In John 17, Jesus prays for his disciples to be “one just as We are one.” What is Jesus praying for? How can we possibly be one as the Father and Son are one? Maybe looking at a flock of birds will help.
A flock of a thousand starlings takes flight at the same moment.
Soon, the entire group is performing a complex display of synchronized flying, without any planning or apparent communication. Shapes undulate in and out, like a swirling work of modern art. The entire mass seems controlled by a central mind. Individual birds make sudden, hairpin turns, and yet no one collides, lands, or leaves the group. The flock moves in utterly complex but effortless unity. Then, all at once, the display is over as each bird lands within a second of one another.
Our minds can grasp wild geese flying in “V” formation. However, we have no idea how starlings coordinate their infinitely more complex movements. The flock seems to be led by the same mind, like a single organism composed of countless individuals, anticipating one another’s movements and flowing together without any apparent leader. Are the birds one or many? Does a flock somehow have a common mind?
How is a flock of birds one?
One of the strongest proposals comes from the field of chaos theory. Perhaps each bird follows a few very simple rules: Don’t hit other birds, stay close to the nearest birds, and fly in the same direction and speed as neighboring birds. And yet, while the computer models using these inputs are similar, they’re not an exact match.
The answer remains elusive to modern science. We still don’t understand how a flock of birds is one.
In John 17, Jesus prays for His disciples:
“Let them be one as We are one.”
He repeats the prayer three times, culminating with, “Let them be perfectly one, so that the world may believe you sent me.” Jesus is asking for something profound: for his followers on earth to be one with each other as God the Father is one with God the Son. Their union is the deepest mystery in all of existence. If we can’t even comprehend the unity of a flock of birds, how can we hope to understand the unity of God?
Before Adam met Eve, God first had him name all of the animals as he looked for His helper and companion. Perhaps, similarly, as we seek out John 17 unity, we should start by trying to understand the forms of unity that are all around us in our human experience.
Family, Tribe, and Nation
Human families are one of the highest natural forms of unity. Speaking of Adam and Eve, is there any greater unity than the union of a husband and wife? And yet, somehow that union overflows into even greater love.
Before my first son was born, I thought I loved children. The truth is, I had no idea what love even meant before he was born. Everything changed when I held him in my hands as a different kind of love opened in my heart. Out of marital union comes the union of father and son, mother and child.
Out of these close familial relationships, grow extended family networks and tribes, creating a new unity among people who speak the same language and are connected by marriage partnerships. As these networks grow and expand, we see the union of larger ethno-nations based on shared geography, local history, and descent.
What we call “nations” in the modern sense are even larger than ethno-nations. They bring a type of unity through common authority, leadership, customs, and a shared cultural or language identity. When I’m traveling overseas, I have an immediate kinship with any American I meet. When we are in the United States, we might have very little in common. We may have different interests or vote for different candidates. But, drop us into another culture and it is immediately clear that we think, act, speak, and understand events in a similar way. Talking with one another feels easy and natural. We are united by a common culture and ways of thinking and action. We are united by common nationality.
Social to the Core
Some of the worst people on the planet end up in high-security prisons. These prisons hold rapists, murderers, thieves, and true psychopaths who enjoy hurting others. With few exceptions, these are truly evil people who deserve their punishment and must be kept separate from society for the protection of everyone else. These are not people you would invite to a dinner party or ask to watch your kids. Within the prison, inmates verbally and physically abuse one another. Hatred and animosity between inmates are the norm. Evil people stuck with other evil people in a highly contained, punitive environment? It sounds a lot like Hell. It’s hard to imagine a worse social situation.
We might think of this prison as the lowest form of unity we can imagine.
And yet, when the authorities want to punish a prisoner, they do something even worse. They put him in solitary confinement.
