RVCC Pastor's Sermon

Sermon - May 24, 2009

“All You Need Is love”

By Rev. Nancy Foran
John 17:6-19

In this final Sunday of the Easter season, we find ourselves once again in the Holy City of Jerusalem. There we are in that same upper room, having just finished the ancient Passover meal. We are seated about the table with Jesus and his disciples. Like them, we long for the sound of Jesus’ voice, long to hear the incisive insights he shared, long even more to soak in his words of wisdom one last time.

Jesus has been talking for a while now – in that quiet and gentle way of his. We have heard him speak of grapevines and those essential connections with God and with each other. His words about love, about loving one another as He has loved us, still hang with a certain poignancy in the still air around us. All that Jesus says, of course, will one day be edited and codified and included as several chapters in John’s Gospel, and we will call this narrative in the upper room his Farewell Discourse.

Sitting there with the disciples in this quiet after dinner conversation time, we, like them, are frightened because we intuitively understand that something awful is going to happen. Our world will be turned upside down, and our leader and rabbi and friend will leave us.

We feel small and vulnerable and lost. We sense that time is short, and we so much want to understand what Jesus is talking about because surely his message will be essential in negotiating the road ahead.

It is growing late now. The lit candles on our table cast their shadows of our meal. The reflection of a half eaten loaf of bread and a cup of wine flickers and dances on the back wall of the house. Darkness has set in.

Jesus knows that he must go elsewhere now – and we know that too. And so he ends the conversation – but not with a lengthy theological treatise and not even with a parable or a good old fashioned story. He ends it with a prayer.

It is a heartfelt prayer, often called the High Priestly Prayer, and it is for us. It is not a teaching moment, like so many others he has shared. It is simply a prayer.

Jesus prays for us. Jesus prays for the disciples who were his friends. Jesus prays for the early Christian community to whom the writer of the Gospel of John directed his narrative.

And Jesus prays for us - for you and me – so many centuries later and worlds apart. As Fred Craddock wrote, we are like “a congregation overhearing a pastoral prayer. We are not directly addressed, but we are very much in the mind of the One who is praying." This prayer, his High Priestly Prayer, is for us.

We know that it is for us because it is not some high and lofty theological abstract. Oh, the words might sound strange to us these centuries later, but they are simple words.

We also know that the prayer is for us because it is about the world in which we live where sometimes God’s saving love seems so far away. It is a prayer for us because it is about how we live in this crazy world that is our home.

Did you know that in some Bible translations, the word, “world,” in this brief passage is used 13 times. Surely that must make it important, and, for the Gospel writer of John, it is important. For him, the world is a dark and messed up place, but God loves it anyway.

There is darkness, and there is light – a frequent symbol and literary image in this Gospel – and the key question that rattles around in our heads as Jesus prays is this: What is our relationship supposed to be to this dark, messed up world in which we live?

And, in this High Priestly Prayer, Jesus answers that nagging question. In the last coherent prayer that the disciples will hear him pray, in these final hours before his crucifixion, Jesus first admits the inevitable. "I am no longer in this world, but they are." If the disciples had not already conceded this notion, it must have dizzied them with confusion, and the vulnerability those words left in their wake must have been terrifying.

And so, for us, Jesus’ words underline a huge problem: Jesus is no longer in the world, but we are. Whatever are we to do with that? Because, you see, if we take our role as followers of Jesus seriously, that is a serious question!

Maybe it would have been better if, as James Howell noted, “Jesus left his future presence down here in more capable hands than ours! We're just not all that special. We feel no miraculous power coursing through our veins, our brains get blurry, we're tired, we're stressed, we're just so very...pedestrian, flat--footed, mortal...human.”

That we are! However, we are in the world – hook, line, and sinker. Such is our lot, and there is no getting around it. And therein lies the tension for us. We trust the message of peace and reconciliation that Jesus preaches.

Yet all around us we see war and poverty and environmental degradation. But we know – we just know – that it does not have to be that way.

