Jesus was drawing near to the end of his farewell discourse to his disciples, a sermon he gave to them (according to John) on the evening of the last supper. In our gospel lesson for today, Jesus broke into a prayer to the Father. It is a famous prayer called the high priestly prayer. There are many spiritual riches to mine in this prayer and our text. For our purposes today on this last Sunday of Easter, the Sunday after the festival of Jesus' ascension into heaven with the church's celebration of the Trinity not far off, the last sentence of our lesson for today is especially crucial to us.

Jesus had been talking to his disciples about life after he left them (John 14:2-3, 18). By the time he got to the prayer in our lesson for today, he was addressing the theme of his glorification (John 17:1). Of course, Jesus' glorification happened both at the resurrection and again in the ascension. Consequently the prayer speaks to our situation on this Sunday of the Easter season, the Sunday after the ascension. Here is what Jesus prayed: "Holy Father [he prayed], keep them [my followers] in thy name, which thou hast given me, that they may be one, even as we are one (John 17:11b)."

Make my followers one, as we are one. A whole cluster of themes jump out at us. Jesus wants his followers to be one, like he and the Father are one.

This notion of the Father and Son being one, especially at this time in the church year when we celebrate the ascension, is bound to lead us to consider God in all his glory and majesty (the Triune God). Not just the Father and the Son, but along with the Holy Spirit, the three make one. How can these three make one? Jesus says it is in the same way that all of us believers are one. How can that be the case?

Making one out of three, explaining the Trinity, has always been a real challenge to the church. We have not usually done a very good job. And we have not been very successful in making the Trinity a crucial aspect in the everyday life of the faithful. Seriously folks, if the Trinity doctrine were discarded next week by an ecumenical council (kind of like the council that drew up the Nicene Creed), would your faith really be affected? Would it make that much of a differnce to you in your daily Monday through Saturday life?

I think that we all know the answer. And it is a tragedy, a judgment on the church, that we have not learned the lesson that the Trinity and Jesus' high priestly prayer teach. They teach us an important lesson about the majesty of God's love.

The Majesty of God's Love.

For me the love of God and its relationship to the Trinity has been best explained by an African theologian of the earliest centuries, a man named Augustine. Augustine took very seriously the idea that our God is a God who wants his people to love in a special way. What is that special way? The Bible teaches it. In marriage, it claims, God wants love to make one out of two (two become one) (Ephesians 5:31; Genesis 2:24). He wants love to make many become one. (Human love at its best works that way. In any family unit to which you have belonged, the love you have for the other members of that family made you all one with them - one family.)

Of course we love that way because God is love. God's love is the perfect love. In him, the many (the three) become one. Here is how Augustine explained it.

We begin with the Father. The Father is eternal, with a burning desire to love. The Father cannot help himself. He is so full of love. Yet in eternity, what does he have to love? Consequently, God posited himself again as an other, as an object of his love. He posited himself again as the Son. Therefore, in eternity, forever and ever, God the Father has had someone to love. He had the Son.

For Jesus' high priestly prayer (today's gospel lesson) we are reminded that everything that the Son has is from the Father (John 17:7). Likewise, all that the Son has he gives back to the Father (John 17:10). The Father is love, overwhelming love. All that he has, the Son has. Consequently, the Son is likwise love - majestic, overwhelming love. He loves the Father back.

In eternity, forever and ever, Father and Son have loved each other. They could not stop themselves. Long before creation, long before they had something else to love, the Father and the Son were consumed by a burning desire to love something. Thus, they needed each other to love. In eternity, the Father loved the Son, and their love was mutual.

Do we have here two gods - God the Father and God the Son? It is at this point that Augustine introduced the role of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, who, according to the Nicene Creed, "proceeds from the Father and the Son." According to Augustine, the Holy Spirit is the love the binds them together. Augustine's words in describing his phenomenon are beautiful. Here is what he wrote: "Therefore the Holy Spirit, whatever it is, is something common both to Father and Son. But that communion itself is consubstantial and co-eternal; and it may fitly be called friendship, let it be so called; but it is aptly called love. And this is also a substance, and 'God is love ...'"

The Holy Spirit is the love that binds Father and Son together as One. The Father loves the Son and the Spirit is the love that makes them One. That is the Trinity.

Even, and especially, in himself, God's love makes one out of many. In his high priestly prayer, Jesus prays that his followers like us would be one, even as God himself is One (John 17:11b). Yet, how can that be? Is not Jesus being a bit unrealistic? He could not intend that all of us lose our individual separateness, become one in the sense that Father, Son and Spirit are One, could he?

Of course, none of us can love like God. Only his love is perfect. Only his love can literally make one out of many.

In a good marriage, two become one to a great extent. It is not that the marriage dissolves the separateness of the partners. But they truly do become one in the sense that the marriage becomes more important than the partners as individuals. That is the kind of relationship which Jesus prays that his followers might have with each other. It just comes naturally when you worship a triune God.

At this point, the importance of the Trinity for our daily life here at church and in the world becomes evident. In the Trinity we live with a God who is so full of love that his love makes one out of many. Of course, such love is contagious. As Christians we may catch some of it and likewise be driven to love the many into one - to relate to all of the followers of Christ as if we were one.

You hear a lot about ecumenism and Christian unity from time to time. This drive towards becoming truly one church is rooted right here in the scripture, specifically as a consequence of the Trinity. The next time that you do not feel excited about ecumenical efforts, the next time that you are critical of efforts to unify the churches, give some thought to the Trinity and see if you do not conclude that our triune God wants his people to be one. Not that he might want one united union church. God's oneness does not abolish the distinctions between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Perhaps God is calling for unity of Christian like his own internal unity. Perhaps he wants us to maintain our separate (denominational) identities in a united church (just as the distinct identities of his three persons are maintained in the unity of the Trinity). In any case, the nature of God as three in one demands that we, his people, be one.

Faith in a triune God entails that there is no such thing as an individualistic Christian faith, one unconcerned about relationships in society or relationships among Christians. One well-known conservative Evangelical theologian put it this way: "Trinitarian religion involves all man's relations to God and to society; the social relationships within the Trinity call out against any antisocial interpretation of personal religion."

A triune God who is always yearning to bring the many into one wants his people to be that way, too. He wants people who are yearning to help make all human beings one people (John 17:18-21). Don't you yearn for it, too? Believing in the Trinity has all sorts of practical implications about the way you live your life. How dare we say we believe in a God whose love is so great that it makes one out of many, if we also do not, year after year, live as though we and all people were one? It is a little wonder that Jesus prayed that his people might be one.

What did he mean by praying for our oneness? I have found a helpful image in one of the sermons of Martin Luther. In an Easter sermon that he gave in 1538, Luther claimed that all Christians are formed in a common brotherhood insofar as they share a common inheritance. We share a common inheritance (namely, salvation and eternal life - the majestic love of the triune God).

A common inheritance.

The image makes me think of a family. Think of your own family. You and all the members of you family share a common inheritance - common family ties, common genes, common stories, perhaps even common values and material possessions. My children, Elizabeth, Peter and Pat, seem to be three very different characters. Elizabeth will always be the boys' sister, no matter what happens. All three have been cursed with a common gene pool. They will have common stories about childhood that they can swap with each other for the rest of their lives (even if they went their separate ways). These children, their parents, and their three living grandparents, are one.

It is in this sense that Jesus prayed that all his people, including you and me, would be one. He wants us to revel in the common inheritance that we share - our common creaturehood and the majestic love that God has for us. That love, in particular, is the common inheritance that binds us together - makes us one family.

Indeed, we have a God who is literally full of love. It is a love so majestic that it made him discontent to be alone. Consequently God posited himself again as Son, and his love was so dynamic that it made God One again.

Such love is not content. It created us. It died for us (to redeem us from sin and evil). It is making us new - making us one. A love that will not quit until it makes us one family.

What a rich common inheritance you and I, all Christians and all creatures, share. We share in the love of the triune God - a love that makes one out of many. This love is what Easter and the new life given in the resurrection is all about. This love is what the ascension of Jesus into heaven is all about, too. For though Jesus has gone to be with the Father in glory, through the Holy Spirit his love is present among us. By making us one, he is giving us over to the Father, to God in all his majesty. Be awake to you (new) inheritance, people. The triune God has a love so majestic that he cannot fail to make us one. That love has been made manifest. Let us go now and live that way - as a people whom God has made into one family!