Sunday's Sermon

“Make Us One”

June 1, 2014

John 17: 1 -11

“Father, the time has come. Honor your son so your son may honor you. Just as you have giving him authority over all humankind, so he can award real life: to know you to everyone you have given him.  This is real life: to know you as the one true God, and Jesus, the one you sent.  I honor you on earth by completing the labors you gave me to do. Now, Father, honor me with your own presence, the presence I enjoyed before the world. 

I have made your name known to all those you gave me out of the world. They were yours, you gave them to me and they have kept your word.  They now recognize that everything you gave me is really from you. I passed on to them the things you gave me to say, and they have been receptive and have come to know truly that I have come from your presence.  They have also come to believe you sent me.  I plead on their behalf. I am not pleading for the world but for those you turned over to me because they are yours.  Everything that belongs to me is yours and everything that belongs to you is mine, so I have been honored by them. 

Jesus says he has completed the work God gave him. Part of that work was to grant people eternal life. In this prayer, Jesus says eternal life is the same thing as knowing God. 

According to Jesus (as described in John), eternal life is not just about life after death. Eternal life is about a new and better quality of life that begins when people come to know God. In the Old Testament “to know” meant to have intimate physical relations. 

Here we understand that eternal life means to have an intimate spiritual relationship with God. Once that spiritual relationship begins it changes a person and how that person relates to the people of his or her community. This new life is so rich and energized that even death cannot put an end to it.

In this prayer Jesus does not pray for everyone in the world but specifically for his disciples and for believers. Believers are the people who have understood that Jesus came from God and that Jesus’ teachings were of God.

Jesus then petitions God on behalf of his disciples. The first and main thing Jesus asks for is unity. Above all Jesus hoped his disciples and believers in general would unite. Some people say Jesus’ prayer remains unfulfilled. Today Christianity is divided into many factions and denominations. Perhaps the fulfillment of this prayer depends on Christians themselves. When Christians find ways to come together and work on common causes they answer Jesus’ prayer.

People of the church might come up with different lists of what is most important for believers to seek. These lists might include correct doctrine, faith, spirituality, or other traits. But Jesus’ prayers focused on asking for unity. This prayer should guide believers and the church today as it tries to live out Christ’s mission in the world.

Jesus’ farewell prayer was enormously influential in the church’s definition of the relation between Jesus and God in the 4^th and 5^th centuries and in many ways it provides a summary of the Fourth Gospel writer’s understanding of the message and mission of Jesus. The gospel of John looks back, as it were, on the alienation of John’s community from “the world”.   It indicates that the Johannine community is already one generation removed from Jesus: a second generation has received the testimony of the first generation and they have become believers. The prayer also calls for the unity of believers so the whole world may also believe.  

All of this reflects the special interest of the fourth evangelist. Nothing in it can be traced back to the parables or sage retorts of Jesus remembered and recorded in the other gospels.  All the key phrases, words, and formulations are characteristic only of the Gospel of John. 

All this makes us realize that disunity in the church is not the characteristic of just our generation.   It had begun as early as the end of the first century.  In, fact, as we study the writings of the earliest writer, Paul, we see the beginnings of the disunity even then. And Paul wrote just a few years after the crucifixion. 

So how do we promote unity in the church?  What is it that divides Christians?
I believe it is doctrine and dogma.  The Christian church in general has lost sight of the message Jesus brought. 

His most important message had to do with the makeup of God’s kingdom…as opposed to the reign of the Romans.  It had to do with mercy, peace and justice.  When asked the most important commandment, what was the answer Jesus was  given? It was to love God with all our might, mind and soul and our neighbor as ourselves.  

The writer of Matthew goes even a little further when he recalls from the oral tradition in Matthew 25 Jesus discussion about the judgment:

It reads like this:

"All the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; and He will put the sheep on His right, and the goats on the left.

      “Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. ‘For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.’ “Then the righteous will answer Him, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink? ‘And when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You? ‘When did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ “The King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.’

      Then He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink; I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.’ “Then they themselves also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of You?’ “Then He will answer them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ “These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

What would happen if more Christians were willing to care for their neighbor as well as they care for themselves?  If eternal life comes from knowing God, why would all Christians not want to be unified?  Christian  believers who want the kind of eternal life Jesus describes, should work together to seek unity, even if it means making other goals secondary.

When you read our earliest Gospels – Matthew, Mark, and Luke – and apply to them the sensible historical criteria that historians of antiquity have devised for looking at such things, it is quite clear that Jesus’ overarching message was that the Kingdom of God was soon to arrive.   This would be a real kingdom, with a ruler, and rulers serving under that ruler.  People would be allowed in or they would be excluded.   Those who were allowed in would lead a utopian like existence.  Those outside would be miserable.

This kingdom was to be brought by a cosmic judge of the earth that Jesus called (following Daniel 7:13-14) the Son of Man.   This figure was coming from heaven in judgment on the earth.   All who sided with God would be rewarded at his coming; those who sided with the evil powers of this world, which were in control of this age (and who were therefore making life miserable for those who sided with God), would be destroyed, or at least punished.

There would then be a massive reversal of fortunes when this kingdom arrived.  Those who were in power now (by having sided with the forces of evil) would be wiped out then, and those who were oppressed and suffering now would be exalted then.  The first will be last and the last first.

This coming of the Son of Man was imminent.  It was going to happen right away.  It would be within Jesus’ own generation.  His disciples would see it.

And so people needed to prepare for the arrival of the Kingdom of God.  They would be saved at the appearance of the Son of Man if they were devoted to God, loving him with all their heart, soul, and strength, and loving their neighbors as themselves.  This, for Jesus, was the heart and core of the Law of Moses, the Torah, the Law God had given Israel and found in the Hebrew Bible (in what is now called the Pentateuch – the first five books).   God was particularly concerned that people live lives of love, not hating, oppressing, acting violently against others, but doing what was best for others and looking forward to the day when God would right all that is wrong with this world.

Those who did so – Jesus’ own followers – were already beginning to see in a very small way what was about to happen in a BIG way when the end came.   In the kingdom there would be no war, and so Jesus’ followers were to be peacemakers now; in the kingdom there would be no hatred, and so Jesus’ followers were to love even their enemies now; in the kingdom there would be no oppression, so Jesus’ followers should work for justice now; in the kingdom there would be no disease or demons, so Jesus’ followers should heal the sick and cast out demons now; in the kingdom there would be loneliness, and so people should visit the widows and orphans now.   The kingdom could be realized in a small way in the here and now, in preparation for its coming for real and forever very soon.

Doing such things, for Jesus, was living according to the Law of God that God had given to Moses.   Yes, you should keep the Ten commandments, all the time.  And yes you should do everything else that God has told you to do.  But it is not simply a matter of adhering to the letter of the law without following the real intent of the law.  And the real intent of the law was to treat others with love and respect in preparation for the coming of the end.

Those who did so would enter into the kingdom when it arrived.  And that was going to be very soon.  So no one should wait: all should prepare.   The matter was urgent, and so Jesus delivered his message with urgency.   Entering the kingdom depended on living the way God had demanded in the Torah.  Anyone who was living otherwise needed to repent and change their ways, and look forward to the time when this miserable world was transformed back into paradise, with the coming of the Son of Man. 

That was the message of Jesus as found in the very earliest gospels.

The people of our small community seem to be more of one heart and one mind then many larger churches. Somehow even with our differences in personal theology, we manage to maintain unity.  We tend to always work together to promote common goals.

Our mission...the most important one...is to help find God's Kingdom here on earth ...a kingdom of love, peace and hope.