After
Jesus shares one final meal with his followers in the Upper Room on Maundy
Thursday, he tells them he will be leaving them soon. Then he looks up to heaven and prays for
his followers. Known as “The High
Priestly Prayer”, the Lectionary divides it into three readings, one for each
year of the cycle. Today’s gospel
reading is the middle section of that prayer.
You
are forgiven if, in listening, you found it difficult to absorb. I have been sitting with it all week and
still find it dense and repetitive.
There are 338 words in these four verses. ‘World’ is used 13 times, the verb ‘to give’
appears in one form or another nine times, ‘protect’ or ‘guard’ four, ‘truth’
four, and ‘name’ and ‘word’ three. No
wonder something gets lost in translation.
The
idea of being given intrigues me. Jesus
states that the Father has given his followers to him and in his prayer he gives
them back to the Father. We don’t think
often about giving a person to someone.
It happens at a wedding: “Who gives this woman to be married to this
man?” For centuries daughters were
thought to be the possession of the father and his answer of “I do” sealed a
transfer of ownership to the husband.
Whatever the giving of a bride means today it certainly is not
that. When I was a kid we played a lot
of pick-up games at a small park at the end of our street. If one team dominated the other it was common
for someone to say, “This isn’t fair.
You’ve got to give us Joey to it make it even.” I’m not sure either of these examples gives us
much insight into what it means that followers of Jesus are given to him and
then given back to the Father.
Here
is one that might. When parents send a
child to school, especially if it is a boarding school, there is a sense that
they are giving their child to that school.
They are entrusting him or her to the faculty and staff with the
expectation they will shape and form the child.
And, at least at the college I attended, my parents expected the school
would keep me safe. The Father gives
Jesus’ followers to him in much the same way.
Jesus forms them through his words and examples. And he protects them, both from the Evil One
and from the world.
At
every baptism we are reminded that in order to follow Christ we must renounce
three things:
· Satan
and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God.
· The
evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God.
· All
sinful desires that draw us from the love of God.
Generally
speaking, we Episcopalians do not talk much about Satan and spiritual forces. I can recall only one time in my 28 years of
ordained ministry I heard a parishioner say (in all sincerity) “the devil made
me do it.” Do you remember Jesus’
parable about the seeds that fall on different kinds of soil? Do you recall what happens to the seeds that
fall on hard, packed ground? The birds
eat them. And when Jesus explains the
parable, what does he say the birds represent?
The Evil One who snatches people after they hear his word. Some in the Christian tradition believe that
Satan is always on the prowl. Some feel
personally attacked by the devil. My
experience is more in line with Jesus’ prayer – whatever is out there and whatever
it is capable of doing, I trust that I am protected, that I am guarded.
The
world is a different story. While there
is much in God’s creation that is good and glorious, there is also much that
can corrupt and destroy. One of the
things that first drew me to the Episcopal Church is the way we engage the
world. We are much more open to it than
the tradition in which I was raised. That
tradition emphasized the fall and totally depravity. Everything about society and the culture was
riddled with sin. The congregation was
“walled off” from the world and the building was something like a bunker meant
to keep out every bad influence. Think
about a church that has its own day school, athletic fields, and recreation
center. It is trying to protect its
members from the world and its influences by giving them fewer and fewer
reasons to be in it.
We in
the Episcopal Church believe that the world is fallen, but not totally
evil. Our members live in the parish but
also in the community. We see the church
as a place to receive spiritual guidance that we use as we reenter daily life
and work. We believe that our world is
good and hopefully getting better.
Rather than pulling people out of the world into the protective confines
of a church, we believe our mission is to go out into the world in order to be
ambassadors of God’s kingdom. By looking
for the good in the world, from time to time we get soiled by the bad. But I would rather run the risk of this than
take the stance of completely removing myself from the world in order to sit in
judgment of it.
Without
a doubt, renouncing all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God is
the most challenging of the three renunciations. Jesus pointed to this when he taught that it
is not what goes into a person that makes him unclean, but what comes out. The words and the actions that come out of a
person emanate from the heart, the home of our desires.
And
while Jesus’ Priestly Prayer does not contain the word ‘heart’, there are two
times he refers to it. He says he gave to
his followers the words the Father gave to him in order that they might be
sanctified. To be sanctified is to be
made pure and set apart for a holy purpose.
Do you ever think of yourself in this way? Some areas of my life and personality feel
holy and pure, but other areas… not so much.
I see myself as a work in progress to be sure. Perhaps you feel the same way about
yourself.
The
other heart reference is to joy. “I
speak these things…,” Jesus says, “so that my followers may have my joy made
complete in themselves.” In his book Wishful
Thinking, Frederick Buenchner writes:
“Happiness turns
up more or less where you’d expect it to – a good marriage, a rewarding job, a
pleasant vacation. Joy, on the other
hand, is as notoriously unpredictable as the one who bequeaths it.”
I
like that. Happiness comes and goes
based on the moment and the circumstances, but a person either has joy or does
not. Tough times and difficult
experiences will not take the joy out of a joyful person. And moments of blessing and goodness may
produce in a joyless person the brief emotion of happiness, but it will never
lead to an enduring joy. A sure and
certain sign that a person has received what Jesus has given is the presence of
joy in his or her heart.
The
good news in today’s Gospel is that, while living in this world and following
our Lord can be very challenging, Jesus is praying for us. Jesus has entrusted us into God’s care and
keep. We are loved deeply, purely, truly,
just as we are. Knowing this produces a
joy which endures and abides.
