Rev Harry Newton preaches on Christian unity from John 17:20-26 at Sumner Redcliffs Church
A Sunday sermon by Rev Harry Newton on Jesus's prayer for unity among his future followers.
Summary
Rev Harry Newton delivers a sermon at Sumner Redcliffs Anglican Church in Christchurch, New Zealand, working through the final six verses of John chapter 17 — the closing section of what scholars call the High Priestly Prayer. He situates the passage carefully within the structure of John's Gospel, explaining the literary architecture from the broad canon of Scripture down to these six specific verses. His central argument is that Jesus's final recorded prayer before his arrest was a prayer for unity among all future believers, and that the church has largely failed to honour that prayer across two millennia of division and denominational splitting. He closes with a congregational prayer asking for wisdom in navigating disagreement while pursuing unity.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Welcome and the Church Calendar
Rev Harry Newton: Welcome to church. My name's Harry, and I'm the minister here. We are in the midst of this part of the church calendar where we have a series of Sundays where quite important things happen. Last Thursday — who's heard of Ascension Day? Great. If you haven't heard, it's when the story about Jesus going up into heaven takes place. He goes up and the disciples are there and it's all a bit crazy, and it sounds like maybe they were smoking something — I don't know, but they weren't. That's how some people say it: maybe they were hallucinating, maybe something went on. But actually there's this quite mysterious thing where Jesus went up into the clouds and in doing so went back to heaven. And then for this sort of nine-day period there's nothing going on. And then suddenly the Holy Spirit comes in authority and power, and that's what we celebrate next Sunday on Pentecost Sunday.
As I say, there's a series of important dates happening across the next few weeks. And in the midst of it, we're kind of in this spot where we hear the Jesus story building to a little bit of a crescendo.
The Bible and the Gospel of John
Now, just so we're all on the same page — there is a book called the Bible. Who's heard of the Bible? All right, cool. Just in case you weren't aware, there's this thing called the Bible. It's Christian scriptures. It's quite old. It's actually not a book — it's actually called a canon. No, not a boom canon. That sounds too much fun. It's a canon, meaning a collection of books or literature. So it's got poetry, it's got letters, it's got apocalyptic writing, it's got all sorts of interesting pieces of literature in there, including something called bios. Bios is an ancient form of Hellenistic literature, and there are only four extant versions of it available in their entirety in the world. There are other versions with bits and pieces, but the only four we have in their entirety are the four Gospels — meaning good news. Gospels. Named after the authors Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Matthew is also known as Levi. Tradition has it that he's the guy who wrote it — one of the twelve disciples. Mark is called John Mark. He's the little cousin of a guy called Peter. You might remember Peter if you've heard the Jesus story — he's a bit of a dropkick. When he was arrested and put in prison, legend has it he was awaiting his death. He was executed in a pretty horrible way — crucified upside down in the middle of Rome. Because they were going to crucify him, he asked to be done upside down because he didn't believe he was worthy to die the same way as Jesus. Pretty gruesome. Just as he's waiting for that to happen, his young cousin John Mark comes, and we're told — well, legend has it — that he dictated his story to John Mark, who writes it all down. Hence Mark is quite rudimentary Greek. It's quite working class, you could say. It's short and to the point because you're on a bit of a time frame.
Then you've got Luke, who we've been exploring together for the last few months. Luke's my favourite, as I've said before, mainly because my grandad became a Christian by smoking his way through it when he was in a Nazi prisoner of war camp. Two things happened: he became a lifelong communist and a Christian. No one else found that funny? I think it's funny. The nurse had a crush on him, and she would sneak him tobacco and Gideon's Bibles and matches. And so he was like, oh, I'll just smoke my way through the Bible. And that's what he did. But then he thought it would be rude to smoke it and not read it, so he read it. Anyway, the Gospel of Luke is really interesting. He spends a lot of time researching things. He never actually met Jesus.
And that brings us to the final gospel — John. John is a character throughout his own version. He's called the beloved disciple. He refers to himself in the third person. John is most likely the younger cousin of Jesus. Tradition has it that he is the youngest out of all the disciples, probably just a teenager. He is there with Jesus on the last night before he dies. He's the one who's there when Jesus dips the bread and gives it to Judas and says Judas is going to betray him and all this kind of stuff. And John is a central figure.
The Structure of John's Gospel
Now, John structures his gospel in a really weird way. There are two parts to it. If you were around in 2023, you might recall that we did a series on John through the first part of the gospel. It goes right up to the end of chapter 12, and it's kicking off in chapter 13 with the second part. The first part's called the Book of Signs. Why? Because it's full of signs — six of them. The seventh sign happens later for some reason, but he puts six of them together there. And the six signs all point towards who Jesus is, because that's what a sign does — it points you towards something.
