Meggan Manlove

Saturday (day 2) May 31, 2025

John 17:20-26

When I hear Jesus’ prayer for his disciples in our reading from John’s gospel today, I hear his visions and hopes for authentic love and unity. I hear him speak poetically about his relationship with the Father, you might think Mother if that is easier for you. We hear of a loving and connected parent-child relationship. And though the Holy Spirit is not named in this text, that dance of the Trinity, the relationality inherent in the God we worship is so present in this prayer. The love within that Holy Trinity is abundant and real and inviting. It’s hard to carry out as human beings, sinful and broken as we are, which is one of many reasons Jesus prays for his disciples. If it were automatic human behavior, then there would be no need for prayer.

This struggle made me think of my first call in Soldier, Iowa, a town of 200 people near the Missouri River in what’s known as the Loess Hills. I served there from 2004-2010 and shortly before I arrived, the school district that Soldier, Iowa was part of was dissolved. A vote was put to the citizens and instead of merging with their long-time partner district, a pin was dropped in the middle of the current district. Like many ELCA Lutheran congregations, my new church was full of schoolteachers. They were grieving, in disbelief that other residents had not seen things the way they did. I clearly remember teachers telling me how difficult it was to stand around the Holy Communion rail with people who had voted in such a way that they had lost their jobs. But they kept coming to worship. They kept coming together and sharing the bread and wine, shoulder to shoulder receiving the gifts of new life and forgiveness. And very slowly relationships healed.

During Holy Communion we are literally invited into the unity of the Triune God, unity portrayed in Jesus’ prayer. In the town church we had a straight communion rail but Memorial Day weekend through the month of June, we went out to the old massive country church for worship. And there stood a beautiful half-circle communion rail, one where you not only stood shoulder to shoulder with people, but those on the ends could look across and make eye contact. One big reason I am still in the church, with all of its faults and growing edges, is because of our audacious belief that when we cannot forgive, when we cannot reconcile, when we have no energy to be curious about one another, the means of grace can still be received through Word and Sacrament. My hunger for bread and wine draws me to the table where I feast shoulder to shoulder with my siblings in Christ.

I wrote to my synod recently that I think we forget how radical and rare it is for the good news of God’s love and grace to be preached and heard, and for the sacraments to be celebrated faithfully. It is radical and rare in part, at least within the geography I serve, because there are so many other things parading as the gospel. I am especially exhausted by White Christian Nationalism permeating into so much of the fabric of the territory I serve. Why does something so antithetical to the good news of Jesus Christ get to carry the name of Christ?

White Christian Nationalism is based on creating and sustaining social hierarchies, often revolving around gender and sexuality. It is also comfortable with authoritarian social control. And it includes a desire for strict boundaries around national identity, civic participation, and social belonging that fall along ethno-racial lines. A “Christian nation” is generally understood to be one where white, natural-born citizens are held up as the ideal, with everyone else coming after. (Andrew Whitehead, p. 29). 

I worry sometimes that as we get clearer about being against White Christian Nationalism, we are not exactly sure what we are for instead. Sometimes it is easier to speak in the negative than the positive. I am grateful to be with you this weekend and hear more about why the two resolutions related to our indigenous siblings are important to you as individuals and as a synod. Addressing the reality of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and the history of Indian Boarding Schools is, in fact, one way to follow the Jesus we encounter in the gospels. 

When we say Christian Nationalism is antithetical to the gospel of Jesus Christ, we need look no further than Jesus’ prayer for his followers. Jesus prays, “As you Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us.” Hear the mutuality and oneness. “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…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.” 

The prayer is saturated in this rich love language, and it is a love not for one set of people, but for the whole world, the cosmos, the same world sung about at the beginning of this same gospel: “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him.” This is the world God made, the world God loves, and the world into which God sent the Son. Into this same world, Jesus now sends his disciples. They are already in the world but now they are commissioned to bear witness in and to the world of God’s love.

And what is this love? Something sentimental that we might find on a cupcake or greeting card? No. Our final verse summarizes the work of all of Jesus’ ministry, “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.” This verse confirms one of the central themes of Jesus’ Farewell Discourse to his followers: Jesus’ death and departure does not end his presence and work with the faith community. Jesus’ work continues in the work of the Holy Spirit. 

God’s love is constant and ongoing, and the love goes on through the Holy Spirit. Empires and ideologies come and go. God’s love will be with you forever. Disagreements within congregations, synods, and entire denominations are important and can keep us up at night, but the balm that gets you through the night is God’s love. 

Influencers, newsfeeds, and so much more can seem to have all the answers. But compared the good news of Jesus Christ, it’s all a mirage in the desert. You worship the God who, as we learn earlier in this gospel, is the source of living water. 

That’s why the author of Revelation records, “the Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’ And let everyone who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes, take the water of life as a gift.” That gift is for you, always and forever. Amen.