in human hearts and souls – and the world around us.

With Jesus, we are called to be one with the universe – to welcome its mysteries as aspects of God’s love, to acknowledge its contradictions of beauty and terror, and, to fix it when it goes astray either by natural catastrophe or human failures.

My personal feelings of devotion to Jesus – in this passage – are called to expand into the world of God beyond my little singularity into passionate love for the living things of nature – to love and participate in the very creativity of God the Creator of everything. To see the oneness. To welcome our part in everything. To find joy as participant in the whole. To acknowledge that salvation is not a private thing at all.