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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!)
The Easter Season continues, despite our celebration of The Ascension of our Lord this past Thursday night. Next Sunday Pentecost will mark the end of Easter’s great fifty days. On this Seventh Sunday of Easter, in a sense, we wait for Pentecost as did the disciples in the First Reading (Acts 1:12-26). Although, that day for which they waited has since come, and so, in comparison to the disciples, we have a fuller view of salvation. In a sense we view salvation as Jesus did in the Gospel Reading, even though He spoke those words on the night when He was betrayed. Yet, we ourselves are still waiting for the full revelation of Jesus’s glory, as mentioned, for example, in today’s Epistle Reading (1 Peter 4:12-19; 5:6-11). Nevertheless, as today’s three appointed Readings together make clear, in this meantime we “Glorify God in His Name”.
Each year of our three-year series of appointed Readings, on the Seventh Sunday of Easter we hear a portion of Jesus’s so‑called “High Priestly Prayer” from the 17th chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, although the division of the chapter across the three years’ Gospel Readings could better follow the three apparent divisions of the prayer. Today we heard Jesus pray that the Father glorify Him, and we heard part of His prayer for the disciples gathered around Him, that the Father would keep them in His Name, so that disciples may be one, even as the Father and Son are one. (Jesus further elaborates on that unity at the end of the prayer.)
As Jesus prays that the Father glorify Him in the Father’s own presence with the glory that He had with the Father before the world existed, Jesus also says that He is glorified in the disciples gathered around Him. Jesus had manifested the Father’s Name to them; He had given them the words that the Father gave Jesus. And they had received those words and kept them: they had come to know in truth that Jesus came from the Father: they believed that the Father sent Jesus. When we consider those statements of our Lord Jesus in the context of St. John’s record of His teaching on the night when He was betrayed (or even in the context of the four Gospel accounts as a whole), we might be surprised at how well Jesus speaks of the disciples gathered around Him. Some Bible commentators question whether the idea of the disciples’ perfectly keeping the word even belongs to this context at the Last Supper, but, of course, Jesus does not say that the disciples kept the word perfectly.
And, Jesus seems to be doing more than putting the best construction on the disciples’ keeping of the Father’s word: Jesus seems to be regarding them as sinners who believe in Him and so who are redeemed. Similarly, in the Gospel Reading Jesus speaks as if He had already accomplished the work that the Father gave for Him to do, even though He had not yet died on the cross for the disciples’ sins, for your sins, and for my sins. And, we likely know our own sin all too well; we know that we, like the disciples, do not keep God’s word perfectly, to the extent that we keep it at all, for we are by nature sinners and hostile to God. In the whole High Priestly Prayer, Jesus seems to transcend time and space. He knows that He will accomplish the work that the Father gave for Him to do, and accomplish that work He did. God so loved the fallen world that He gave His only Son, so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16). When we in sorrow repent of our sin and believe in Jesus, then the Father forgives our sin for Jesus’s sake. Whatever our sin, despite our still‑sinful nature, by grace through faith, God regards us as sinners who believe in Jesus and so who are redeemed.
Strictly speaking, as we heard last year on The Seventh Sunday of Easter, Jesus, in the third part of the prayer, prays for us and all future believers, as those who believe in Jesus through the disciples’ word (John 17:20). Through their and their successors’ faithfully carrying out the ministry of Word and Sacrament, God’s Name has been glorified, manifested to us as people out of the fallen world whom God gave Jesus. Many of us know that God’s Name was first manifested or revealed to us when It was put on us with the water and word of Holy Baptism. More than given our own names, at the Font we were given His Triune Name. In that same Triune Name those who privately confess the sins that they know and feel in their hearts are individually Absolved by their pastor as by God Himself. Instructed, examined, and absolved, we are admitted to this Altar Rail and receive, in the Sacrament of the Altar, Jesus’s body in bread and His blood in wine, for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. As St. Paul writes to the congregations at Corinth, this bread is a participation or communion in the body of Christ, and the content of this cup is a participation or communion in the blood of Christ. And, because there is one bread and one cup, we who are many and partake of the one bread and one cup are one in Christ’s body and blood (1 Corinthians 10:16-17). We are one, even as the Father and the Son are one.
Within Their unity there is so much giving, as the Gospel Reading makes clear. For example, the Father gives the Son authority over all flesh, in order for the Son to give to all whom the Father has given the Son eternal life, which is that they know the Father as the only true God and Jesus Christ Whom the Father has sent. Like the disciples in the Gospel Reading, we who believe that the Father sent Jesus know in truth that Jesus came from the Father and that everything that the Father has given Jesus is from the Father. And, like the disciples in the First Reading, we are of one accord, devote ourselves to prayer, and accomplish the work God has given us to do, as a congregation of believers and according to our own individual vocations.
During this in‑between time, as the Epistle Reading anticipates, we will suffer for God’s Name, but in suffering we are blessed, and we “Glorify God in His Name”. He has manifested that Name to us, He has put It on us in Holy Baptism, and by It He continues to forgive us, as we live each day with repentance and faith. So called out of the fallen world, we are the Father’s and the Son’s. In God’s fellowship we are safe in the fallen world from that which threatens us. And, we bear our individual crosses in patience and peace now, glorifying God in His Name and knowing that we will rejoice and be glad when Jesus’s glory finally is fully revealed. For, as St. Peter writes, after we have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called us to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish us. To Him be the dominion forever and ever.
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 + + +