Sermon preached at the Church of the Ascension, May 20, 2012
Easter 7: Acts 1:15-17, 21-26; I John 5:9-13; John 17:6-19
When I looked at the
readings for today I must admit that for a moment I was tempted to take the
reading from Acts as my text. My process to become an ordained minister is certainly
a lot more complicated than the process Peter managed. Mine involves a whole succession
of interviews and letters and and medical reports and papers – quite apart from
the requirement to go away for two years and complete a Masters degree in
Divinity and pass General Ordination Exams. The idea of just drawing lots to
choose and ordain someone seemed strangely attractive…..
But no, it’s the
reading from the Gospel according to John that I want to focus on. This is part of what is called the final
discourse, a long speech by Jesus that starts at the Last Supper and finishes
in the Garden of Gethsamene – so it is positioned just before Jesus’ arrest and
crucifixion. This particular section is part of a prayer that takes up all of
chapter 17 though it’s a bit difficult to tell as we’ve lost the beginning. So
although the disciples, and we, are listening in, it is addressed to God the
Father. Some writers have compared it to the Lord’s Prayer that we find in Luke
and Matthew. Just like the “Our Father” it is addressed to the Father, it
speaks of Jesus glorifying (another way of saying hallowing) God’s name, of Jesus
doing God’s will (“finishing the work that you gave me to do”), “on earth and
in heaven (in God’s presence)” and of protecting the disciples from evil (evil
one). I think it is quite possible that this very long prayer and the much
shorter prayers in Matthew and Luke really do have the same source. All four
gospel authors are after all writing about the same life and the same events.
But sometimes I have
the feeling that John’s guiding principle in writing this Gospel seems to be,
why use one word when ten will do! That makes reading and understanding him quite
difficult at times, he repeats himself, he even seems to contradict himself as
well. I mean just look at what he has to say about the disciples’ relationship
to the world in these thirteen verses: “they do not belong to the world “(14), “yet
I am not asking you to take them out of the world” (15) and “I have sent them
into the world” (18). What does he mean? Let me try and summarize the main
themes of this passage:
1. The
disciples, who as we know could sometimes be a bit dense and slow to understand,
now know all about Jesus and who he is, they believe in him. Through him they,
and we as listeners or readers, know all about God, and they and we now
understand that Jesus is from and of God.
2. Jesus
is about to return to God, in fact sometimes this passage reads as if the
Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension have already happened. As Jesus is about
to leave this world he prays for the disciples’ protection from the evil of the
world, from the hatred and rejection they will experience in their mission.
3. Finally
he dedicates or commissions the disciples, and all followers of Christ who hear
or read this passage, sending them into the world to bear witness, but sending
them into a world to which they do not fully belong.
There is a real sense
of tension between belonging to Jesus and belonging to the world, a real sense
of an inevitable conflict between Jesus’ followers and the world, something that
they had really experienced by the time this was written down. Just like the
kingdom or people of Israel, the disciples are to be sanctified or made holy: set
apart for God’s purposes. We often talk about being in, but not of the world. Trying
to work out what this means has been an ongoing issue in the history of the
Church. And that has often meant the whole church or just parts of it tending
to one or the other extreme.
For example as a
reaction to the excess of wealth and power of the church of his time, St.
Francis renounced all worldly goods and influence (including clean clothing it
appears). Another monastic order, the Carthusians, not only tried to withdraw
from the world, but from each other by living in a kind of voluntary solitary confinement
and in silence. This didn’t end with the Reformation. The Anabaptists, today’s Mennonites,
completely denied that secular authorities could be Christian, and would not
allow their members to hold any position of government authority.
On the other hand we
have Christian groupings that have had no problem with getting involved in the world,
even to the extent of accepting worldly power and habits. Military religious
orders – like the Templars, Hospitallers, Teutonic Knights - were willing to
fight and to kill to establish and defend Christian kingdoms. In the Papal
States religious and secular authority were indistinguishable, and in today’s England
the state still influences some senior church appointments on the one, and Anglican
Bishops are part of parliament influencing legislation on the other hand. I
would put religious groups that focus solely on social, environmental or
political goals in this category too.
There are dangers in
both extremes, in either too much activity or too much withdrawal. The Scottish
theologian William Barclay wrote: “The
rhythm of Christian life is the alternate meeting with God in the secret place,
and serving people in the marketplace.” Withdrawal from the world and from the
needs of the world is not the answer for all Christians, though there is a
place for those who do and by doing so offer us places and methods to meet God
“in the secret place.” But the prayer in John’s Gospel is quite clear: “As you
have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” On this
mission from God to the world however the disciples’ and our task as their successors
is not to accept and absorb the world’s values, but to bear witness to Christ,
to Christian values and to the word that is truth.
So the message does not
say choose Christ or the world, but choose Christ and the world. Christianity
is quite good at holding seeming opposites together: God and Man; God’s Kingdom
now and still to come; God’s Kingdom in the world and not of the world. One way
of illustrating what I believe this means is to think of two dimensions: vertical
and horizontal.
The vertical dimension is
what connects us to God. This is the connection Jesus renewed by becoming human,
the connection God maintains through the Holy Spirit. We care for this connection
in prayer, in meditation, in reading or hearing scripture, and of course in worship.
The horizontal
dimension is what connects us to one another and the world; it stands for community,
for concern and care for one another, for being engaged in social, environmental
and political issues.
It would be very wrong
indeed to try and separate these two dimensions. Jesus didn’t, when he was
asked to name the most important commandment, he named two, one that I’m
calling “vertical,” to love God with all our heart and mind and soul, and one
that I am calling “horizontal,” to love our neighbor as ourselves. And what do
we get if we put these two together? We get the Cross, the ultimate symbol of
Christianity. (Hold up a cross)
That is what the cross
stands for: Jesus the Son reconnecting us to God both through his incarnation
and through his sacrifice for the whole world on the cross, and Jesus’ life,
his teaching and actions reconnecting us to one another through our
responsibility to care for and to love one another.
The mission Christ gave
his church, that’s all of us by the way, is to hold these two dimensions
together. We are the hinge so to speak. That is what he empowered and
challenged us to do: to work for unity, to overcome the separation from each
other and from God that sometimes seems to be our second nature. That was the
mission for which he was sent into the world, and that is what we have been
sent into the world to do too. Or to put it even more simply in the words of
the “shorter” Lord’s Prayer we all know so well: Thy kingdom come. Thy will be
done. On earth as it is in heaven.
Amen