The second half is called the Book of Glory. And that's where we find ourselves today. The Book of Glory starts at chapter 13 and goes through to the end of chapter 21. But chapters 13 through to 17 are known as the Farewell Discourse. Jesus spends this whole time doing, saying, and praying a series of things which are designed to model and to prepare his disciples for what will happen with his impending death and resurrection.
This is all kind of important because it lays the groundwork for our reading this morning. We just heard a very short reading — six verses long. It's the last six verses out of the entire chapter of chapter 17, which is the end of the Farewell Discourse. And those six verses are the hinge — the literary hinge between what goes before and what comes next. In the very next verse, it all kicks into gear. Jesus is suddenly arrested and everything happens subsequently to that.
The High Priestly Prayer
Now, this whole chapter is known as the High Priestly Prayer. So we've got the High Priestly Prayer within the Farewell Discourse, which is within the Book of Glory, which is alongside the Book of Signs, which is within the Gospel of John — within the bios genre, within the New Testament, within the canon, which is the Bible. So you see how we've done that? We've gone from a big funnel right down to here.
Now we get down to here and we've got three sections to this chapter, the so-called High Priestly Prayer. Why is it called a High Priestly Prayer? What does a priest do in quite traditional cultures? What do they do in Catholic churches? Has anyone been to a Catholic church? I went to a Catholic school for a bit. You might recall they don't do this in all Catholic churches anymore — post-Vatican II, to be fair — but some still do. The communion table's here. They turn their back to you and they pray to God. The idea is they are a conduit through whom you pray. They are the person who contends on your behalf before the saints and before God.
So Jesus does the exact same thing throughout this chapter, hence why it's called the High Priestly Prayer. The first few verses, he prays for himself. Now this is a very different prayer to the other three gospel accounts where Jesus prays to God and says, "I don't want to suffer, but please take this away from me if you can. If you can't, it's okay — I'll go through with it." This one, he doesn't do that. I won't get bogged down in the details, but it's actually a very different prayer. And since John was there, I personally find that quite interesting.
What happens next? Then he prays for his disciples and his wider entourage of followers. And the third segment is where we are today. In the third segment, he prays for the future church. And there's something in here which I think is quite important.
John 17:20-26 — Jesus Prays for Future Believers
Now, if you don't call yourself a Jesus follower, if you don't call yourself a Christian, that's absolutely fine. Genuinely, it is. I'm stoked you're here. But if you do, this little reading today has something quite challenging to say to you and to me — to anyone who calls themselves a Christian.
Here we are. John 17, verse 20. Jesus says, "My prayer is not for them alone" — "them" being the disciples he's just been praying for. This is the hinge that goes into the final verses of the prayer, and that in turn is what the scholars refer to as a literary hinge which launches us into the final segment of the gospel. Who's he praying for? He's saying, "I pray for those who will believe in me through their message." In other words, he's praying for all future believers.
Now, over the last 2,000 years, 99.99% of Christians have become Christians because somebody else has told them the good news of Jesus. They didn't become a Christian because they met Jesus. They became one because someone else told them. Who told them? Someone else. Someone else, going all the way back to the apostles. So essentially what he's doing here is saying: if you consider yourself a Christian, then I'm praying for you. He's praying a prayer for us — for you and me sitting here in 21st century Aotearoa, 2,000 years later.
What is it he's praying for? He makes it clear who he's praying for. But what is his actual prayer? His prayer is this: "I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message — that all of them may be one." And right there, on the word "one," I think weighs a lot of meaning and challenge.
Unity as the Defining Characteristic of the Church
Jesus emphasizes unity. Both here and a couple of verses later, Jesus's prayer is for unity to be the key defining characteristic of his future church. And I find that personally quite confronting, because it strikes me that we haven't done a very good job of this over the last 2,000 years.
Do you know that there are between 30,000 and 40,000 Christian denominations across the world? If you get rid of the wacky ones — and I'm assuming I'm not one of the wacky ones; it's always there, mate, it's never you — and then we combine others under wider banners, there's still somewhere in the realms of 300 to 500 denominations across the world. That's a lot of denominations, a lot of different flavours of Christianity. Now, almost all of these come into being because they split off from another denomination.
Now, for those of us who have been around the Anglican Church for any period of time, particularly the last few years, will know that splits happen. The Anglican Church split. It's been very painful. Sometimes splits happen for a good reason. When the one that happened here in New Zealand occurred, it was actually following on from what happened overseas. My father was an Anglican minister. He split and became part of what's called the Confessing Anglicans. Now, they're still part of the global Anglican movement, but in New Zealand it was kind of two parallel churches. My wife's family's church did the same thing. We chose to stay because we felt a sense of calling to stay. But the reality is that people do split, and sometimes splits do happen for genuinely good reasons. However, they're still very painful.
