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After the AscensionThis Sunday falls directly after the celebration of the Ascension of Christ last Thursday. We find ourselves liturgically in the in-between time after Christ’s going away and before his sending of the Holy Spirit upon the Church.The fact that Christ ascended into heaven and left the disciples without his physical and singular presence raises the question: How will God be manifested in the world now? What witness is there of the truth of the Incarnation and the Gospel after Christ has been taken up? The answer is simple, and we see it in our passage today.In this passage, we hear the prayer of Christ, of Son to the Father. He prays for ‘those who will believe in me…that (through them) the world may believe that you have sent me’.God is no longer visible to the world as he was when he walked the earth in the person of Jesus. You can no longer visit him, or feel his physical touch, or hear his audible voice…except through those who will believe in him. That is, through the Church, through you and me. We are Jesus’ body on earth now. The task is ours to witness to the world of the reality of those things we believe: that he was born, that he manifested God’s love and wisdom to the world, that he died for all, that he was raised again, that he was taken into heaven. We are God’s representatives to this truth.The Oneness as a WitnessHow will this truth be manifested to the world? Through the oneness of those who believe:“I ask…for those who believe in me…that they may all be one…so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”The conclusion we draw here is that the oneness of the Church will be a witness to the world. With the implication that division in the Church will impair the Church’s witness. So we had better have a think about this oneness – what it is and how to get it – so that we can more clearly speak of Christ.What does this Oneness consist of?Some English translations use the word “unity” here where ours uses “one”. I like “one” better. First of all, it is a direct translation of the actual Greek word “eis”. And, secondly, because it speaks more clearly of what Christ goes on to say.“Unity” may or may not speak of intimacy, of love, of the dynamism of a shared life.But “oneness” does. Think of the way we might speak of “oneness” today. How might we use that term? Perhaps the most readily available example is that of a husband and wife who have become “one flesh”, “one body”, almost one person as their lives have been brought together in a radically new way.How does Christ pray that believers should be one? We can pick out three things, which are all aspects of the same reality:Firstly, the oneness of Father and Son in their relationship with one another: “…that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us.”Secondly, a unity of glory: “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one.”Thirdly, this idea of glory is linked to the love between Father and Son: “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.”The fathers of the early church wrestled with passages like this and others which appear to speak of a very close identity between Jesus, God the Father and the Holy Spirit. After some time, they eventually formulated the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. This doctrine tells us that there is a oneness in God which is shared by three persons – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And theologians like St Augustine spoke of Holy Spirit as the “bond of love” between the Father and the Son, that is the way by which the Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father.Doubtless we speak here of a reality that is far beyond our comprehension. And yet the amazing thing is that we called by God to be a manifestation of the oneness of the Holy Trinity here on earth today.Let me p