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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
In the now more‑than‑six‑months that I have been pastor of Pilgrim Lutheran Church, I have had several conversations with members about how we as Christians should live our lives in the world—in our families, at school, at our jobs, and in other social groups. In those conversations, I probably alluded to the Gospel Reading for this Seventh Sunday of Easter. And, in telling how Jesus therein describes our lives, I probably stated then, without realizing it, the theme for this morning’s sermon based on that Gospel Reading: “In but not Of the World”.
This morning’s Gospel Reading again comes from the Gospel according to St. John, specifically from its account of Jesus’s teaching in the upper room on the night He was betrayed. We have moved, however, from Jesus’s teaching about the vine and branches in chapter 15 to chapter 17. In between He has talked about sending the Holy Spirit, and He is anticipating being absent from the disciples after His death, resurrection, and ascension. They are to be “In but not Of the World”, so Jesus prays what we call His “High Priestly Prayer”. And, in the section of the Prayer before us, Jesus entrusts His disciples to His Father, asking His Father for two things relative to the disciples: first, to keep them in the Father’s Name (and thus from the Evil One) and, second, to sanctify them in the truth. (We can relate to entrusting others to God, as we move away, watch children grow up, or prepare for our own deaths.)
Jesus begins this part of the Prayer by addressing God as “Holy Father”, and His calling God “Holy Father” prepares us for the contrast that follows, contrast between the holy and unholy. The unholy, sinful world and its people, led by the Evil One, hate both all that is holy and all who are holy. You and I are born into this world, and so we are by nature a part of this world, unholy and sinful. When we come to faith, we rightly wrestle with how we as Christians should live our lives in the world—in our families, at school, at our jobs, and in other social groups. Too often, we might forget that Jesus wants us to be “In but not Of the World”, and, so in the interest of reducing the world’s hatred and opposition to us, we might become too much “of” the world. We might compromise our morals or at least appear to go along with the crowd so no one thinks differently about us. Or, instead of compromising, we might try withdraw so much from the world that we are hardly “in” the world anymore at all. Monks and nuns tried that for centuries, only to find out that the unholy and sinful world still lived in them, even if they were trying not to live “in” the world.
Jesus’s mention of “the son of destruction” who was lost specifically refers to Judas, who freely chose to betray Jesus. The expression “son of destruction”, however, is a Hebrew way of describing one who has fallen victim to destruction. One time God through Isaiah used the expression to call all the sinful people of Israel what the English Standard Version translates as “children of transgression”. So, Jesus’s use of the expression in our Gospel Reading reminds us that there is a judgment, and thus it calls us to repent. God calls us to turn in sorrow from our sins—our sins of trying not to be “in” the world, our sins of being too much “of” the world, or whatever our sins might be. God calls us to turn in sorrow from our sins and to trust Him to forgive our sins. When we so turn in sorrow from our sins and trust God to forgive our sins, He does just that: He forgives our sins. He forgives them for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ, Who Sanctified Himself that we might be sanctified.
“Sanctify” in this case, or “consecrate” as the English Standard Version translated one use of the word in the Gospel Reading, essentially means to “set apart as holy”, the way sacrifices and priests in the Old Testament were “set apart as holy”. Jesus speaks to His “Holy Father” as a High Priest about to offer Himself to death on the cross as a sacrificial victim for all those God gave Him. Only because Jesus offers Himself as a holy sacrifice for all those God gave Him can all those God gave Him themselves be declared and made holy, set apart from the rest of the unholy and sinful world. When we believe that Jesus died and rose again to save us from our sins, God declares and makes us holy. He forgives us our sins—our sins of trying not to be “in the world”, our sins of being too much “of” the world, or whatever our sins might be. He forgives all our sins and, as our Epistle Reading noted, thereby gives us eternal life in His Son. By grace through faith in that Son Jesus, we have a right relationship with God—we are sanctified, as Jesus says in the Gospel Reading, in the truth of God’s Word.
God’s Word is undoubtedly true; there truly are no errors or contradictions in it, and so His Word in all its forms is God’s only way of making us holy, as well as His only way of building His Church. After Jesus ascended into heaven, He in one sense is not “in the world”, for He does not speak or act on earth as others do. Yet, Jesus is still present with His Church in a different way, through the Office of the Holy Ministry. (In our First Reading we heard how God through the believers called Matthias to take Judas’s place in that office.) Through the Office of the Holy Ministry, God continues to make people holy and build His Church, through the pure preaching of the Gospel and the right administration of the Sacraments. In Holy Baptism, God took you and me, who were born into this world and were part of the world, and He drowned us in the waters of the font so that a new person, born of God, born from above by water and the Spirit, would come forth and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever. At the font, God baptizes us into His Name—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—and He puts His sign of the cross on us. Both that Name and that sign are recalled in Holy Absolution, when we privately confess the sins that trouble us most and are individually absolved. Baptized and Absolved in God’s Name, we are united in relationship with Him and with one another. That union and unity are strengthened and shown forth to the world in the Sacrament of the Altar. As Jesus sanctified Himself for us, so there in bread He gives His body for us, and there in wine He pours out His blood of the covenant for us. We who are many are one body, and we partake of the one bread and drink of the one cup. Human failures to hear and understand God’s Word rightly cause further between those who claim to be Christ’s, and so we rightly limit participation at this table to those who confess the truth of His sanctifying Word.
Made holy by God’s sanctifying Word in all its forms, we become a holy nation of priests offering spiritual sacrifices of praise acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. We may wish that Jesus’s prayer would be to take us out of the world immediately, but that would be disastrous for the world! The unholy and sinful world, even though it hates us, is to see from us that the Father sent the Son and loved the world in Him. Yes, even made holy, we who are “In but not Of this World” still fail to live our lives perfectly, so we live with daily repentance and faith. We need not doubt where we stand with God, but we trust His Word that Father and Son guard us so that not one who continues to believe is lost eternally. Jesus makes us aware of that protection so that we may have His joy fulfilled in us, even though we do not always fully appreciate that joy. In the world we have tribulation, but Jesus with His death and resurrection has overcome the world, and that victory is ours by faith in Him. With that victory, we can say and mean, “I have enough”, in German “Ich habe g’nug”, or, as it is translated in our closing hymn, “I am content!” We close now praying its final stanza:
I Am Content! At length I shall be free, / Awakened from the dead,
Arising glorious evermore to be / With you, my living head.
My Lord, earth’s binding fetters sever, / Then shall my soul rejoice forever.
I am content! I am content! (Amen.)
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +