We Are Yours Series

This prayer that John record is a prayer that Jesus prayed for his disciples.

The part that includes us happens just after our text for this week.

But we can be included anyway.

Jesus is praying for us! What an amazing thing.

Set this thought alongside the idea of Ascension.

Jesus is leaving, but Jesus is with us.

Jesus takes his place at the right hand of God, returns to the circle of the Trinity, but at the same time continues to be present with us.

Worship this final week of Eastertide needs to be a celebration of living the Resurrection with the Resurrected one at our side.

It is a reminder that we are not alone, that we continue to journey with the one who calls us and the one who saves us; even as we look forward to the one who will empower us to continue the work of building toward the kingdom of God.

One of our values is community.

We are in this together. So, while we stand, on this Ascension Sunday, looking to the Christ departing from us into heaven, we stand together.

We stand side by side. And when my vision of who Christ is begins to waver, you come alongside and shore me up.

When you begin to wonder if it was all a dream, I’ll be there to remind you of the reality of our experience of Christ.

We are here for mutual support.

Christ prays that his followers would be united, would stand together as we embark on our mission.

Living the Resurrection is to celebrate the community of faith that we have become.

Ill.

Harry Tyson Moore (November 18, 1905 – December 25, 1951) was an African-American educator, a pioneer leader of the civil rights movement, founder of the first branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Brevard County, Florida, and president of the state chapter of the NAACP. Harry T. Moore and his wife, Harriette Moore, also an educator, were the victims of a bombing of their home in Mims, Florida, on Christmas night 1951. As the local hospital in Titusville would not treat Blacks, he died on the way to the nearest one that would, a Black hospital in Sanford, Florida, about 30 miles to the northwest.

So of you might know Harry from the song by Sweet Honey and the Rock, what you might not know as Rev Barber has told it that what happed to Harry was the NACCP demoted him because white leadership felt he was doing too much, And when he founded the vote league that was registering black people and bringing black and white people together to change the power structure, the power structure got mad with him.?And they actually went to the top leaders in this NAACP and asked them to shut him down. when he was taken down from the NAACP that is when his enemy’s felt comfortable killing him and his wife blowing them up!

We can’t afford to allow the evil to separate our break down our team. That’s what Jesus was telling his disciples. That’s what the baker rebellion was all about, and the Virginia slave codes. The Evil dividing up what God has set for Good.

1) We must Know That We Belong

Significant then are those things which are “given” by the Son and the Father. Most important and immediate we hear that the followers of Jesus know themselves as belonging to Jesus. To know oneself as belonging to Jesus is to know this as integral to the Father’s and the Son’s essential nature and purpose.

2) We must Know the Word

Secondly, we hear that these followers have been given the “word.” They are protected in the “name” precisely because they have been given and have guarded the “word.” Of course in the context of John’s witness to the “Word become flesh” (1:14) we are meant to understand that “word” in its double sense.

a) Jesus has given to them only those words which he has first received from the Father;

b) They have received or accepted those words (and so have been given the power to become God’s children, All by the Word!

3) We are Sent Into the World

Still in spite of the risk, and precisely because of the Father’s love, this community of disciples are sent into the world, just as the Father’s love has sent the Son into the world.

The mandate is clear: we must go……we must preach….and the message to be preached is the Gospel.

Isn’t it amazing that after the passing of over two thousand years, the Gospel of Jesus Christ still has the power to change lives?

The Gospel: the message of salvation through faith/trust in Christ and His atoning work on the cross.