Here in John 17 we listen as Jesus, with His eyes lifted towards the heavens, prays to His Father in heaven. And what a profoundly beautiful prayer.
as Jesus cries out prayer for Himself, His disciples and for those who will come to believe in Him through their message! We're spending these next few days exploring this incredible prayer of our Lord.
"Difficult or not, the idea of the Trinity turns out to be vitally important because it tells us that God himself has been experiencing community throughout eternity. Community is rooted in the being of God.
Did you ever wonder what life is like inside the Trinity? The writers of Scripture are most interested in talking about God's relationship to us, so we don't know a lot about this. But it is worth considering.
Do you think there was a lot of bickering about who is the most omniscient or the most omnipotent or which member is the oldest? My wife and I will occasionally argue about division- of-labor issues whose turn it is to take out the dog or empty the dishwasher. Can you imagine that kind of discussion going on within the Trinity?
Not quite. "The life of God is a life of self-giving and other-receiving love," writes Miroslav Volf. Father, Son, and Spirit are so close that Jesus could say, "The Father is in me and I am in the Father." The ancient Greek word for this "mutual indwelling" of the Trinity is perichoresis, which is related to our word choreography. The Trinity exists as a kind of eternal dance of joyful love among Father, Son, and Spirit. This can get a little abstract, so let me try painting a (human and inadequate) picture of what "mutual indwelling" involves.
"Hold You Me?"
When our first daughter, Laura, needed comforting during infancy, Nancy and I would usually use one of two phrases. When Laura was crying and we didn't know why, when we had tried all the obvious solutions like feeding her and taking care of hygiene issues and she was still distressed, we would hold her and repeat over and over in the most empathic tones we were capable of -"Honey, honey, honey," or "I know, I know"-nodding our heads as if we really did know. We generally didn't know, but it seemed reassuring to say we did.
After a while, Laura internalized this. By the time she was approaching her first birthday, she would sometimes wake up in the morning and begin to cry; but instead of just making crying sounds like other babies, she would cry words to herself over and over, "Honey, honey, honey...I know, I know."
Laura would cry them to herself with great compassion, nodding her little head just as she had seen us do. She was the world's first self-comforting baby. Sometimes Nancy and I would lie in bed and crack up over the sound of a one-year-old reassuring herself: "Honey, honey, honey."
But never for very long. When we would go into her room, Laura would switch to another phrase. She would poke her head up off her pillow (at that age she had just a strip of red hair that ran down the center of her scalp-it looked like a Mohawk haircut), raise her stubby little arms into the air, curl her fingers daintily toward us, and ask plaintively, "Hold you me?" The grammar was a little confused, but the meaning was clear and the request was impossible to refuse. Who could say no? The irresistible invitation. The universal cry of the human heart. Hold you me?
The connection that takes place between a mother and a child is perhaps the clearest picture in our world of what has been called the "human moment." It creates a little circle of life: A mother ceases to think about herself and focuses on her child; she gives love and warmth and blessing and the child receives life. At the same moment, the act of giving doesn't empty the mother; she receives the joy of pouring herself out in service and love, and she, too, is given life. The human moment reflects a kind of relational ecosystem in which life becomes greater and richer as it flows back and forth from one person to another.
Larry Crabb calls this process "connecting."
When two people connect, when their beings intersect as closely as two bodies during intercourse, something is poured out of one and into the other that has the power to heal the
soul of its deepest wounds and restore it to health. The one who receives experiences the joy of being healed. The one who gives knows the even greater joy of being used to heal. Something good is in the heart of each of God's children that is more powerful than everything bad. It's there, waiting to be released, work its magic.
Even an infant being held knows, with an understanding deeper than words, that what is being expressed with the body is in fact the decision of the soul: to hold another person in one's heart. I will seek your good; I will share your joy and hurt; we will know a kind of oneness, you and I. It is the brief enactment of a covenant. It is a promise of self-giving love.
The work of building community is the noblest work a person can do. The desire for community is the deepest hunger a human being can have. It was the desire of Marilyn Monroe and Kurt Cobain; the desire of Brian, age eight; the deepest longing of old Howard Hughes, if only he'd known it.
But no merely human circle of life is truly sufficient. Every circle requires another larger circle to support it. The well-being of families depends in part on schools and neighborhoods and workplaces and cities and nations and economies. Every merely human circle is broken, just as those of us who make them up are broken.
Dallas Willard states, "Ultimately, every human circle is doomed to dissolution if it is not caught up in the life of the only genuinely self-sufficient circle of sufficiency, that of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. For that circle is the only one that is truly and totally self-sufficient. And all the broken circles must ultimately find their healing there, if anywhere."
The life of the Trinity is an unceasing offering and receiving of self-giving love. The Father holds the Son in his heart, and the Son does the same with the Father. "The Father is in me and I am in the Father," Jesus says, and the Spirit holds and is held as well. "Hold you me" - offering themselves to one another in ceaseless, joy-filled, mutually submissive, generous, creative, self- giving love is what the Trinity has been doing from before the beginning of time...
The Great Invitation
What is most amazing is that God invites us into the Fellowship of the Trinity.
"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,
that all of them may be one, Father, just as you 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."
We have been invited into this fellowship of love. This is why Jesus says, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." To gather "in His name" is not restricted to church services. In the Bible, a person's name generally stands for his or her character and identity. To gather in Jesus' name means to relate to other people with the same spirit of servanthood, submission, and delight that characterizes Jesus in the Trinity. Whenever that happens, Jesus says, He can't just stand idly by. He is always a part of it, basking in it, cheering it on. A community of loving people is God's signature.
This is why the experience of authentic community is so life-giving. We are taking our place in fellowship with Life himself. When I am in isolation, I feel lonely. When I am in community, I experience what might be called "fullness of heart." The human heart is forever empty if it is closed in upon itself. In community - the divine community especially a heart comes alive. To experience community is to know the joy of belonging, the delight at being known and loved, the opportunity for giving and growing, the safety of finding a true home."
My prayer for today: (if you would like to, please feel free to add your own prayer here):