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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!)
Although not a part of the Church Year, happy Mother’s Day to all of you who are mothers in one fashion or another! Although not everyone is a mother, we all certainly had a mother or more in one fashion or another. Occasions such as Mother’s Day can bring us varying degrees and combinations of sorrow and joy—sorrow as we might lament failed relationships or the loss of loved ones from this world, and joy as we might celebrate our mothers’ love and successful relationships with them. To be sure, every earthly family has its own degree of both dysfunctional and functional relationships. Perfect relationships are in view in the appointed Gospel Reading for today, the Seventh Sunday of Easter, and this morning we consider that Gospel Reading under the theme “Relationships”.
Today’s Gospel Reading is the third and final part of what is usually called Jesus’s “High Priestly Prayer”. In the preceding two parts, Jesus prayed for Himself and for the disciples, and, as we heard, in the third part, Jesus prayed for those who would come to believe in Him through the disciples’ word, which can include you and me. What comfort for us who believe that, on the night when He was betrayed, Jesus was praying for us! In short, Jesus prayed that we may all continue to be one, as the Father and Son are one, and that we may also continue to be in God and He in us, for the purpose that the world may believe that the Father sent the Son.
By nature, we are not one with each other, nor are we one with God, and those failed relationships certainly do not lead other people in the world to believe that the Father sent the Son. Since human kind’s fall into sin, such failed relationships come to us naturally! We are sinful by nature, and our sinful nature leads us to commit countless actual sins: things that we think, say, and do that we should not, and things that we fail to think, say, and do that we should. Apart from faith in Jesus Christ, we would suffer punishment here and now and in hell for eternity. But, through the disciples’ word Jesus gives us the glory that the Father gave Him, that we may be one even as the Father and the Son are one. Jesus makes known to us all that God is, that the love with which the Father loved the Son may be in us, and so Jesus Himself may be in us. By the working of the Holy Spirit, the Son reveals the Father to us, calling us, and thereby enabling us to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust Him to forgive out sin, and to want to do better than to keep on sinning. When we so repent, then God forgives our sin—our sin related to failed relationships, or whatever our sin might be. God the Father forgives all our sin for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ, Who died on the cross for your sin and mine.
God the Father has a perfect relationship with His Only-begotten Son; His Only-begotten Son has a perfect relationship with God the Father. And, both the Father and the Son have perfect relationships with the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit has perfect relationships with the Son and the Father. God the Father not only loved the Son, but He also loved the world so that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16). God the Father did all that needed to be done in order to restore us to right relationships with Him and with one another, but we can ruin those relationships again by failing to continue to repent and believe, which is why Jesus prayed that night and continues to pray today that we all may continue to be one with each other and continue to be in Him, that others in the world may also repent and believe.
Now admittedly, Jesus’s prayer for us can sound like so much talk—maybe too abstract and maybe even hard to us to imagine being answered in the way that He prays. Yet, our Triune God brings about the answer to Jesus’s prayer through the ministry of purely preaching the Gospel and rightly administering the Sacraments. That is how important the Office of the Holy Ministry is! We heard in today’s First Reading how the Eleven apostles, right after the Ascension of our Lord, which we observed Thursday night, were led to replace Judas with Matthias in this ministry (Acts 1:12-26). Through the apostles’ successors, God still today in Holy Baptism works forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe. As we daily repent and believe we remain in our baptismal grace and have no need for any sin to trouble us. Nevertheless, if there are sins we know and feel in our heart, we privately confess them to our pastor for the sake of receiving individual Holy Absolution, forgiveness from the pastor as from God Himself. And, so baptized and individually absolved, we receive the Sacrament of the Altar, bread that is Christ’s Body and wine that is Christ’s Blood, for the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation. In these very concrete ways God continues both our being one with one another and our being in Him and His being in us. Where others differ in what they teach and practice, we are rightly divided, especially at the Communion Rail (1 Corinthians 11:19). But, where we are united in believing, teaching, and confessing the truth of the apostles’ word, we are one with Christ—and so we are one also with the Father and the Holy Spirit—and we are one with one another—for in the sacramental and churchly Body of Christ we are united with all those who have gone before us in the faith, including mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, and so forth.
Our Triune God earnestly wants all people of the world to repent and believe and so be united as one in Him and so with all believers. No wonder Jesus prays for the purpose that the world may believe, even though in the second part of the prayer He was clear that He was not praying for the world (John 17:9). However, we note well that in this third part Jesus does pray that the world may believe that the Father sent Him—and not only that the Father sent Him, but also that the Father loved the world, even as the Father loved the Son. That the Father sent the Son takes in all that Jesus did and still does for us and for our salvation, including our ultimately being with Jesus where He is and there seeing His glory that the Father gave Him because He loved Him before the foundation of the world. A perfect love and resulting perfect relationship brings about our perfect love and resulting perfect relationships in Him.
Today’s Epistle Reading, the end of St. John’s account of the Lord’s revelation to Him (Revelation 22:1-6, 12-20), tells how the servants of the Lord, those bearing His Name on their foreheads, the sign of the cross put upon them in Holy Baptism—how those people see his face. With perfect relationships, they have been become perfectly one, to use Jesus’s words, and so they worship the Lamb and reign with Him forever. Their baptismal robes of righteousness are washed white in the blood of the Lamb, and they eat the fruit of the tree of life. With them, we say, “Come!” And the Lord Jesus says, “Surely I am coming soon.” To which, with St. John, we reply, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!”
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 + + +