… In Truth
Sunday, May 28th, 2006
Easter 7B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
John 17:6-19
They are, in my humble opinion, the most horrifying 20 minutes of any movie ever made. The opening sequence of ‘Saving Private Ryan’, for someone who has never been anywhere near combat, provide a gut-wrenching, heart-pounding, nerve rattling glimpse in a two-dimensional format of the absolute horror and chaos that was the three-dimensional reality on D-Day in Normandy for the first troops to land.
Watching that portion of the film, I was reminded of just how far removed most of the world today is from conditions then. There are, of course, dozens of places in the world where wars are raging and battles are being fought, besides the few that we are engaged in, but none of them seem to carry the weight of the future of the world on their outcome as did the battle of Normandy in June of 1944.
As we had opportunity to view the moving wall last week while it was here, and mark the names in their reading and the passing of the years by walking from one end of the monument to the other, and as we pause this weekend and especially tomorrow, we engage in one of the most significant acts a nation can undertake: to remember those who have given their last measure for something we enjoy here today of which there was no guarantee at the time of their deaths – whether that was the preservation of this nation, or the rejection of fascism, or the preservation of the balance of power to maintain peace in the world at large, while sacrificing it on a local level, there was in each case a lack of certainty surrounding the ultimate outcome.
To that end, when Abraham Lincoln said:
At the dedication ceremony of the cemetery at Gettysburg, he was speaking to the fact that all the words in the world will blow away like so much dust, but that it is in the actions taken by those who are wiling to put their lives at risk – to put their words into action, that brings about lasting and real change.
In some ways, the Gettysburg address was a prayer, spoken by the president on behalf of the nation, but it also served as an encouragement to the people who were there that day – to be so dedicated to the purpose of preserving the union and the nation, that the power of those few words have moved generations around the world.
Our passage this morning is also known as the Priestly Prayer of Jesus. It is spoken shortly before he is arrested, after he has spent the last several days, to not say chapters, teaching his disciples about what is to come, and as we saw last Sunday, teaching them about their ultimate purpose as well as HIS.
What was so radical about what Jesus did was very simply the way he approached God. Prior to his coming, the only method by which the Israelites could approach God was through the high priest, after offering an appropriate sacrifice.
It was through the sacrifice that two things were accomplished: first, the priest himself was made worthy to offer the sacrifice, and the sacrificial victim, say, a lamb, was consecrated – made holy – in the act of being sacrificed.
In the passage of the middle section of the prayer that we are reading today, Jesus is praying on behalf of his disciples, and what we come to see is that he is praying for ALL his disciples – those present then, as well as those to come … later, and now.
Have you ever been prayed over – I mean REALLY prayed over?
Our second semester at the Leland Center, in early February of 2003, I received word the day before our class met that my position at Stickdog Telecom was going to be phased out over the next six weeks or so. There were no plans to pursue a continuing career in the industry, because I knew I was going to be stepping out into something that I’d been preparing for …. my whole life. And even though there was a thrill of excitement about that, not having any idea of what that stepping out would LOOK like was more than a little unsettling. We had rent and bills to pay, and three children to feed and clothe, in addition to ourselves.
We got to class that night and in our opening few minutes we’d always gone around the room and allowed anyone to share any prayer concerns they might have. As Leslie and I shared our news, there was a spontaneous move on the part of our classmates and Brian Williams, the professor, to move in close around us and put their hands on our shoulders and heads, and everyone in the class either spoke or said a silent prayer for us – the sense of it was simply overwhelming. The words that were spoken to God on our behalf were not just encouraging, but empowering, and uplifting, and yes, on some level, challenging – in the sense that I felt that ‘this is an expectation that I need to live into – not in the negative sense of an expectation, but in the sense that it was simply TIME to do what needed to be done to follow God’s call.
This entire chapter is a single overheard prayer. What the disciples heard was Jesus asking God for himself, for them, and for the world of believers that was yet to come: asking for strength, asking for holiness, asking for unity, asking for boldness in love.
