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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. (Amen.)
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
Generally speaking, people like to be given things. We might especially think of our being given gifts at our birthdays; maybe for you there are also Mother’s Day just past and Father’s Day coming up; there are occasions such as Confirmations, graduations, weddings, and housewarmings; and then, of course, there is Christmas! There is a lot of “giving” in today’s Gospel Reading, the first portion of what is usually called Jesus’s “High-Priestly Prayer”. In fact, in the Reading’s eleven verses, the same Greek verb for “giving” is used eleven times: among other things, God the Father gives the Son His Name, work to do, and authority over all flesh, and the Son gives the words given to Him by the Father and eternal life to all those people whom the Father has given Him (the giving of those people out of the world itself is mentioned in the Gospel Reading four times). This morning we consider especially how “God’s giving includes our eternal life”.
Jesus’s High-Priestly Prayer apparently comes at the close of His and His disciples’ time together in the upper room on the night when He was betrayed. Jesus’s so‑called “Farewell Discourse” ends with Jesus’s speaking about His disciples’ having tribulation in the world but Jesus’s overcoming the world (John 16:33). In His disciples’ presence, Jesus then prayed for the Father to glorify Him and for His disciples to be kept in the Father’s Name, and, in a part of the prayer that we hear on the Seventh Sunday of Easter in other years of our lectionary series, Jesus prayed for those who will believe in Jesus through the disciples’ word. Although we arguably are more‑directly included in that last part of the prayer, even Jesus’s earlier petitions regarding His glory and the disciples’ being kept ultimately benefit us.
Perhaps, like many other people, including me, you have received your coronavirus “economic impact” or “stimulus” payment, what popularly has been called the “Trump Check”. Several Pilgrim members have rightly pointed out that, at least theoretically, the government is not giving us anything that was not ours to begin with—in that way, the government’s giving us the “Trump Check” is like our giving to God of what He has first given us. In the case of God’s giving us eternal life, as with all that God gives to us, we are quite far from having it of ourselves or otherwise on our own.
As we heard in the Gospel Reading, Jesus in His High-Priestly Prayer refers to the Father’s having given Him authority over all flesh, for the purpose of His giving eternal life to all whom the Father had given to Him. Especially in St. John’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account “flesh” refers to that which is powerless in spiritual matters, unable to give birth to children of God (John 1:13) or to help at all (John 6:63). Yet, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity was made human flesh (John 1:14), in order to redeem that human flesh and all of us who are of that human flesh. For, on account of our fallen human nature and the actual sin that it leads us to commit, we deserve nothing but punishment, such as death here in time and torment in hell for eternity.
Although we are unable to do anything to help ourselves spiritually, in His unsearchable judgments and inscrutable ways (Romans 11:33), God has chosen those who are to be saved and brings about their salvation. Jesus died for all and extends the gift of eternal life to all, but God’s choosing is evident as only some receive and keep His Word (for example, Kretzmann, ad loc John 17:1-5, pp.503). God calls and so enables us to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust Him to forgive our sin, and to want to do better than to keep sinning. When we so repent, then God forgives us. God forgives our sinful nature and all of our sins, whatever our sins might be. God forgives us for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Today’s Gospel Reading certainly is rich in its glimpse into the mysteries that are our Triune God and the Son’s incarnation in our human flesh, or, as Jesus put it, the only true God and Jesus Christ Whom the Father had sent (confer 1 John 5:20). For example, that Son of God in human flesh prayed that the glory that was His according to His divine nature before the world existed would finally be evident in Him according to His human nature in God the Father’s presence (confer Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration VIII:85). Although some religious traditions deny it, and so they also deny the incarnation itself, the man Jesus had all the attributes of God from the moment of His conception of the Virgin Mary, but He did not always of fully use them. Jesus did not always of fully use those attributes so that He could suffer and die on the cross for us, in our place, the death that we otherwise deserved. Especially in St. John’s Gospel account, the cross is the place where the glory of God is revealed (John 12:23). And, the glory and other attributes of God, like the substance of the divine nature itself, are common to all three Blessed Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. All that is the Father’s is the Son’s and is also the Holy Spirit’s (confer John 16:14‑15). The Holy Spirit leads us to know the Son as the revelation of the Father. We know and trust in the only true God and Jesus Christ Whom the Father has sent, and so we receive God’s free gift of eternal life.
We receive God’s free gift of eternal life through God’s Means of Grace. His Office of the Holy Ministry is essential for the preaching of His Gospel and the administration of His Sacraments. And so, in today’s First Reading (Acts 1:12-26), we heard how God through the eleven apostles chose Matthias to have Judas’s share in the ministry and apostleship, and later God chose others to share in the ministry, as He even does with pastors today. In some ways like the Lord Jesus before them, those who are chosen to share in that ministry manifest God’s Name, giving the words that He has given for them to receive and keep. We are baptized into that Name, individually absolved in that Name, and commune in that same sphere of power and love. Jesus’s ascending into heaven, which ended His post‑resurrection appearances and which we marked this past Thursday, does not, as some wrongly think, keep Jesus from being present with His Body and Blood in the bread and wine of the Sacrament of the Altar. Rather, there Jesus is present and thereby gives us forgiveness of sins and so also eternal life.
So forgiven and granted eternal life, at least for now we live in the world and are to be not of the world. Instead, of being conformed to the world, St. Paul writes to the Romans (Romans 12:2), that we are to be transformed, and our transformation should impact the world. For example, later in Jesus’s High‑Priestly Prayer, He prays that all we who believe might be one, as He and the Father are one, for the purpose of the world’s believing that the Father sent Jesus (John 17:20-21). That “being one” is said not to be uniformity but an organic unity where social differences are transcended and where men and women live in their respective vocations of the created order (for example, Stauffer, TDNT 2:440-441). We give back to God of what He has given us. As did Jesus before the disciples, we pray together, as we do in the Prayers of the Church and in the Lord’s Prayer, even when we pray the Lord’s Prayer on our own, for its language remains, for example, “our Father and “give us”, “forgive us”, “lead us”, and “deliver us”. Especially the last two petitions are necessary, as today’s Epistle Reading reminded us (1 Peter 4:12-19; 5:6-11), because our adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Yet, as St. Peter described, even in our suffering we can see the glory of God. And, in our baptisms, we have already been rescued from the power of the devil!
Out of His great love for us, God gives and gives and gives and gives. And, we have been reminded, in considering today’s Gospel Reading this morning, that “God’s giving includes our eternal life”. Let us answer the call of today’s Psalm (Psalm 68:1-10; antiphon: v.32) for us to sing to God and to sing praises to the Lord with our singing and praising Him now and for eternity.
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 + + +