But some of the reasons people split are frankly just a bit weird and petty. Did you know — this is a fun one — back in the 1800s, a bunch of Southern Baptist Americans split because they had a disagreement about whether one should use soap when baptizing children. I don't think you should use soap — they're very slippery. Can you imagine picking up the child and it slips out of your hand? Oh, there goes little Johnny out the window. Now, they had a disagreement about this and they genuinely split. Why? Because they thought it implied that physical cleanliness was more important than spiritual purity. Now, that sounds a bit weird, but it's not just them.
The Russians got in on the action around the same time. The Orthodox Church split back in the 17th century because of a disagreement over beards. Some believe — the traditionalists believe — that all priests were required to have a beard, because it was a sign of masculinity, piety, and biblical tradition. Others believed that one should oil one's beard, which others thought was too feminine. And others thought you should shave the beard for hygiene reasons. I kid you not, they split.
Now, we might think the Russians and the Americans are a bit funny, especially given what's going on overseas nowadays. But it's not just them. Most of us in this room come from Anglo-Saxon heritage, do we not? All three of my grandparents were Scots. The Scots are a bit weird too. About 100 years ago, there was a Presbyterian congregation in Scotland that split into two congregations — that still exist to this day in the same town — because they couldn't agree about which door to use to enter the local church. I kid you not.
The point here is that sometimes we split over really silly and petty things. And we have not exactly done a good job of staying as one since Jesus prayed this prayer 2,000 years ago.
The Depth of the Unity Jesus Prayed For
And I think it's important to remember that the emphasis on the importance of unity isn't something we just find in this verse. It's not something we can simply gloss over. Jesus actually mentions it multiple times. For example, earlier in the Gospel of John, chapter 10, we hear Jesus say of his future followers that there shall be one flock — as in one gathered people — and one shepherd, one person leading them. And then shortly after, in chapter 11, we hear about how Jesus's death and resurrection is going to take place in order that the children of God who are scattered might also be gathered into one. Unity is a big thing to Jesus.
And it was his big prayer this morning — his final prayer — that his future followers, you, me, and anyone and everyone who decides to follow him, might be united as his people. The night before he died, Jesus prayed earnestly for unity among his followers. It's one of his final things he thought, said, and prayed — that we would be united. He didn't just hope that we might get along in a mildly middle-class English kind of way. He asked that we might be one in the same way that he and the Father are one. We hear this in the second half of that verse: "I pray also for those who believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you."
Now, we can gloss over that pretty quickly, but that is an incredibly intimate and profound kind of unity. Jesus, the Son of God, and God the Father — they're intrinsically linked. So while they're distinct, they can't be separated. They're united, one God without division or separation. And what this shows us is that unity is important to Jesus because it's inherent to who he is.
Unity Is Not Uniformity
But I think it's key here to realize that unity does not mean uniformity. Have you ever noticed that? People think that to be united means we have to be uniform — almost like drones, copy and paste, copy and paste, copy and paste. Not the case at all.
Once again, look at the Trinity. You've got God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. One God but three persons. They're not three separate gods or people, nor is God taking on different faces at different times — that's a first-century heresy called modalism. I won't get distracted with that. The point is it's one God but three persons, living in a perfect relationship of love and unity. What this means is that God exists in community — loving, giving, and delighting in God's self. And that means that relationship is not just something God does; it's inherent to who God is.
So when Jesus prays that we would be one as he and the Father are one, he's inviting us into the same kind of deep, loving relationship that he enjoys on the daily. He's wanting those of us who call ourselves his church to experience a unity that reflects the heart and the essence of who God is. But while the Trinity — Father, Son, Holy Spirit — are all united as one whole, they're also distinct, yet completely united. They're diverse, yet one. And our unity should reflect that reality. It's not about becoming cookie-cutter, because it's possible to have a deep connection without erasing difference.
How you express Christianity in a different cultural context will differ. The way you do church where I was as a kid in the Middle East was very different to where my wife was as a kid in Pakistan. The way we do church here at Sumner is very different to the way they do it, say, up in Eketāhuna, because there are always different contexts and different expressions of the faith.
In our reading this morning, Jesus was not praying for a single global institution. He was praying for a spiritual unity rooted in love and truth. It's not about structures or denominations all needing to be the same, or us all having to be uniform. It's about a shared faith and purpose. Unity is not about uniformity. It's about a shared commitment to Jesus.
Unity as Witness to a Divided World
And the reason all this matters is because our world is really divided. Have you noticed? No one can agree on much. But the only thing we can agree on in New Zealand is that paedophilia is wrong. And beyond that, there's not much else we can actually agree on, is there? Even whether the world is round or flat — we actually genuinely can't agree on much. Our world is divided, and what a divided world needs is a united church.
