Seventh Sunday of Easter
John 17:6-19
I have had a wonderful week. Last Sunday three hours after a hectic and beautiful confirmation service Doug and I boarded a plane to Atlanta, Georgia. We left it all behind—the robes strewn around the library, the unwatered flowers, the incomplete bulletin for this week, the unmown lawn at home—we just left it all.
We went to the Festival of Homiletics which is just a fancy way of saying “preaching conference.” In many ways the festival of Homiletics was less stressful than a vacation—we didn’t have to make any decisions more demanding than where to eat dinner. The schedule for four and half days was before us and all we had to do was show up at one of the three opulent churches on Peachtree Drive and sit in their padded though narrow pews and absorb six hours of lectures and sermons. With genuine Southern hospitality they fed us snacks and lunch and saw to our creaturely comforts. For us 2000 preachers there’s just nothing better than letting someone else plan the worship, struggle with the text, preach the sermon, worry about the technical issues like timing and sound quality.
We left the world behind. Oh we got USA today at our door but I wasn’t paying attention to the fact that the unemployment figures for last month came out worse than expected, that Obama and Cheney were facing off on National Security, that Kris Allen won American Idol. I hardly knew the space shuttle was up there much less that it was having trouble getting down. I didn’t even check e-mail till Wed. afternoon when I decided I really didn’t want to come home to too much junk mail.
No decisions, no planning, nobody to answer to, no worries.
Are you jealous? Don’t you just occasionally want to leave the struggles and challenges of the world all behind. Forget the work deadlines and all you haven’t done, the pace of the kid’s schedules to ball fields, music lessons, play dates, birthday parties. Pretend that difficult individuals on your volunteer committee just don’t exist. Oh yeah—you want it.
So Friday pumped up and inspired from hearing probably a dozen speakers weaving a tapestry of stories on the great texts of the Bible I pull out the lessons for Sunday.
And this is what I get. Slammed with the world and a tough text to boot.
Jesus farewell prayer not his final prayer but the last one the disciples would hear. Jesus headed out to Gethsemane, to arrest, trial, conviction, crucifixion. But before that he prays—he prays for the disciples and for us. He prays to God “on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours.”
The language is particularly convoluted but basically the first four verses tout the disciple’s credentials, our credentials, the disciple’s readiness, our readiness. Jesus prays to God, your name is known to them, they know my words; they know that you have sent me.” And then Jesus prays that we his disciples be protected. We need that protection because “We are in the world.” Thirteen times, thirteen times in these few verses Jesus makes reference to THE WORLD. Now the gospel writer John typically sees things in black and white so we might be tempted to think from this passage that the world is a bad place and the best thing we can do is get out while the getting is good. But we really have to see this passage in the context of another that I’m sure you recognize, “For God so loved the world, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.”
Now Christianity has since the beginning striven against heresies and other religions that would suggest that the world is bad. These heresies and religions would suggest that we need to escape this bad environment either to a transcendent plane or a hermits cave.
First and foremost God loves the world. Now don’t get me wrong the world can be a dangerous place—it was for Jesus and it was for those first disciples and it can be for us. In this prayer Jesus says “I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.” Traditionally we have talked about this as “in but not of the world.” Would most of you say you don’t belong to the world? Most of us would describe ourselves to a stranger in many ways that would indicate belonging: our family ties, our citizenship in a nation, our residence in a town, our membership in various organizations to which we say we “belong”.
What Jesus is getting at here is the question of ownership. Do the world and its values own you? Are you enslaved to the values and structures, the principalities and powers, of this world or are you free to go against them if you think they are going against what God wants for us? Think about that in relationship to your family, your peers, your work, the country or any other civic or leisure organization to which you belong. Where is the ultimate allegiance of your heart? Bob Dylan wrote a song that included this chorus “you’re gonna have to serve somebody.” Does the world own you? Whom do you serve?
Remember Jesus loves this world—so much in fact that in this final prayer he sends his disciples, read us, into the world; not to be owned by it but to transform it. Jesus calls us to live and speak and witness to our beliefs in the middle of the world. Our life of faith is not to be lived separately from the rest of our lives. I think American Christians have a particularly difficult time with this because we wrap it up somehow with separation of church and state. I think that concept has migrated in people’s heads to say somehow that the life of faith happens only in church on Sunday morning. But Jesus sends us into the world to walk the walk and talk the talk of faith. The choices in our lives should reflect our faith. The hope expressed by Jesus in later verses in chapter 17 is that the world might come to know God’s love through the work of the disciples and so be transformed into the world God hopes for.
It seems somehow right on this Sunday between the ascension and Pentecost, when we’ve put the Christ candle out that we recognize our responsibility. Jesus' body is no longer here, but Jesus' body is very much here. We are the body of Christ. Teresa of Avila said "Christ has no body on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours; yours are the eyes through which the compassion of Christ looks out on a hurting world, yours are the feet with which he goes about doing good; yours are the hands with which he is to bless now."
I hope and pray for all of you, that you get your chance and your moments to step out of the demands and routines of life if even for a few hours or days. That’s good—that’s Sabbath. But then come back; refreshed renewed, rejuvenated because Jesus is calling us to a hurting world he loves—a world perhaps challenging, perhaps dangerous but a world that needs us to speak that word of faith, that good news of new life.
Amen