Easter 7

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: Easter 7
PROPER: A
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: May16,1999

TEXT: John 17:1-11 - Farewell Discourse (cont.)
"And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. . . . . . . . . .Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one."

ISSUE: This high priestly prayer of Jesus is given to us by John's Gospel account. It is offered or written at a time of great anxiety in, and a time of great hostility for the early church disciples. John reveals that Jesus has glorified God. He has given enormous enlightment and a brilliant portrayal of God. Through Jesus one sees the likeness of God. What's more, the disciples are to be bonded to him, and to one another. He prays for their protection as the disciples now and in the future become uniquely those who carry on the work of Christ. They become the only Gospel that others may ever read.
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The passage from John 17:1-11 is a continuation of the Farewell Address or Discourse of Jesus to his disciples. According to John this farewell situation is set in the context of the Last Supper that Jesus has with his disciples before his crucifixion. What we have in this reading today is a prayer that Jesus is now offering to God. As we try to understand this prayer, and that is not particularly easy to do because John is so mystical, it is important to remember that John was writing his Gospel nearly 70 years or so after Jesus' death and resurrection. It is not likely an exact verbatim of what Jesus said. It is more likely to be from oral tradition and a variety of sources. It could also be John's understanding of Jesus being cast in this form of prayer. John was writing to a small community of early Christians. Many of whom had been thrown out of their synagogues and thereby suffered loss of family, friends, and business contacts. Their very livelihood was threatened. The early persecutions of the church had begun. The eyewitnesses of the life and ministry of Jesus had by this time died off. There were other pagan influences threatening the early church. There were also separating factions within. St. Paul had written that some people saw themselves as followers of Peter, Cephas, Paul. It was a time of signficant uncertainty. John writes to this threatened early Chrisitian community what he believes Jesus would have said to his disciples at a time of very high anxiety prior to his own crucifixion.
It is a time for getting the message and meaning of Jesus' ministry clearly in focus. Let's get it straight and right. The time has come, it is a critical time in the ministry of Jesus as it was for John's early church community. It is time to Glorify the Son of God, in order that God may himself be glorified. Glory is not a familiar word for us. To glorify is to honor. It is to hold up to or be held in a bright light, a brilliance. What Jesus does in his ministry is to hold up to the light the truth about God. Jesus is clearly undistracted in his obedience and his effort to reveal that God is love and that God is full of compassion. He will even without hesitation accept crucifixion on the cross to bear witness to his unwaivering commitment to God the Father of love and compassion. Jesus in his obedience is glorified, held up to the light in his crucifixion to reveal the unwaivering obedience and commitment to the God of Love. At his resurrection, his being raised from death, God is glorified. God embraces the life and ministry of Jesus and holds it up for all to see that this Jesus was so closely related to the God of Love and Compassion that he is held up for all too see his honorable status.
John's Gospel reveals, in this passage, and also defines what eternal life is. He writes, "And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." Popular religion defines eternal life as life going on and on and on. Eternal life for the early Christian community was to know God through Jesus Christ. Eternal life was a life with quality and meaning to it. To embrace Jesus Christ as Lord and as the one who gives access to the true God of love and compassion was to have a life with meaning and quality to it. To embrace God is to embrace love and compassion. It is to be truly human, and to be a reflection of God and to be in resonance with God in the life that you live. It is to be unique in an otherwise crazy world.
The second part of this prayer is Jesus' high priestly prayer for his disciples. The high priest of this period was the priest at the Jerusalem Temple who offered sacrifices and prayer on behalf of his people. In this prayer, Jesus offers prayer not only for himself that God should be honored and his obedient ministry. He also offers prayer on behalf of his disciples. He holds them up to the light of God for blessing and honor. Jesus had a profound appreciation for those who gave up so much to follow him, and to hear him, to listen, and to accept him. He would leave them now and he prayed for their protection as he left them in a hostile world to carry on the message and the work. Jesus saw this community of people as unique and wonderful people who carried on his message. John, as he wrote this passage, was trying to inform this early Christian community faced with persecution, and uncertainty that God's protection through Christ Jesus would be with them. It was a prayer and message of consolation and hope for an frightened and uncertain people. It was also a prayer statement of great admiration and respect for those who would obediently and confidently follow him, and continue in his way.
Now, I must admit to you that I sometimes find John's Gospel to be difficult to get a handle on. His style is sometimes hard to appreciate and his way of saying things tedious. It is the most spiritual and mystic of all the gospels. That in itself is hard for modern Americans. But what we have here in this reading this morning is essentially a passage which holds up God the Father, and Jesus Christ the Son to the light. It reminds us to keep our lives clearly focused upon God, to honor God, and embace and respect and study the message of love and compassion of Jesus Christ as it is revealed in the Scriptures. There are those wonderful sayings and parables that challenge the listener to be changed and aware that often the ways of God are quite different from the popular ways of the world: Making the last be first and the first last is a reminder that Jesus was often trying to turn things around.
What is also important in our appreciation of this passage is that Jesus saw his church, his people, as a unique people in the world who were to continue in carrying on the message. Often our perception of the church today is that it is a large group of people carrying on the work of Christ. I am not particularly convinced that we are really as large as we think ourselves to be, at least in terms of people genuinely committed and aware of the real message of God in Christ. Human beings are easily distracted and philosophies and easy popular religious notions infect our fellowship. Nominal Christianity, that is, fringe believers are not always as well versed in the true essence and essential meaning of the Gospel of Christ. You get a lot of folk-like understanding of the Gospel, the golden rule philosophy, as opposed to the more radical calls of Jesus to resist the world and make dramatic changes in our lives.
The passage from John today reminds the church of today of its uniqueness in the world. In a world where there is often a great disrespect for human life: the community of Christ holds life to be precious, and every the life of every human being to be respected with dignity. The community of Christ holds mercy and compassion to be more important than rigid laws, more acceptable than revenge and violence. The community of Christ's faithful hold love to be a supreme value in face of a world of indifference, conflict, hostility, hatred, prejudice. The church has not always been good at this, sometimes supporting racial hatred and conflict. We are not perfect, and world issues can be very confusing. We do not wish to see Abanians murdered by corrupt regimes. It is also hard to support cruel bombing that gets out of hand, and a violence which becomes the easy and only solution to every world problem. Yet, whenever we grasp Jesus Christ truly as our Lord, studying the message of Scripture, we have something helpful and hopeful to say to the world.
The union of Jesus with God is unique. Jesus led the way to the Father. He revealed and renewed a profound understanding of the mercy and compassion of God for his creation and his people. There is a real bond and a clearly lighted manifestation of the magnificent love of God for the world. We too who live in a world of uncertainties, anxieties, fears are prayed for and honored by Christ. He calls us into the bonding, and to be the continuing voice and message of hope in the world. He promises that God's Holy Spirit is with us. We must not underestimate what it means to be the people of God, the church in the world today. We offer the God of love to the lost, the last, and the least. To all who are oppressed and down trodden, to all who are empty and feel themselves to be meaningless, we through Christ offer eternal life, quality of life, and meaning, hope. We are one with Christ, and we must not let that slip away from who we are, and what we are about.
Jesus glorified God. He held God up to the light for all to see the True God of Love. Through his teaching, prayer life, his healing, obedient crucifixion and resurrection, God held Jesus up to the light, glorifying him as the Way, the truth, and Life. Christ holds up all who believe and trust and walk in the light to be held in honor as well. May we continue to know our calling and to walk in that light that Christ bestows upon us.