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: B
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: June 4, 2000


TEXT: John 17:11b-19 - The High Priestly Prayer
“I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. . . . . As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”

ISSUE: - The High Priestly Prayer of the Johannine Jesus is similar in content to the Good Shepherd image. It states a prayerful concern for the protection and guarding of the community. The community living in a brutal and hostile world needs that protection. But the protection is not isolationism, it is a protection for a community sent to the world to be a witness with Christ to the God of love and justice.
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Many of us have been witnesses in recent years to some very strange, if not painful and demeaning, experiences so far as the Christian faith is concerned. You will remember the terrible incident in Guianna, where a small Christian sect led by The Rev. Jim Jones were either murdered or committed suicide out of fear of the evil world. The Heaven’s Gate Community (?) was another one of those sort of new age quasi-Christian sects that led its membership into a suicide ritual supposedly leading them to the heavens. The tragedy of the Waco incident under the leadership of David Koresh was another one of those terrible unfortunate and seemingly unnecessary events that led adults and children to untimely deaths as a result of a fiery inferno.

While some of those events seem extreme, and the results of what we might call religious fanatics, there are still many other Christians today among us who have some kind of a vision of Heaven, or Kingdom of God, as some wonderful ethereal place where we go when we die, that is so much better than this place we call earth. It has occurred to me that if God’s Heaven is so great, then why don’t we escape? Unless, however, we believe that we sort of have to be punished, and do time here on earth first, before we are somehow worthy of God’s Kingdom. Sounds a little like doing time in prison before parole.

I am convinced that while we might presume to know a lot in this technological scientific world we live in, there are still many mysteries, and many things that we don’t yet know or understand, especially when it comes to knowledge of and magnanimous workings of God. We live in an information age, and surely we are all caused to stand in wonder of the knowledge and discoveries of this age. They are astounding. As we stand in wonder of it all, we can only clutch at glimpses of some meanings that we can attempt to understand and build on them as we enter into the process of revelation and new discoveries.

The High Priestly Prayer of Jesus is, I think, one of those glimpses into the meaning of our lives, and our place here in this world. This section this morning from John’s Gospel account is a revelation of what John believed Jesus would have prayed before his demise on the cross. It is a glimpse of what Jesus might have prayed in a world that was a hostile, corrupt, and oppressive world. The early disciples and Christians experienced that kind of world. But the prayer of Jesus is much like the Good Shepherd imagery. Jesus prays for the protection of his disciples. He prays that God the Father will guard them, and that they will be united, and stay “attached,” which is what it meant to be in love. Just as Jesus stayed attached to the Father may they be guarded and protected and supportive of one another.

Jesus seems to have, at least John knew when he was writing, that Jesus’ time was limited. His crucifixion and death was imminent. But as the prayer continues, it is not that the early Christian Community should be removed from the world, but that they should be protected from evil, the evil one, and sanctified, made holy. Again, like that episode at Easter where Jesus appears to his disciples and breathes on them, the community is reminded that as Christ was sent to the world, so this community is sent to the world. They are not eliminated from the world. They are different from the world, but called to live in it, and sent to it, as Christ was sent to the world.

This prayer, it seems to me is a far cry from a common prevailing belief that dying and going to heaven is the be all and end all of life. What’s more the community is not seen as a community of the elite separated from the world but sent to the world. Jesus was sent to the world, not to be an elite holy figure placed on a pedestal, but uniquely involved with the world. Jesus was indeed the sign that God loved the world in such a way, was so attached to the world, that God in this wonderful and mysterious way will die for the world and in the world. And the community of John is the extension of that grace and love for the world. What that community needs is protection and guarding by the Father, and a prevailing truth, spirituality, spirit to keep the community on track in the world.

I kind of think to myself, in putting this sermon together. What is my prayer be for my children when I’m gone. Surely some of you have thought about this kind of thing. When you’re gone, what do you hope for the kids. You might think that it’ll be nice to meet again in heaven someday, but more than likely we’d like to pray and think that they’ll be safe from harm and guarded by God. You might like to think that they’ll carry on, the family name, the family business. You might hope that they’ll have a good meaningful life. Is that not something of the High Priestly prayer that we might have for our own. This hope is a bit limited in that we think of those closest to us. Jesus on the other hand had a much broader scope in mind: the family for him was the family of God. The family of God does not become a part of the corruption of the world, but the extension of the way of God in a world that has lost its direction, meaning, and purpose.

Sometimes we have to take a hard look at ourselves as the church community and ask ourselves whether or not we are living into the prayer, the hope, the expectations, the yearning of Jesus Christ? Are we open to the truth, the Spirit of God, the spiritedness of God, the way of God, and God’s yearning concern for a world of love and justice?

To answer this we may have to ask how the world sometimes perceives the church? How do we ourselves perceive what we do as a Christian Community sent to the world? I’m not sure that’s really easy to answer. So often the perceptions of the present day church is a community of folk whose primary task is social gatherings and a kind of ardent holding on to values of being good and nice. We picnic. We have pleasant Hospitality or Coffee Hours. We have Bell Choir. A minimal number of us gather for Bible Study. We put pleasantries, or platitudes, on our church sign that you see on every other church sign in the country. The organization becomes clubby, elite, nice, cozy, warm and fuzzy, but somehow a far cry from being sent to and for the world.

Jesus obviously saw the world for what it was. It was a scary frightening, brutal, and vicious place. More often than not, politically, and religiously it was corrupt and cruel. But it was still God’s world to be love in such a way to die for it. You found Jesus and his early disciples in many uncomfortable places: among the sick and the dying, among the oppressed, among the disenfranchised poor widow, orphans, blind, lame, and deaf. He loved and prayed and raised all that world up to the light, and tried to offer it to God in a prayerful yearning way.

We have to constantly struggle with this issue. How do we see ourselves as the community of Christ? Are we isolated and elite, treating ourselves to the good life? Are we really, really, sacrificial when it comes down to who we are? We look at the late Mother Theresa with great admiration. Yet we often see the church of today taking great flight from the cities, and isolating itself from the neediness of the larger community, from the squalid places, the filthy slums. Maybe it’s because we see so much on the news that we retreat from the world, but Jesus didn’t pray for respite and retreat, even when Judas failed him, it was time to plunge ahead. When the church takes a stand as on gun control, and someone says “I’ll leave the church,” we have a tendency to go into a retreat mode without continuing to wrestle with our consciences and with what is right in the long run for the greater good of the whole community.

Clergy spend a lot of their time and energies in the ministry asking people to do things. Sometimes it seems the unending yearning and hymn of the parish priest or minister. Please help with this thing or that thing in the church. I wonder if it isn’t hard to get people involved because the church is so damn boring and piously sickeningly nice.

Let me ask you? And myself? Do you want to go to heaven and push the clouds around, and sit in the shadows of the pearly gates? Or would you rather be here in this world wrestling with the meaning of life, and seeking to discover purposeful living? Granted there are all times when the pushing the clouds around sounds like a real relief. But honestly, now. What would you really rather? The world isn’t easy, and there’s much that’s wrong and vicious, and corrupt. But Jesus prayed to the Father: Don’t take them out of the world, don’t let them be corrupted by it, but don’t take them out of it, “as you have sent me to the world, so I have sent them into the world.