Theory of Everything

John 17:20-26

I am not a scientist, even though while in high school and college I originally planned to be one. Even though I took the religious route instead, I still enjoy reading science books and articles and watching science shows – especially about the origin of the universe and quantum physics. The vastness of the universe both on the macro and micro level – the cosmic and subatomic scale - fills me with wonder. It puts things in perspective and reminds me how little I am and how little I know and understand.

There is one concept that fascinates me in particular. Theoretical physicists call it the Theory of Everything. The theory of everything or final theory seeks to explain all known physical phenomena in scientific terms, and be able to predict – in principle - the outcome of any experiment that could be carried out. It seeks to reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics. The theory has not yet been successfully formulated and is one of the unsolved problems of physics. Being a layman scientifically, I don’t really understand the problem, much less the possible solutions. But I see it as an attempt to understand how the universe works, explaining it in terms of one grand theory. In fact in theoretical physics there is even called a theory called the Grand Unified Theory.

There is a corresponding problem in philosophy – which I know a little bit more about - called the problem of the One and the Many. This is about metaphysics rather than physics. It goes back to Plato and even earlier to pre-Socratic philosophers. In Christian philosophy it seeks to understand how the one God is related to the many things of God’s creation. In other words, how is everything in the universe related and how is it all connected to God? This may all sound much too complex and heavy for a Sunday morning sermon – especially on Mother’s Day. So I will give you the quick answer: the solution is Christ. In fact the answer to almost any question for the Christian comes down to Christ, as any Sunday School student knows.

There is an old joke about a Sunday School teacher using squirrels for an object lesson. He started out by saying, "I'm going to describe something, and I want you to raise your hand when you know what the answer is." The children nodded eagerly. "He lives in trees (pause) and eats nuts (pause)..." No hands went up. "And he is gray (pause) and has a long bushy tail (pause)..." The children were looking at each other, but still no hands raised. "And it jumps from branch to branch (pause) and chatters and flips its tail when it's excited (pause)..." Finally one little boy tentatively raised his hand. The teacher breathed a sigh of relief and called on him. "Well," said the boy, "it is probably Jesus ... but it sure sounds like a squirrel to me!"

This morning I don’t want to talk about physics or squirrels. I want to talk about our lives. A lot of people struggle with a lot of things in their lives. They try to make sense of everything that happens – from personal tragedies to Boston Marathon bombings. They try to discern the will of God for their lives. The answer – as simplistic as it may sound – is Christ. Christ is what connects us to everything. He is our Grand unified theory – the theory of everything – except that Christ is not a theory; he is reality. Our scripture lesson for this morning is one of the great passages in the Bible. I love it not only because it helps me to put everything in perspective theologically, but also because it rings true to my own experience of Christ. I hear these words of Jesus and they ring true to me on a deep level. So what I have to say this morning is not going to be difficult to understand – like theoretical physics. Hopefully it will be very simple.

I. The first point I find in this passage is Oneness with God – Communion with God. In this passage Jesus prays a prayer for us. He prays this prayer on the night before he dies. Right before he died, Jesus was thinking of us – which itself is very moving. He says: “I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word.” He had just finished praying for this 12 apostles. Now he is praying for those who will believe in him through the word of the apostles. That means not only first century people who heard the apostles directly, but also all those throughout the centuries who would believe through the testimony of the apostles contained in the written gospels in our NT. So that means us. He prays in verse 21 “that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.” This one verse is an amazing statement. It fills me with the same wonder as I feel when I look at one of those photographs of distant galaxies taken by the Hubble telescope.

This passage tells us that Jesus is one with God. This is a repeated claim in the Gospel of John. It begins in the very first verse of the Gospel of John and runs as a unifying thread through the whole gospel. The Gospel of John begins with the words: ‘In the beginning was the Word [which refers to the eternal Christ before he became man] and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” Without getting too much into the philosophical underpinnings of this verse, this is saying that before the man Jesus of Nazareth was born, who Jesus really was as the Eternal Word was one with God, and in fact he was God.

This is the basic claim of Christianity - that the man Jesus was not just a human being, but was in some real and meaningful sense Divine. Jesus described his relationship to God in our passage today in these words: “You, Father, are in Me, and I in You.” This means that we can experience God in Jesus Christ. When I look into the distant heavens I see God. I see not only the creation of God, but I actually experience God through the wonder of his creation. When I read about the complex sub-atomic world of quarks and Higgs bosons – I see not only the intricate handiwork of God, I experience God. And when I look at Jesus Christ, I see God. We can get really into theology here and how Jesus is God, but for me that is mostly a word or idea game. I see these words of scripture as ways of expressing spiritual experience. When I say that Jesus is God, I mean that I experience Jesus as God. That God was and is in Jesus and Jesus in God. I think that is what Jesus meant when he prayed these words – that he experienced his oneness with God.