I guess the question comes down to how have we lived out that strength, that holiness, that unity, that boldness, as a body of Christ?
We as a nation have set aside a specific date to honor our war dead. Do we as Christians honor OUR … martyrs? Are we so uncomfortable with the idea that people have died for what they believed and even, TODAY, are dying for their faith, and yet, we sit in comfort and thank God for our blessings.
Abraham Lincoln called the people of this country to ‘increased devotion to that cause’ for which the men who were buried in that cemetery died. Is it so difficult to hear God’s call on our lives to increased devotion, to ever more courage, holiness, unity and love? Is it a call that we have become immune to, have we heard it so often that we do not even hear the words or ponder the implications?
Are we willing to explore the path that God might have for us as a church, as a body, to discover what it means to be ever more courageous, in speaking truth in the midst of a culture that seems to thrive on gossip and hearsay, on innuendo and outright fabrication. On a society that would rather get tied up in a discussion of what the name of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s baby girl will be rather than address the harsh reality of mass persecution and massacres in Darfur, Sudan, or in the real possibility that, working together, we actually DO have the capacity to end hunger in the world.
Do we have the courage to speak and live in holiness, upholding the sanctity of humanity, granted by God in the original blessing of the world, to a world that today would rather we lose ours by losing sight of the humanity of those with whom we do not see eye-to-eye on anything from the practice of faith to the form of a family, to the how we vote on issues that face the nation as a whole.
Can we as a body speak to … and even more … ACT in unity in spite of our differences? Can we, having come out of DIS-unity in our inception one hundred and seventy-four years ago, or even barely fifteen years ago, carry on the work of the Kingdom without grumbling and complaining? Will the world remember us – this congregation – for the love with which we cared for each other and those around us, or for bitterness and backbiting?
Can we do what Christ prayed for us?
I believe wholeheartedly that we can, and we will, and we must, if we are to lay claim to the name Christian.
Let’s pray.
Sunday, May 28th, 2006
Easter 7B
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
John 17:6-19
6”I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 7 Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; 8 for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. 9 I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. 10 All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. 11 And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. 12 While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. 13 But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. 14 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. 15 I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. 16 They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. 17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.
They are, in my humble opinion, the most horrifying 20 minutes of any movie ever made. The opening sequence of ‘Saving Private Ryan’, for someone who has never been anywhere near combat, provide a gut-wrenching, heart-pounding, nerve rattling glimpse in a two-dimensional format of the absolute horror and chaos that was the three-dimensional reality on D-Day in Normandy for the first troops to land.
Watching that portion of the film, I was reminded of just how far removed most of the world today is from conditions then. There are, of course, dozens of places in the world where wars are raging and battles are being fought, besides the few that we are engaged in, but none of them seem to carry the weight of the future of the world on their outcome as did the battle of Normandy in June of 1944.
As we had opportunity to view the moving wall last week while it was here, and mark the names in their reading and the passing of the years by walking from one end of the monument to the other, and as we pause this weekend and especially tomorrow, we engage in one of the most significant acts a nation can undertake: to remember those who have given their last measure for something we enjoy here today of which there was no guarantee at the time of their deaths – whether that was the preservation of this nation, or the rejection of fascism, or the preservation of the balance of power to maintain peace in the world at large, while sacrificing it on a local level, there was in each case a lack of certainty surrounding the ultimate outcome.
To that end, when Abraham Lincoln said:
“ in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract."
At the dedication ceremony of the cemetery at Gettysburg, he was speaking to the fact that all the words in the world will blow away like so much dust, but that it is in the actions taken by those who are wiling to put their lives at risk – to put their words into action, that brings about lasting and real change.
In some ways, the Gettysburg address was a prayer, spoken by the president on behalf of the nation, but it also served as an encouragement to the people who were there that day – to be so dedicated to the purpose of preserving the union and the nation, that the power of those few words have moved generations around the world.