We are supposed to set an example of unity. Jesus himself said so. Unity is powerful and it's beautiful when it takes place, because it shows that what unites us as Christians is infinitely greater than what divides us. And what unites us in faith is the risen Jesus and carrying out his commands — carrying out his commands like proclaiming the good news of his death and resurrection, teaching, baptizing, and encouraging new believers, responding to human need through generosity and loving service, not turning a blind eye to those who are poor and can't pay the bills, challenging injustice and pursuing peace no matter the cost, and striving to safeguard the integrity of God's creation.
These are the things that he commands us to do. And when we focus on this stuff — on what really matters — all that other stuff kind of fades into the background. Like who you vote for, our views on infant baptism, whether transubstantiation or consubstantiation are real — all those differences become secondary, because what unites us in Christ is infinitely greater than what divides us.
The Challenge of Living Out Unity
But here's the challenge. This is not just a nice idea about having warm, fuzzy feelings and all kind of getting along and singing Kumbaya. It's challenging you and me in terms of how we live, think, act, speak, and pray. Because we need to guard our unity as a church, because so much is at stake when we don't.
Jesus did not pray for our unity just so we could have warm fuzzies. He prayed for it so that the world might believe that he was sent by the Father. In other words, our unity is a witness to a broken world. As Nicky Gumbel, the vicar of Holy Trinity Brompton in England, said a while ago: a divided world demands a united church. It demands it.
When Christians argue over petty things — Russian beards, Baptist soap, and Scottish doorways — we're not just being weird, and we're not just being difficult. We're actually hurting our witness. We're making it harder for people to believe that Jesus is who he said he is. But when people from different races, ages, social backgrounds, and political views are united, the world sees something powerful.
In my last parish, I was up in a semi-rural area in the Wairarapa. For those of you who don't know the area, it's lots of cows. I remember standing there once looking out, and at one end of these really long pews — massive pews — was a guy. I won't say his name. He is an openly gay celibate man who is about as eco-justice, social-justice-minded as you can imagine. And he's a proud Green voter. He used to wear the badge "I only date boys who vote Green" on his thing when he came to church. At the other end of the pew was another guy who is the complete polar opposite. He's half American and voted for Trump. And these guys would not just sit there and be polite to each other — they would have meals together. They were in the same home group.
The point is that we have massive differences, and sometimes those differences are important, and sometimes they are serious, and sometimes they do lead to disagreements and occasionally even splits. But nine times out of ten, actually, if we have grace, we can be united — because the thing that unites us is Christ. And what unites us is stronger than what divides.
When the world sees people united despite their differences, it sees something powerful. Because it shows that Jesus really was sent by God and the Holy Spirit really is at work. Because there is nowhere else in society where you will see such a diverse group of people come together. That kind of unity, lived out and not just talked about, is one of the strongest signs, I think, that the Jesus story is true.
That's why we are called to do all we can to pursue it within our church. Why we're called to pursue it across churches and across denominations. Unity matters because it matters to Jesus, and because its impact is a witness to a broken world.
Guarding Our Speech and Our Witness
And you have a role to play in that unity. How you speak about other Christians has intense implications. When we gossip, or we get angry, or we start to say snarky things about that little church down the road, our non-Christian friends and family hear it. They're not dumb.
I had a thing recently — I was talking about something, and it got parroted back to me later by my daughter. She hadn't even been in the same room, and I realized she'd been listening. Now, it wasn't anything major — I was having a moan about something. But the thing is, it was like: actually, I've got to be really careful, because it's getting parroted. And what she said wasn't quite accurate either. And it's the same thing with our faith. We need to be working hard to ensure that we're working towards unity within the church.
That does not mean that we turn a blind eye to silliness. Nor does it mean that we just go, "Oh, it's okay if you don't believe that — we can just agree to disagree." There are things that we need to hold true to. But Jesus — and we're not getting into it today — actually gives us a blueprint of how to deal with disagreement. But in terms of this stuff, we are being called to be united, to be one. That was Jesus's final prayer and request for us. And if we call ourselves Christians, we need to take this seriously.
Closing Prayer
Let's pray.
Dear Lord Jesus, thank you for the fact that just before you died, the last thing that you were thinking about was us. That's pretty special. And we give you thanks, Lord, for all the many expressions of faith around the world. We give you thanks that the thing that unites us is not uniformity, but our shared love of you and faith in the good news of Jesus. We pray for ourselves, Lord, that you will give us wisdom to discern those times when we are being called to be gracious towards others, but also to discern how to respond to disagreements. And we pray, Lord, for your church worldwide, that it will be united in its faith and united in its proclamation of the good news of Jesus. And we pray this all in your holy name. Amen.