And Jesus realizes our predicament, and so he prays to God on our behalf: "I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one,” from everyone and everything that tells us we are crazy, that the world as it is now is the best it’s gonna get.

Let all will be well, Jesus prays. Let all will be well. Even though Jesus is not here to protect us in body, God’s spirit will surround us, and all will be well. Remember those words in this High Priestly Prayer when being in the world seems darker and more ominous than you think you can handle, when you need encouragement, when everything around you is falling apart.

Jesus prays that all will be well as we go forth in his name. Oh, we may wish that Jesus was here in body, but in a way, Jesus’ body is very much here – in us. Teresa of Avila said "Christ has no body on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours; yours are the eyes through which the compassion of Christ looks out on a hurting world, yours are the feet with which he goes about doing good; yours are the hands with which he is to bless now."

It will not be an easy road. Jesus understands that, but he prays that, come what may, we will have joy. He prays that we will experience joy in finding others in a community like this one here at RVCC who will work beside us in the world – through mission and outreach, through being an integral part of this small town in Maine.

Jesus prays that because of such singleness of purpose, such commitment to his message, we will discover that there is more to bind us together than should ever drive us apart. He prays that the threads of the tapestry of love that he has created will be strong enough and tightly woven enough to keep us together in the tough and potentially divisive times. He prays that because of his message, we will all be one.

And Jesus prays that we will be sanctified, that we will be purified, that, if we can not be made holy, at least we can love – and surely love is holy enough. That will make us a sacred community, a community set apart, he reminds us in his prayer. Though we are centered in the world as it is, we are grounded in the Gospel message.

Jesus prays for us – for you and for me. How we react to this wonderful prayer – well, it is different for all of us. Some of us teach in inner city schools. Some of us work in soup kitchens. Some of us speak out against war. Some of us place ourselves in the thick of war in order to, in our own way, try to bring about peace.

On this Memorial Day weekend, it is those in particular that we remember – not because they wielded guns, not because there is a glory in war, because Memorial Day is not about war, it is about peace. That is why the President each year issues a proclamation that moments be set aside on Memorial Day – not to glorify war but to pray for peace.

I have a cousin that I lost touch with decades ago and only became reacquainted with recently as I was looking on the internet for information on my maternal grandfather, someone I know little about.

I came across a website on the American military in Turkey that focused in part on my cousin, John. I found out that for 35 years he served as a police officer in the Air Force and as a civilian.

I also found out that in 2007, partly because of his professional training and partly because of his facility with the Turkish language, at 54 years old, he was asked to go to Iraq to train Iraqi police officers in Mosul, on the Turkish border.

In this blog, John writes, “Some would say I served my time and should just go play golf. I would argue that this is my time. The military and civilian police agencies were kind enough to give me great skills. Now it is my time to pay back for that knowledge….(We are in Iraq), like it or not. My goal is to make enough of a difference so that we can get our people out.”

He continues by writing, “As for my immediate family, I will miss all of you the most (especially Harley the dog). I have a good, strong family support system with a wife, Sue, who loves me and supports the job I have always wanted to do. My mother, Dawn, has accepted that I choose to go of my own free will and without reservations. I will be doing an honorable job…I want the Iraqis to have the ability to stand on their own so we can get out of there and bring our troops home.” His blog entries end with a plea – pray for peace.

We are in the world, but I would submit that deep down inside we all know there is a better way. The question is just - how do we get there from here? The answer is different for each one of us. I became so aware of that as I read my cousin’s remarks.

So pray for us, Jesus. Intercede for us. Show us how to live in this dark and messed up world, all the while bringing your light. Pray that we will find joy and not too much discouragement. Pray that we will be made holy – people of love, people of peace. Amen.

Sermon - May 24, 2009

“All You Need Is love”

By Rev. Nancy Foran John 17:6-19

By Rev. Nancy Foran
John 17:6-19