Our passage this morning is also known as the Priestly Prayer of Jesus. It is spoken shortly before he is arrested, after he has spent the last several days, to not say chapters, teaching his disciples about what is to come, and as we saw last Sunday, teaching them about their ultimate purpose as well as HIS.
What was so radical about what Jesus did was very simply the way he approached God. Prior to his coming, the only method by which the Israelites could approach God was through the high priest, after offering an appropriate sacrifice.
It was through the sacrifice that two things were accomplished: first, the priest himself was made worthy to offer the sacrifice, and the sacrificial victim, say, a lamb, was consecrated – made holy – in the act of being sacrificed.
In the passage of the middle section of the prayer that we are reading today, Jesus is praying on behalf of his disciples, and what we come to see is that he is praying for ALL his disciples – those present then, as well as those to come … later, and now.
Have you ever been prayed over – I mean REALLY prayed over?
Our second semester at the Leland Center, in early February of 2003, I received word the day before our class met that my position at Stickdog Telecom was going to be phased out over the next six weeks or so. There were no plans to pursue a continuing career in the industry, because I knew I was going to be stepping out into something that I’d been preparing for …. my whole life. And even though there was a thrill of excitement about that, not having any idea of what that stepping out would LOOK like was more than a little unsettling. We had rent and bills to pay, and three children to feed and clothe, in addition to ourselves.
We got to class that night and in our opening few minutes we’d always gone around the room and allowed anyone to share any prayer concerns they might have. As Leslie and I shared our news, there was a spontaneous move on the part of our classmates and Brian Williams, the professor, to move in close around us and put their hands on our shoulders and heads, and everyone in the class either spoke or said a silent prayer for us – the sense of it was simply overwhelming. The words that were spoken to God on our behalf were not just encouraging, but empowering, and uplifting, and yes, on some level, challenging – in the sense that I felt that ‘this is an expectation that I need to live into – not in the negative sense of an expectation, but in the sense that it was simply TIME to do what needed to be done to follow God’s call.
This entire chapter is a single overheard prayer. What the disciples heard was Jesus asking God for himself, for them, and for the world of believers that was yet to come: asking for strength, asking for holiness, asking for unity, asking for boldness in love.
I guess the question comes down to how have we lived out that strength, that holiness, that unity, that boldness, as a body of Christ?
We as a nation have set aside a specific date to honor our war dead. Do we as Christians honor OUR … martyrs? Are we so uncomfortable with the idea that people have died for what they believed and even, TODAY, are dying for their faith, and yet, we sit in comfort and thank God for our blessings.
Abraham Lincoln called the people of this country to ‘increased devotion to that cause’ for which the men who were buried in that cemetery died. Is it so difficult to hear God’s call on our lives to increased devotion, to ever more courage, holiness, unity and love? Is it a call that we have become immune to, have we heard it so often that we do not even hear the words or ponder the implications?
Are we willing to explore the path that God might have for us as a church, as a body, to discover what it means to be ever more courageous, in speaking truth in the midst of a culture that seems to thrive on gossip and hearsay, on innuendo and outright fabrication. On a society that would rather get tied up in a discussion of what the name of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s baby girl will be rather than address the harsh reality of mass persecution and massacres in Darfur, Sudan, or in the real possibility that, working together, we actually DO have the capacity to end hunger in the world.
Do we have the courage to speak and live in holiness, upholding the sanctity of humanity, granted by God in the original blessing of the world, to a world that today would rather we lose ours by losing sight of the humanity of those with whom we do not see eye-to-eye on anything from the practice of faith to the form of a family, to the how we vote on issues that face the nation as a whole.
Can we as a body speak to … and even more … ACT in unity in spite of our differences? Can we, having come out of DIS-unity in our inception one hundred and seventy-four years ago, or even barely fifteen years ago, carry on the work of the Kingdom without grumbling and complaining? Will the world remember us – this congregation – for the love with which we cared for each other and those around us, or for bitterness and backbiting?
Can we do what Christ prayed for us?
I believe wholeheartedly that we can, and we will, and we must, if we are to lay claim to the name Christian.
Let’s pray.
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