John 17:9-19

08/15/10
John 17:9-19
Hudson UMC

Today we are in the second of three Sundays digging through Jesus’ high priestly prayer in John chapter seventeen. Once again, as I was preparing to preach on this passage, I was astonished with how much information is packed into a relatively short chapter. The problem with passages like this, that are so completely full of content, is that they are sometimes so complicated that it is hard to really get into them and piece together what we need to know for today. Sometimes, all we want is a simple, straightforward passage, where we don’t have to work very hard to understand what it says and we can apply it to our lives without much trouble and without having to think much. However, it is precisely the passages that make us think, that push us to dig further than we might want to, that force us to submit ourselves to the text rather than submitting the text to ourselves, that we really begin to be open to God speaking to us.

Last week, when we considered the first part of this prayer, I emphasized the incredible solidarity that Jesus has with the Father. It was important because it means that, when we encounter Jesus, we are not just encountering a human being, or as is often said these days, “a great human teacher” like a Ghandi or a Mother Teresa, but the very living God, who had spoken to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the prophets of the Old Testament. If this is the case, it changes the way we live. We do not just follow someone who is going to teach us a good way to live or someone who is going to teach us about God, but we follow God who has come to us as a human being. The stress last week was about the fact that it is God who has come to us as a human being.

This week, the stress is on the fact that God has come to us as a human being. If the last section of Jesus’ prayer showed us over and over again how Jesus is in absolute unity with the Father, this section shows us over and over again how He is in incredible solidarity with us. We talk about the fact that God loves us and that He came to earth, to walk with us, to teach us, and ultimately, to die and be raised for us, but is it possible that we have allowed this to become something we have heard and said so many times that we have let ourselves miss the absolutely astonishing thing that we believe?

I don’t know about you, but if I were the Lord of the universe, I don’t think I would be the same kind of God as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. I think that, because I like to spend a fair amount of time by myself, that I might have thought twice about creating the universe and people to live in it. When Adam and Eve couldn’t follow simple directions and not eat the fruit from the one tree, even when there were countless other trees to eat from, I don’t know for sure that I wouldn’t just say, “enough is enough,” and be done with it. When Cain killed his brother Abel out of jealousy, I don’t know if I would have had the compassion to protect him from avengers. If I got so mad that I would destroy the earth through a flood, I quite possibly would not go out of my way to save one particular family, especially if I realized that human nature hadn’t changed and things would probably just start all over again. In short, I could come up with a whole list of reasons why I wouldn’t do what God has done, and that is before I even begin to think about the whole history of Israel and their incredible stubbornness and sin.

When I think about the most amazing act of God, the coming to earth in and as the man Jesus, I really start to squirm. Why would God do that? Would I do that if I were God? Probably not. Why would I ever want to willingly limit myself like that? It would like a human being becoming a cockroach, only more so. Why would I intentionally endure all the hurts and trials of a human life, finally enduring some of the most savage treatment that human beings have ever committed and nailed to a cross to die? I can’t say that I would. When I think about this, I could begin to question if this is really what God has done. However, because I can no more doubt of truth of the gospel than I can doubt that I am alive, I instead am overwhelmed with the mercy, love, and patience of God and with the incredible conviction that is a very, very good thing that I am not God and that God is not like me.

So, in spite of the fact that our minds are overwhelmed at the fact that the almighty God of the universe would do what He has done, we rejoice because He has indeed done it. Even the psalmist, writing long before God made His compassion on humanity so clear and evident in Christ, wrote, “When I look at the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.”

Just as I lifted up three statements of Jesus last week that showed His unbreakable connection with the Father, I want to lift up three statements of Jesus that show His incredible solidarity with us. “All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them.” Jesus has spoken all throughout the gospel of John that He has glorified the Father by His deeds and words. When we remember that Jesus is truly God, we can understand this. After all, it is not surprising that God could glorify God. However, He then goes on and says here that He is glorified in His disciples, and not just the eleven He has around the table, but everyone who follows Him.

Imagine that. Jesus, God in flesh, is glorified in us. Again, I don’t know about you, but when I look at my life, I can come up with a whole list of reasons why I could imagine that God would not, or at least should not, be glorified in me. And yet, He says that it is the case. We might try to dismiss this amazing claim by saying, “Oh, he’s actually talking to the disciples, who were such mighty pillars of faith. Maybe, if I lived like they did, I could glorify Christ, but I don’t.” However, we need to remember that it was not until Pentecost that the disciples had any kind of real faith. Jesus is saying that He has already been glorified in his followers, even when they have shown over and over again that they do not get it, even when they are going to scatter that very night, even when one of them is going to directly deny Him three times before the sun came up.

I think that it might be good to think about it like this. Instead of the weakness of the disciples being any kind of hindrance to their ability to glorify Christ, maybe it is precisely because they are weak that they glorify Him. After all, as amazing as it might seem for God to be glorified by the best of the best, how much more incredible is it that God can take even our weakness and brokenness and transform it into His glory? Any fool can be made to look good because they surround themselves with the powerful. Only God almighty can show just how good He really is by surrounding Himself with the weak, transforming them. If someone was strong before they met God and continued in strength, nobody would ever know that God made a difference. However, if weak people like you and me encounter God and we are powerfully transformed so that our weakness is left behind and we live from day to day in the strength of God, it should be clear to everyone that our transformation is not our own but came from God. And if God can take someone like me and bring some good out of him, truly He is a glorious God.

