Easter 7C  |  Acts 16:16-34, John 17:20-26

Jesus is in the middle of praying:

“I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one.”

Jesus is at the Last Supper, gathered with his disciples for the last time, finishing their time together before heading to the garden for the Passion. And he prays for them. He prays for unity and love and commitment.

And he also prays for everyone who comes after them. He prays across time and space, for all the devoted and those longing for grace. Which means he prays for us. That we may be one as he and the Father are one.

Not only together, unified here. But in the Father. In him. Together. With them.

This prayer for unity is not just for us now. It is for us across time, that we may seek oneness with Jesus and his disciples, with saints and the Great Cloud of Witnesses in every age. United through Christ in a Way of Love.

That is one serious prayer.

It is also a reminder of our interconnectedness. And our responsibility.

Not merely to uphold tradition, but embody it, become it, with the joy of participating in a world beyond our own. To be members and participants in the Kin-dom here and now — not just in the age to come — so that earth may be as heaven.

Some speak of time in physical terms, that we can bend it, like light, and physically touch it, perhaps even embody it. That kind of physics is beyond my small study, but it complements the teaching of Jesus, doesn’t it? Thinking along these lines, perhaps we can decouple that dominant sense of the physical, rootedness of a now divorced from a past and a future, that we think only of ourselves, only of our time, that we might instead know a present unity with the past and the future that we may see it all as one. 

Because there is living to be done, isn’t there?

Consider Paul and Silas.

After visiting with Lydia, the cloth-dealer, the two continue their work in Macedonia, when they are followed by a slave who bothers them by shouting about their devotion to God. To the point that Paul gets annoyed with all of the shouting. Like her testimony was a burden, like her words weren’t shouts of praise. Paul gets so annoyed that he exorcizes the spirit from her.

Which had the people rejoicing, right? This poor, enslaved young woman was set free. And nobody had to hear the shouting. So obviously the people would be happy for her.

Well…maybe the people are happy, but the slaver — not so much. She is their property. And their cash cow. Now she’s worthless to them. Her worth was generated by her suffering — her continued suffering. And their wealth was created by sustaining that suffering as long as possible.

So the owner “dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities”. Notice the location: the marketplace. This isn’t a courthouse with its symbols of objectivity and power. It is the center of commerce and wealth. Where lives, like this young woman’s, are bought and sold, exploited by and for the powerful.

Notice here, too, the priority of the law. 

Paul has freed this young woman of torture, given her freedom and health, wholeness, newness of being. 

He has also “ruined” a man’s property. And that lands him in jail. Because the law in the kingdom of earth cares more about the maintenance of property than the freedom of citizens. But in the Kin-dom of God, freedom, justice, health, peace, and wholeness are far more important.

This backward priority, of money, of preserving the exploitation above freedom, of making the human into capital to be stolen, then spent — to marketize humanity regardless of God’s conviction to heal — is a fundamental rejection of what we know is the heart of our faith. To welcome in, gathering in love, healing and seeking wholeness in our present world — with our people — that is faith.

The prison cell is an absence of trust.

And of faith.

It is the brutalizing of two travellers of Jesus’s Way of Love, who brought healing and wholeness to one who was tortured and exploited, whose own sense of living was stunted by perverse profiteering, enslaved. And the law protects the slavers, the exploiters, stealing her livelihood and productivity, her labor and her life from her. Nothing about this is good or right or just.

And when the doors fly open, the jailer there is afraid and conflicted. He fears his own life and livelihood, so distorted the values and the system are — he thinks of suicide as a way of preserving life — that is how perverse and antichristlike this vision is. That we would see that as a more reasonable solution than ending the exploitation of people and the impoverishing of souls. Like our own medical bankruptcies and GoFundMes and stories of fundraising medical care rather than risking the political capital of ensuring healthcare for everyone.

But no one has escaped. The jailer’s life isn’t over. It has only begun. And he can see that. Something powerful enough to make him walk away from this system of pain and torture, from the abuse and hatred, that turn a person’s life into another’s wealth. Which would preserve such exploitation in a mutation of justice and peace.

And in an act of repentance, he brings them to his own home, washes their wounds, and feeds them. The one who was paid to oppress them, sets to healing them.

The jailer heard without seeing.

As Jesus prayed for those that would come after. He was talking about that time after the resurrection, when he would say to Thomas, 

“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

And of Saul being hit, struck blind, and following the way, becoming Paul. Of going to Macedonia because of a vision, because he was prevented from going to Asia, and it is here that he meets Lydia and this jailer. 

He speaks of these people being united across time and space, who have never met each other — only Paul and his companion — but are siblings with every one of them. 

And siblings with us as Children of God.

Makers of peace, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Whose poverty of spirit helps us connect with those who mourn and grieve, who struggle and can’t fight back, who are merciful and pure in heart. We are united in love across time and space, through a tradition bound together in Jesus by love. By knowledge that love is the root of our being, the heart of our days, and the joy of our lives.

This divine community is a blessing to our present and a promise for our future. It is a means of being with those who have come before and to commune with those who come after. 

And the demand upon us is mere love. A selfless love that encourages us to let go of our obsessions with owning things and having our way. Which challenges us to love people even when we don’t want to. A love that puts people above profit and hope always within reach.

A love for us now. Here. And for every day ahead of us. Shared, as it is, among friends, neighbors, in this great crowded, cloud of witness.