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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!)
There is an old legal term: in Latin hostis humani generis and in English “enemy of the human race”. The term apparently originates from the ideas that the high seas were common to all humanity and that a crime such as piracy made pirates an enemy of the whole human race, beyond legal protection, subject to the violence of anyone. The term also applied early on to slavers and more recently to torturers, and some would have it apply now and in the future to terrorists. Somewhere in the middle, Christians applied the term “enemy of the human race” to the devil, and passages like today’s Gospel Reading may well have been used in support of such an application. In today’s Gospel Reading, the Lord Jesus Christ prays His Holy Father to keep His disciples in the Father’s Name and so from the Evil One, as their and all believers’ (if not all humanity’s) enemy. And, Jesus prays His Father to sanctify His disciples in the Truth. With those two specific petitions in mind, this morning we reflect on the Gospel Reading under the theme, “Kept and Sanctified”.
Today’s Gospel Reading is an excerpt of the 17th chapter of the Holy Gospel according to St. John, Jesus’s so‑called “High Priestly Prayer”, prayed on the night when He was betrayed, while He was still in the upper room with His disciples. In each of the three years of our cycle of appointed Readings we hear an excerpt of this Prayer on the Seventh Sunday of Easter, although those excerpts do not quite align with the three sections of the prayer (Year A, vv.1-11; Year B, vv.11b-19; Year C, vv.20-26), in which Jesus prays in turn for Himself (vv.1‑5), for His disciples (vv.6-19), and for future believers (vv.20-26). In the prayer as a whole, Jesus prays as if He has left the world and is going to the Father, so our hearing the prayer on The Seventh Sunday of Easter is especially appropriate, as this day comes on the Church Calendar between Ascension, when Jesus ended His post-resurrection appearances to His disciples, and Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came in a special way upon the disciples, in some sense an answer to Jesus’s prayer for them to be “Kept and Sanctified”.
Jesus prays His Holy Father to keep His disciples in the Father’s Name and so from the Evil One, and Jesus prays His Father to sanctify His disciples in the Truth. Jesus’s mentioning His Father’s holiness and the need for the disciples to be made holy contrasts with His repeated mentions of the unholy world and is in keeping with the need for the disciples to be kept in the Father’s Name and from the Evil (and unholy) One, the devil. Like the disciples, by nature we are not only in the world, but we are also of the world. We are not holy but unholy. Because we are born of sinful flesh (John 3:6), we inherit from our first parents the corruption of original sin, and so we commit countless actual sins of thought, word, and deed—we dishonor our parents, we disregard life, we live unchaste lives, we steal, we lie, and we covet. On account of our sins, we all deserve to be children of eternal destruction, like Judas, the devil (2 Thessalonians 2:3), and all those who follow his temptations and do not repent and believe. But, God mercifully and graciously calls and enables us to repent: to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust Him to forgive our sin, and to want to do better than to keep on sinning. When we so repent, then God forgives our sin, whatever our sin might be. God forgives all our sin, for Jesus’s sake.
As we heard in the Gospel Reading, for the disciples’ and for our sake, Jesus consecrated Himself (made Himself holy) that the disciples and we might also be made holy. Of course, as true God in human flesh, the God‑man Jesus Christ was already holy, but as our High Priest He set Himself apart, made Himself a holy sacrifice on the cross for us (confer Luther, ad loc John 17:19, AE 69:98‑99). Only because of His death on the cross for us can we be made holy. God so loved the world that He sent His only‑begotten Son to save the world; whoever believes in Him will not be destroyed eternally but will have eternal life (John 3:16-17). Today’s Epistle Reading reminded us of this testimony of God the Father concerning His Son, that God gave us eternal life in His Son (1 John 5:9-15)—by grace on account of that Son, through faith in that Son. And, God gives that grace and creates that faith in specific ways.
In today’s First Reading (Acts 1:12-26), we heard how the disciples returned from Jesus’s Ascension and were God’s instruments for putting Matthias into Judas’s office, which had been vacated as Scripture prophesied (Psalm 69:25; 109:8). The apostles’ ministry was so important that that office had to be filled that quickly, for, as the Father sent Jesus into the world, so Jesus sent them into the world. The Office of the Holy Ministry preaches the Word of Truth that sanctifies (or makes holy). We do not sanctify ourselves however we want, but we are sanctified only by the Word in all its forms (Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration II:51). We are sanctified as we hear and believe God’s Word preached. We are sanctified when we are baptized and receive its gifts in faith, for there at the Baptismal Font we are born not of the worldly flesh but of God (John 1:12‑13), born from above of water and the Spirit (John 3:5-6). As God’s Triune Name is put on us in Baptism, so we who privately confess to our pastors the sins that we know in feel in our hearts are individually absolved in that same Triune Name. And, we are sanctified as we partake of Jesus’s body with bread and of His blood with wine in the Sacrament of the Altar. As He sanctified Himself for us, so His body and His blood are for us (1 Corinthians 11:24; Mark 14:24), and in Him we have God’s sanctification (1 Corinthians 1:30). United in Him sacramentally, we are one body (1 Corinthians 10:17), even if in this lifetime that unity remains an unseen object of faith (confer Luther, ad loc John 17:11, AE 69:76-77).
Through His Word in all its forms, God both keeps us in His Name, from the Evil One, and sanctifies us in the Truth. We are marked with, protected by, and united in His Name, and we teach and practice according to His Truth. God would like for us to transform the world, and to that end we pray in the Lord’s Prayer, among other things, that His Name be holy and that we be delivered from evil (Matthew 6:13). With God’s Word, we have Jesus’s joy fulfilled in ourselves, even as we see the world fail to be transformed and instead hate us and all Christians, as it hated Jesus first (John 15:8), with an intense murderous hatred.
One internet blogger claims that in the ancient Roman world Christians were referred to as hostis humani generis (an enemy of the human race), undeserving of any legal protection. Although that internet blogger gave no example of such an ancient reference, there has been a similar reference more recently. Two years ago, in dissenting to two U.S. Supreme Court rulings on so‑called “gay marriage”, Justice Antonin Scalia said the Court’s majority adjudged those who oppose “gay marriage” hostes humani generis (enemies of the human race). Whether or not the world so labels Christians, the world hates Jesus Christ and all faithful Christians because they testify that its works are evil (John 7:7). Yet, even the hatred of the world is no reason for us to lose sight of Jesus’s joy fulfilled in ourselves. We who believe are chosen out of the world (John 15:19), we are “Kept and Sanctified”, through His Word and Sacrament, and, as we endure to the end, we will be saved (Matthew 10:20).
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 + + +