The second thing that Jesus says that ties us together with Him in a serious way is, “I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.” In previous sermons, I have spent a fair amount of time talking about what Jesus means when He talks about the world hating Christians and why that is, so I won’t emphasize that right now. Instead, I want to focus more on this idea of not belonging to the world.

In John, “the world” is a negative term. To speak of the world, or of things that are worldly is to already to interpret them in terms of hostility to God. Over and over again, Jesus says that the deeds of the world are evil, that the world hates Him, that He came into the world for the sake of judgment. However, there are other places where John talks about the world. He calls Jesus the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every person. John the Baptist exclaims that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, that He is indeed the savior of the world. However, these two different uses of the concept of the world are not in conflict. It is not as if saying that Jesus loves the world while the world hates Jesus and His disciples are contradictory. Indeed, Jesus loves the world in spite of the fact that the world hates Him.

The point that is being made here, though, is that Jesus is not of the world. Indeed, He has come from His Father in heaven. He is not part of the evil in the world that is in contradiction to God, but is on God’s side in everything, because He is God in our midst. What is astonishing is that He declares that we are not in the world like He is not in the world. There is part of us that wants to say that we are in the world because we live here and we can look around and see the world all around us. And yet, in spite of all the evidence against it, Jesus assures us that we are set apart like He is, that we, by faith, have come to participate in His separation from the evil of the world. It is an interesting thing to remember. Jesus is saying that, even though it is our business as the church and as individual Christians to be about the business of reaching out to the world, we are not to let the world call the shots about what we say and do. The world is hostile to God. If the world calls the shots, God will be excluded from all our dealings with them. God is calling us to be involved in His ministry.

This leads us to our last major thing that Jesus says that shows us that we are bound to Him in a profound way. In fact, this might very well be the most important part of this part of the prayer for us. “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” Throughout the entire New Testament, the idea of participating in the mission of God is addressed in many different ways. Sometimes it is spoken of in terms of building the kingdom of God, sometimes it is spoken of as being involved in the transformation of the world. In John, the primary language to speak of our being involved in mission is our being “sent.”

Jesus was sent into the world by the Father, to become a human being, a specific man, to enter into our condition, to bear it upon Himself, to take what is ours from us and to give us what belongs to Him. He came to give of Himself for our benefit, even laying His life down for us. This is what it means for Jesus to be sent by the Father. That is the content that we should keep in our mind when we read, “As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” We have been sent into the world, but it is not as though we have our own mission that is somehow separable from the mission of Christ. It is indeed the mission of Christ being worked out in and through us by the power of the Holy Spirit, who grafts us into Christ like branches on a vine.

There have been those who, when they have read the incredible ethical implications of the teaching of Christ, have said, “It is a great idea in theory. However, nobody could actually live like that,” and so they effectively dismiss Christ’s ethical teaching. The teaching that gets the most attention is from the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

It is indeed true that Jesus’ teaching demands more of us than we often feel prepared to give, and yet, in spite of that, the life He describes is not truly impossible. After all, Jesus Himself lived that way. And yet, when we really look to see how it plays itself out, we realize that, even if it is possible to live this way, we may not want to. After all, all of this not resisting the evildoer resulted in Jesus being crucified. He prayed for His enemies, by saying, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing,” as they nailed him to the cross. It is possible to live like Jesus tells us to, but it just might mean that we will be mistreated and even killed.

The same is true of being sent by Christ like He was sent into the world. His mission had a lot of hardship, He was abused by many, and He did not have a whole lot of security and stability in His life. This is a very real picture of what our participation in His mission might look like. We might feel that this is above and beyond what we are capable of and we would be right. Nobody who is left to their own strength, or rather, their weakness, can do what Jesus calls them to do. And yet, Jesus has done it and has given us His Spirit so that we might join Him in His mission.

Jesus lived on earth as a particular human being, but now He has been resurrected and ascended into heaven. And yet, He is not just spiritually present in the world but is physically present in this earthly-historical reality. He is present in you and me. It is not impossible for Jesus to call people by a human voice, because He calls them through our human voice. It is not impossible for Jesus to reach the lost in this country or abroad in the midst of our humanity, because He does so every time we reach out to the lost or go to minister to people of foreign lands. We as the church are indeed the earthly-historical correlate to the act of God in Jesus Christ. What Christ has accomplished once and for all two thousand years ago, He is accomplishing continually in and through His people in the church.

We have been sent into the world, a world that is hostile to God, but we do not need to be afraid that we will fail in this mission because it is the very mission of God, it is a mission that, in the objective sense, God has already completed. We are walking on a difficult path, but is a path that Jesus Himself has walked already and so we can trust that we will not stumble or fall because it is the Lord’s path that we have been graciously allowed to walk. So, since we already have been sent into the world, let us go out and allow Christ to work out in our own life and community what He has already worked out once and for all in His life, death, resurrection and ascension. Let us pray.

AMEN