Jesus also wanted us to experience that oneness or communion with God for ourselves. Listen to what Jesus prayed. He prayed, “that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us.” He goes on in verses 22-23 to say, “And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one….” Verses 22- 23 are even more astounding to me than verse 21.

A couple of weeks ago I preached a sermon on the glory of God. I talked a lot about Jesus as the glory of God, quoting the beginning of John’s gospel where he says, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” The glory of God was beheld in and through Jesus Christ. I defined glory as the manifested presence of God. Here Jesus says, “And the glory which You gave Me I have given them.” The glory of God that was in Jesus, Jesus says he has also given to us! That same glory of God is in us. The powerful manifested presence of God is in us. That is an amazing statement!

Then he goes on to say: “that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me.” Jesus is saying that just as he is one with God the Father, so are we to be one with Him and God. This is talking about our union with God, being united with God. We can go all types of theological places with this idea. People can develop monistic philosophical systems or pantheistic theologies. I don’t go there. I don’t think Jesus is talking theology or philosophy; Jesus was not primarily a theologian or a philosopher. I think Jesus is talking spiritual experience.

Here I think that Jesus is inviting us to our own experience of being one with him and one with God. This is the heart of true Christian spiritual experience – the heart of being a Christian. The Christian life is not primarily about holding correct doctrine about Jesus or living by a certain Christian code of ethics. Those things are certainly part of Christianity, and I believe them and teach them, but they are secondary. They come after the experience; they flow from our relationship with Christ and God. The most important thing is being one with Christ and one with God through Christ.

Personally I think this is missing from much of Christian religion today – not only missing from mainline Protestant Christianity, which tends to be too much in the head - but also missing from much of evangelical Christianity. Most Christians of any denominational variety have little awareness of what Jesus is talking about here in this passage about being one with Christ and one with God. I might be wrong. It is impossible to get into someone else’s mind and heart, and I definitely would never presume to judge another’s relationship with God – only God can do that. But as a fulltime pastor for 35 years now I have had many discussions with many Christians about their understanding of God, their experience of God and their relationships with God. My assessment is that a lot of Christian religion is mostly ideas.

What Jesus is inviting us to in this passage is not just an idea. This is reality. In fact it is more real than what most people mistake for real life. Most of our lives we live in our heads – the realm of our ideas. We mistake our thoughts about the world for the real world. People create stories about their lives with themselves in the starring role. Everything that happens is all about them. Ideas are not real; they are just in our heads. But God is real. The true God is not an idea. God is real. And Jesus is saying that we can experience unity with true God like Jesus experienced unity with true God. Listen to Jesus’ word again: “I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.”

This experience of God that Jesus is inviting us to is not just an inferior imitation of what Jesus experienced. Jesus calls it here “perfect,” “that they may be made perfect in one.” He is talking about us being “made perfect in one.” This is the type of thing Jesus said often that Christians don’t really know what to make of and so we gloss over his words and do not take them seriously. A few chapters earlier 14:12 Jesus said this, “ Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father.” We will do greater works than Jesus did? Do we really believe this? We don’t know how to deal with such words because they don’t fit with our ideas of Jesus or ourselves. Jesus is saying that what he experienced, we can experience. What he experienced of God, we can experience of God. We can experience it because we are in him and he is in us, and we are in God and God is in us – just like Jesus prayed! What Jesus prayed for us is real!

There is another important point that I need to make from this passage. It is about the purpose of this unitive experience of God. Jesus said in verse 21, “that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.” Verse 23 “I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.”

There are actually a couple of things here. The purpose of this experience and awareness of our unity with God and Christ is so that people might know that God sent Christ. In other words there is a missionary purpose to all this – that people might believe in Christ.  This is not just about us. We tend to make spirituality all about ourselves. That is especially true of the “spiritual but not religious” movement in our society now, people who respond to surveys saying they have no official religious affiliation to any church or religion. Yet many of these will say they are spiritual. What they mean is that they have an individualized spirituality – designer religion. It is all about them. What Jesus is talking about is not just about us. In fact it is not about us at all. The more we know God and less it is about us. The more we experience our communion with God, the more that the self disappears in the majesty and greatness of God. Jesus said we have to die to self to live to God. We have to lose our selves to gain God. It is not about us. It is so that others may know Christ and God.

It is also about love. Jesus talks about the centrality of love in this passage: “that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.” In the closing verses of the passage Jesus mentions love several times. Verses 24-26 “You loved Me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father! The world has not known You, but I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me. And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.” The oneness that we experience in Christ and in God is love. It is a unity of love. We love God with all our heart and mind and soul and strength – and that love overflows to loving others as ourselves. Love is the nature of God; God is love. When we are one in Christ and one in God we are one in love. You could say that Love is the grand unified theory. It is the theory of everything. Love is incarnated in Jesus Christ. When we are in Christ, that love is also incarnated – enfleshed and lived in our lives. It is not about us. It never was. It is all about God and God’s love expressed through us to others. That is the theory of everything.