As a species, we have such a deep desire to be together that it is a punishment to remove someone from the worst community imaginable and force them to be alone. We need each other the way we need food and water. We are social to our very core, made to be in unity. We want to work together, play together, be together. Most of us live in a house with our families and in neighborhoods with other families. We want to be with people we know well and with perfect strangers. We want to be together in small, intimate settings, and massive crowds. I have always hated being in crowds. However, as I learned during lockdowns, even I, someone who prefers small groups, have a deep longing to be around huge groups of people.
Different Degrees of Natural Unity
One basic level of unity, we could think of as simply “being together.” It’s clear from the prison example that we prefer “being together” even in horrible situations with very low levels of unity, to being alone.
Closely related to “being together” is “working together.” We’re not just human “beings”, we have things we want to do as well. Working together brings many advantages, including a division of labor so jobs can be finished more easily and increased capacity to work. We also just benefit from being together, working together.
As we are “being together, working together”, it is hard to accomplish anything when divisions and disagreements dominate. Envy and back-biting make everything slow and painful. Hatred and abuse are counterproductive. It’s like playing tug of war with half of your team playing for the other side.
So, a higher form of natural unity we might call “being together, working together, not fighting.”
I think all of us would be glad to be part of a family or company with this type of unity. It’s such an improvement over being alone, working alone, or being in constant conflict. And yet, even among natural forms of unity, there are much higher levels that we’ve all experienced.
A higher form of unity is when there is shared joy and delight in being together, not just an absence of conflict. People love to be in groups like this, like a family reunion where everyone is getting along, or an after-work party where everyone is laughing. The shared joy has a way of building on itself. We enjoy others who are enjoying us. And they enjoy us enjoying them.
At an even higher form of natural unity, we may have such a delight and commitment to one another that we prioritize the success of the group over our own success. We often see this type of unity demonstrated in sports teams, military organizations, and musical groups. We stop being independent individuals and allow ourselves to be part of a larger, coordinated whole, like birds in a flock. For humans, this kind of synchronization often requires extensive practice. It also requires leadership that creates a common culture.
With good leadership, culture, and practice, human beings can function with incredible unity. A symphony orchestra is a vivid example: dozens of instruments, hundreds of players, one leader, and beautiful unity. Watching a skilled sports team is a joy, in part because, at their best, the players anticipate the movements of each other with a kind of sixth sense, like starlings in the flock. The hope of victory and the fear of defeat adds deeper meaning to the united movement we see.
Perhaps the highest level of natural unity involves giving up one’s life for others.
2,500 years later, we still remember the 300 Spartans, who sacrificed their lives to save Greece from the invading Persians. History is full of examples of husbands laying down their lives for their wives, mothers dying for their children, and soldiers dying for their comrades. Somehow, the willingness of someone to pay the ultimate cost can create the most powerful bond of natural unity in those who are left behind.
These are not what Jesus is praying for
As human beings, we are often in social situations that are characterized by a lack of peace. We might call that, “being together, fighting”. The prison example is at one end of the extreme, but we’ve all experienced the pain of divisions among families, schools, businesses, and churches. It can be tempting to think that if could only achieve some measure of peace, we have arrived at John 17 unity.
While Jesus is certainly aware of natural examples of unity like the ones mentioned, He is not praying for us to “be together, working together, not fighting.”
He’s not praying for us to be united like our favorite sports team in pursuit of a world championship, pursuing the same goal and prioritizing group success, or to be joined like a symphony orchestra, reading off the same page and playing in harmony.
He’s not praying for us to be one like a flock of birds, performing mind-bending anticipatory movements as a group.
He is not even asking us to sacrifice our lives for our country, our spouse, or our child, although this type of love begins to touch on the divine.
He is asking for a deeper kind of unity. He is praying for us to be one as the Father and the Son are one.
He wants us to be one “just as” God the Father and God the Son are one.
He wants human beings to be one the way God is one with God.
Understanding what Jesus is praying for leads us to two questions:
How is God one? And how on earth are we supposed to be one like that?