7th Sunday of Easter May 28, 2006 “Series B”
Grace be unto you and peace, from God our Father and from our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Let us pray: Dear Heavenly Father, through the death and resurrection of your Son, Jesus the Christ, you revealed your glory, the forgiveness of our sins, and the hope of life eternal in your heavenly kingdom. Through the power of your Holy Spirit, assure us of your presence, strengthen our faith, and continue to forgive our repentant sins. Form us into your church, that we might live our lives reflecting your steadfast love and faithfulness. This we ask in Christ’s holy name. Amen.
Have you noticed anything different this morning about our chancel? For the past six weeks, beginning with our celebration of Jesus’ resurrection on Easter morning, the Paschal candle, which symbolizes Christ’s victory over sin and death, was positioned to the left of our altar and was lit during our worship services. The purpose for placing it beside the altar and lighting it during worship in the season of Easter, is to visually remind us of the forty days in which our risen Lord appeared to his disciples.
This past Thursday marked the Ascension of our risen Lord – his return to God the Father in heaven. As a result, the Paschal candle now stands beside the baptismal font. There it will be lighted for our celebration of baptisms and funerals, to remind us that through our faith and baptism, we participate in Christ’s resurrection victory over sin and death.
What an awesome sight that must have been, for the disciples to have witnessed our risen Lord’s ascension. Not only had they seen Jesus die by crucifixion, and then, on Easter Sunday, appear to them risen from throws of death – they also saw him ascend back to heaven! If there was any doubt remaining in the minds of the disciples about who Jesus was, or by what authority he healed and taught and preached, Christ’s ascension made it clear. In Jesus they had beheld the very presence of God in their midst.
Listen for a moment to Luke’s description of our Lord’s ascension. “Our risen Lord said to the disciples, ‘These are the words that I spoke to you while I was still with you – that everything written about me in the Law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, saying, ‘Thus, it is been written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead… and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations… You are witnesses of these things.’
Then Jesus led them out as far as Bethany, and… blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And [the disciples] worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God.” End quote.
This lesson from Luke tells us that there was no doubt in the disciple’s minds about the source of what they had experienced in their relationship with Jesus. In Jesus, they had experienced the saving grace of God. In Jesus, they came to recognize that God himself was in their midst, helping them to understand the meaning of life in a new and different way. In Jesus, they came to understand that through their faith in his death and resurrection, God forgave their sins, and offered them new and eternal life in God’s heavenly kingdom.
Is it any wonder that the disciples, according to Luke’s Gospel, left the mount of our Lord’s ascension, returned to Jerusalem, and spent each day at the temple blessing God and giving him thanks for what he had done for them, through his Son, Jesus the Christ? What they had witnessed and experienced filled their hearts with such great joy, that they couldn’t help but praise God for his redeeming grace, as they reflected upon all that they had experienced.
But the season of Easter does not end with the ascension of our Lord. Today, we are asked to join our Lord’s first disciples, to reflect upon the significance of what they had witnessed, and what it means to us. And I can’t think of a better lesson for us to ponder, than Jesus’ prayer for his disciples – his prayer for you and me. Think about this. Jesus, the Son of God, is praying for you and for me.
There is so much in this prayer, that I can’t possibly reflect upon it all. So take this lesson home with you and think about it, think about all that Jesus has done for you, think about Jesus praying for you!
From our text, Jesus acknowledges in prayer that he has revealed God’s word to the disciples, and that they had come to believe that he has come from God, and that God had sent him. Then Jesus begins to pray for the welfare of his disciples. Consider verse 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.”
Isn’t it an awesome thought, that even as Jesus leaves this world, and returns to be with his Heavenly Father, that he continues to pray for his disciples? Jesus, our crucified, risen and ascended Lord, continues, even to this day, to lift his disciples in prayer to the Father, to intercede on our behalf, to pray for our protection.
Of course, the kind of protection that Jesus is praying that God provide us, is not concerned with the kind of things we often wish God would provide us. He is not asking God to protect us from illness, or accidental harm. He is not asking God to protect us from theft or financial loss. He is not even asking God to protect us from physical death.
Rather, Jesus prays that the Father protect us in his word, which he has passed on to us from God himself. He is praying that we be protected in faith, in trusting that Jesus had been sent from the Father to reveal God’s redeeming grace, and that through his death and resurrection, we have become one with him, as he is one with the Father.
And in light of this, Jesus is praying that through our faith and continued relationship with him, we might become one with each other. It is his prayer that we might grow in faith to truly care for one another, as he has cared for us.
Over the years, a lot has been made of the lack of unity within the Christian church – that somehow the divisions between the various denominations of Christ’s church reveals a lack of oneness with Christ. But I can’t believe that Jesus is as concerned so much with the structure of his Church, as he is with seeing the members of his church truly care for one another! True caring and compassion for one another can carry across the denominational lines that separate us.
Let us now consider verses 17 and 18. Here Jesus prays: “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.”
According to the dictionary, the word “sanctify” means to purify, to make holy. Here, Jesus prays that God the Father might purify us and make us holy in his sight through truth, the truth of his word. As I have mentioned before, the term “truth,” as it is used in John’s Gospel, usually does not mean the opposite of falsehood. Rather, John uses this term in the relational sense of the word, meaning “to be faithful,” to “be true to another.”
Thus, if I might rephrase this petition of Jesus’ prayer for his disciples, he prays: “Father, Let them be holy in your sight in your sight, make them pure through their faithfulness. Your word is faithfulness.” Here, Jesus is praying that God continue to purify us through our faith, our trust in God’s redeeming grace that Christ has revealed to us through his death and resurrection.
Jesus asks this of his Heavenly Father, because he has sent us into the world, just as God had sent him into the world. Jesus prays for God to protect us in his word, to protect us in faith, to make us one with him as he is one with the Father, not just that WE might know the redeeming grace of God, but so that WE might continue to spread God’s word to others of what he has done for THEM through Christ’s death and resurrection.
Thus, on this final Sunday of Easter, following our Lord’s Ascension, may we reflect upon our Lord’s continuing prayer for us, his present day disciples, and join his disciples of every age in praising God through our continuing witness to the grace of God.
Amen.
