1 June 2025
Meet Tabitha and Elisha
Today’s gospel has some outrageously good news for us. In fact, it is stonkering in what it claims.
Today’s gospel is from John 17 in what we call the high priestly prayer. Jesus the High Priest is praying for lots and lots of different people and lots and lots of different things.
He prays for those who will become believers in the future, those who, through his disciples' ministry, will come to know the Love of their heavenly Father and his Son.
So we get
“I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,”
He prays for unity amongst his disciples.
“that all of them may be one”
He prays for his apostles and asks for two things for them.
First, that they may be with him.
“Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am,”
and secondly
That they may see the glory of God.
“and to see my glory, the glory you have given me.”
He prays that the world may come to believe that the Father sent Him and the disciples may know that they are loved.
“I pray that the world may believe that you have sent me and you have loved them just as you have loved me.”
And this is the really good bit. The same love that the Father has for Jesus is the same love that God has for us. The ferocity and passion and tenderness and eternal love that God lavishes on his Son is the same ferocious and passionate and tender and eternal love that God lavishes on … you and me.
And the word ‘know’ occurs no less than 5 times in the gospel reading. And it is a special kind of knowing. It is not an academic book knowledge like the square root of 9 is three or the chemical formula for water is H2O.
So if it's not “book knowing” then what sort of knowledge is it, and what would be an example of it?
Introducing Tabitha and Elisha. Here are two people who, when you look at them, you “know” that they are together. They are a single body. There is a cohesive, electric atmosphere around them that is almost material and touchable. What’s more, they themselves know they are together. With every fibre of their being, they know each other and they know they are together.
And that I think others and sisters is the closest we get to understanding the sort of unity that God the Father and his Son have with each other.
“Just as you are in me and I am in you.” Except, of course, that the unity that the Father and the Son have is never marred by sin, by the quick word, by the irritations that Tabitha and Elisha inevitably know.
But the takeaway this morning with chips and sauce on the side is very good news indeed, and it is something that we can never quite get our heads around. And the good news is this.
That special untainted adoration, that inseparable unity, that mind-blowing delicious love that the Father and Son perpetually enjoy…. is exactly the same relationship and the same dazzling sparkle that The Master wants to, longs to, desires to, craves to have with you and me. Which is the same spectacular unity that we are called to have with each other.
Listen closely.
“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”
“I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me.”
And when we try to achieve this unity with God and with each other, then we become witnesses to Him. Then the world knows and thinks… Ah .. Look at how they behave one towards another. I’ll have some of that. Then God’s glory is revealed to a world that has an unrelenting hunger and thirst for peace, for harmony and for reconciliation.
I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
This is our high, noble and essential vocation, and while it might sound easy and luscious, it’s not and we fall short in sorts of ways.
For example, we share the threefold order of ministry (bishops, priests and deacons) with our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters, and yet after 4 centuries we somehow still can’t quite get our stuff together. The outside world, which looks at our divisions, is right to call us out and ask us if we really do love each other.
Perhaps a good starting point towards reconciliation is to understand the very good news that I mentioned earlier.
The incredible relationship between the Father and the Son is the same relationship God longs to have with us, which is the same relationship we are to have with one another. Now, how good would it be if ….