The temptation to see ourselves as God, or at least as gods or goddesses, is as old as the problem of human sin. “You will be like God, knowing good and evil,” the serpent tells the woman in the Bible’s story of that first sin.¹ In fact, making ourselves and our desires and interests Number One is the root of much of the sin we commit. (It’s no accident that the first commandment comes first!) So it may come as a surprise to realize that in our gospel today, Jesus prays that we will be like God.

            What’s that? You didn’t hear Jesus speak about that in the reading? Well, listen carefully. Jesus prays to the Father, “The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one.” “They” in that sentence includes both those who were with Jesus during his ministry and “those who will believe in me [Jesus] through their word.” Jesus is asking that we and all believers may be united in the same way that the Father and the Son are united. And while there is no explicit mention of it here, the Holy Spirit is also in the picture as the one who has been called “the bond of love” between the Father and the Son. The community of Christian believers is then to have a unity that makes it an image of the Holy Trinity, the one true God.

            The plural pronoun “they” is crucial here. The point is not that we are to resemble God as individuals but that together we are to be like God. That’s Jesus’ prayer for those who come to believe in him — for the Christian community.

Like the unity of the Trinity

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