No Longer in the World (5/28/17)
Ascension
(mural of Christ ascending to Heaven, from a graffiti wall in Bristol, England)
On Sunday, May 28, we considered the distinction between being and doing. We considered this in light of Jesus' prayer in John 17:1-11, in which Jesus asks God to remain in relationship with the disciples, to abide with the disciples.
Sermon
Good morning. I’m glad to see so many of you hear on this
Memorial Day weekend. By a show of hands, how many of you have been out to
decorate the graves of your loved ones? I feel a little guilty because I
haven’t yet been to the cemetery to plant flowers. My grandmother and my great
aunt Eva always insisted that the graves had to be decorated before Memorial Day. I remember taking
them to Belle Vernon Cemetery many times to plant flowers—and other times just
to visit the graves. It was their way of showing love and respect for their
husbands and other relatives. Even after Grandma died, my dad and I would
usually go together to plant flowers on the graves.
Grandma’s love of family was only surpassed by her love of
God; and really, those were kind of the same thing for her. God had blessed her
with a wonderful family and she returned that love to her family in every way
she could. She could see and count her blessings every day, and that made her a
very happy person, for the most part.
Grandma lived to be 97 years old. She lived in a little
apartment off of my dad’s house—the house that she and my grandfather built in
the 1930s. Sometime after she turned 90, my parents put a baby monitor in
Grandma’s bedroom, so that she could call out to us if she fell or was in pain.
The unexpected result of this was that we could hear her prayers every night.
She had a lot of questions for God. Grandma truly didn’t understand why she
lived so long, or why God had let her outlive so many people that she had loved
so much. This morning’s Gospel lesson reminded me of this chapter of my
grandmother’s life.
We think of prayer as a private act, other than the prayers
we offer in worship. My grandmother’s evening prayers were certainly meant to
be private. Jesus’ prayer for the disciples is very much a public act. He wants
and needs the disciples to know that He will be with them, and that God will be
with them, even when Jesus is no longer in the world.
This prayer takes place right after the Last Supper and it
forms the end of the Farewell Discourse, that is, Jesus’ final conversation
with the disciples. In the Gospel of John, this is a long conversation—it
begins in Chapter 13 and it concludes with this prayer in Chapter 17. In this
conversation, Jesus restates the reasons for the Incarnation, for God entering
the world in the person of Jesus. And then Jesus commissions the disciples to
continue His work in the world. This prayer summarizes that conversation.
This prayer tells the disciples—and us—that Jesus came to
make God known in the world. Jesus reminds us that He was with God before the
world was created and he will return to God after His earthly mission has been
completed. Jesus then asks that God protect the disciples in the world as they
continue Jesus’ work of reconciliation. So, on that level, it’s not a difficult
story to understand. What may be more difficult is trying to figure out where
this passage stakes a claim on our lives.
When we think of the Scriptures that have shaped our lives,
that explain what it is to live as a Christian, I’m going to guess that very
few of you would name this morning’s text from the Gospel of John. I’m sure
many of you think of the Ten Commandments, or maybe the Beatitudes. I always
think of the story in the Gospel of Mark, when a scribe asks Jesus which
commandment is greatest. Do you remember Jesus’ answer? You can find it in Mark
12:28-31:
Jesus answered, “The
first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love
the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all
your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love
your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
I also think of Jesus’
instructions in the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 25, to feed the hungry, give
drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, heal the sick, and visit the
prisoners—basically, to care for the lost, the last, and the least among us.
Perhaps some of you think of the story of the Good Samaritan, that ends with
Jesus’ call to, “go and do likewise.”
We tend to focus on the Scriptures that call on us to do very specific things. We like action.
We take comfort in the idea that there’s a set of instructions for us to
follow. Scriptures that tell us what to do
seem to offer us a measuring stick for our own behaviors. We can judge our own
actions against Scripture. Or that’s the temptation, anyhow. Of course, we say
that God alone may judge us. And we say that we are saved only by God’s grace,
not by our own actions. But we all live with a degree of uncertainty, and that
can be uncomfortable. Scriptures that offer certainty give us comfort.
But this understanding of Scripture as a set of divine
instructions is incomplete; it doesn’t help us to work through the Gospel of
John or this prayer that Jesus offers on behalf of the disciples. This Gospel
is all about the incarnation; it’s about God entering the world the created
world in the person of Jesus. The Gospel of John is about the Word made flesh.
The Gospel of John is about being,
more than it’s about doing.
It’s no accident that we find this prayer in the Gospel of
John. Prayer is more than just a conversation with God. Prayer is how we live
and practice our theology. Prayer is also about relationship. Prayer is about
being as much as it is about doing. And in this prayer in the Gospel of John,
Jesus is asking God the Father to remain in a relationship with the disciples
after Jesus has left the created world.
Remember, beloved, that the disciples are always stand-ins
for us; the disciples are the point where we enter the story. So that means
that Jesus is also praying for us. Jesus is praying for all the generations of
believers who will come after the end of the incarnation. Jesus is praying that
God will remain in a relationship with us, abide with us, so that we may
continue to share God’s name in the world. Yes, Jesus has things for us to do in the world, but first we must be in relationship with God. That is the
grace that is offered to us in this prayer.
So how does this piece of Scripture call upon us to act?
How are we changed and what are we supposed to do in light of what we’ve learned? Those are the questions that I
usually try to answer in this last portion of a sermon. But this time, I think
our response to this text has to focus on being,
more than on doing. And that’s complicated.
If we think of prayer as simply a bunch of requests for
God—a bunch of things that we want God to do
for us—then we are missing the relational aspect of our prayers. First and
foremost, prayer is an admission and an acknowledgement that we believe in God
and that we rely upon God for all things. If we didn’t believe we wouldn’t
pray. And of course, we give thanks for our many blessings.
Prayer also gives us the opportunity to love one another.
This happens when we name our joys and concerns for members of this
congregation, such as JoAnn Breckenridge, Tom Smith, or Marianne Turcheck, just
to name a few. We believe that God hears all our prayers, but we don’t get to
know God’s plan. We don’t know why one cancer patient gets to come home from
the hospital and resume her life, while another patient is given only a month
to live. Yet we pray for each one.
I believe that we are changed by the prayers that we speak.
I don’t presume that any single person has been healed and discharged from the
hospital because of a prayer that I offered. But I do believe that I am changed
by offering that prayer. The prayer brings me into a better relationship with
the person for whom I pray. It helps me to see where I might offer the light of
God’s love, through human relationship. By praying, I remain in a right
relationship with God and with humanity, and through that right relationship, I
am called to action.
If we reduce prayer to an action, followed by God
fulfilling or ignoring our pleas, then we miss the opportunity to more fully
live into our relationship with God and our relationships with one another. May
we all live more fully into those relationships through our lives of prayer. Thanks
be to God. Amen.
Benediction
Now, beloved, as you depart from this place, remember that
we are called to be the Church, the body of Christ in the world, the world
today. Go forth and be instruments of God’s love and peace and reconciliation. Do
not return evil for evil to any person, but know that we are all loved by God,
and that we are called to reflect that love to everyone we meet. Go forth and
be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. In the name of Jesus
Christ, our Lord, let all God’s children say, Amen!
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