Eavesdropping on Jesus

The other night I was helping a new preacher get set up with a headset microphone. The most important thing I told him was to turn it off if he went to the bathroom before the service. The mic should be turned off at the sound desk — but some chances in life you really don't want to take. We've all heard the stories. Politicians caught saying something off the record while still miked up. The friend who didn't realise they were on speakerphone. The accidental email reply-all. And it cuts both ways. Overhearing someone say something unkind about you is genuinely terrible. Is that what they really think? But overhearing someone saying nice things about you — well, that's lovely. They aren't there to flatter you. They just genuinely like you. Listening in to someone else's conversation isn't usually polite. But sometimes you can't help it. And one of those moments is here in John 17.

Jesus opens his heart

After several chapters of teaching his disciples directly, Jesus shifts. He starts talking about them — to his Father. He opens his heart in prayer. And as we listen in, we get a glimpse of what really matters to him on the night before the cross. This is the longest prayer of Jesus recorded in the Gospels. He prays for himself, then for his eleven disciples in the room, then he shifts again — and prays for those who will believe through their message. Which is us. Isn't that remarkable? On the night before he dies, Jesus is praying for you. And what does he ask the Father for? One thing above all: that we would be one.

I pray also for those who will 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. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. Our unity with each other is meant to be the same kind of unity the Father has with the Son. Drawn into the trinitarian love of God himself. And the stakes are not small — Jesus says it twice in three verses: so that the world may believe.

Unity is part of our witness

There's something distinctive about a community where people from very different backgrounds, ages, and stages actually like and love each other. That kind of community is genuinely inviting. Outsiders notice. But the opposite is also true — and often more visible. Public division between Christians is one of the worst witnesses the watching world ever sees. How can we believe what they believe when they're always fighting among themselves? So you can see why Jesus prays for unity, and prays for our witness, in the same breath.

Unity is hard

But unity is hard. Even when we try. At a global level, Christianity is fractured along denominational lines that go back centuries. At a local level, the brother or sister sitting near you in the pew might hold a view that feels just opposite to yours — and you don't understand it. And our culture doesn't help. More and more, the message is: if we can't agree, we can't be friends. You have to choose sides. Real conversations turn into shouting matches. But maybe Christian unity was never about everyone agreeing on everything. Maybe it's about staying connected in our differences. That's a different kind of unity to what the world is offering. And it's exactly the unity Jesus is praying for.

Foundation: love that holds onto truth

Two foundations sit underneath this kind of unity. The first is love. Jesus' command to his disciples is the most concrete one in the New Testament: love one another. Love that cares for the other, values the other, serves the other. Love modelled on Jesus' own sacrificial love for us. Whatever else unity looks like, it has to be built on this. But love isn't the same as agreeing with everyone and ignoring truth. Jesus' own love wasn't soft or undemanding — he warned, rebuked, corrected, stood for truth. Loving someone doesn't mean letting them walk into error. Paul puts the two together in Ephesians: speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become the mature body of Christ. Maturity is being able to hold clearly to what you believe — knowing who you are and what matters to you — while staying in healthy relationships with people who see things differently. That's the model. Not love without truth. Not truth without love. Both, together.

Tool 1: prioritise the problem

With those foundations in place, two practical tools. The first is to prioritise the problem. When you find yourself disagreeing with another Christian, ask: what is this actually about? And does it matter? A helpful framework is to think about three orders of issue. First-order issues are gospel-central. Things like: Jesus is the Son of God, the only way to the Father, salvation by faith alone. Disagree about these and we're not really in fellowship. Second-order issues really matter, but they aren't core gospel — different interpretations of the Bible, often shaped by culture or tradition. We can disagree about these and still be brothers and sisters, but we might not be able to be in the same church together. Things like baptism, spiritual gifts, roles for men and women, church governance. Third-order issues are preferences. Music style, what the pastor wears, what time the service starts. We should be able to live with disagreement here without it threatening anything. The framework helps because often our disagreements aren't really about the issue itself — they're about what order we think the issue is. One person treats a third-order matter as first-order, and suddenly we're at war over the colour of the carpet. And often what looks like the disagreement isn't the real disagreement underneath. The recent split with the Archbishop of Canterbury looked to many like a fight about women in leadership. Dig deeper and it was about human sexuality. Dig deeper still and the actual issue was the authority of the Bible itself. So before you fight, ask: what are we actually arguing about? Does it really matter? Or is this something we can live with a difference of opinion on?

Tool 2: remember the person

The second tool is to remember the person — both the person in front of you and the person in the mirror. Neither of them will get everything right. In a disagreement, this is a person to relate to, not an argument to win. They're a brother or sister to love. And we are no doubt part of the problem too. Any disagreement has so many things shaping it. When we get knocked off balance by someone's view, we don't always make good decisions. We tend to flee — I'll just pretend it didn't happen — or fight — here's a person I must convince. There's a third way: be curious. Ask half a dozen questions before ever putting forward your own opinion. What makes this important to you? How does this fit with Jesus' call to love? Are there parts of Scripture that have shaped your view? Curiosity gives you time to think, turn down the heat, and figure out what's actually going on. It changes the whole texture of the conversation. You stand a much better chance of staying in relationship — and even sharing your own view — without it ending in a stand-off.

A work in progress

The early church wasn't a utopia of agreement. Read the New Testament — they argued constantly. Unity is something we're still working toward, still praying for. And it's something Jesus is still working in us. He prays at the end of John 17: I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known. It's ongoing. Unlike much of the world, we believe we can have unity and love even when we don't agree and don't understand — because our unity isn't really about agreement. It's about being in the same vine, connected to the same Jesus, walking together towards the time when we'll be brought into perfect unity in the renewed life he wins for us on the cross. Until then, we keep walking. Stumbling steps towards living in truth and love. And we pray that the world might see our unity and see its source in him.

This post is adapted from a sermon preached by Murray Colville at St Hilda's Anglican Church Katoomba on John 17, as part of our Come and See series through John's Gospel.