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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.)
As we praise the Lord for Christ’s resurrection, we deal with quite a different reaction from the world around us, in which world some so-called “Christians” deny that Christ did rise, if the people of the world even care about Jesus Christ at all. After last Sunday’s Gospel Reading from John 15 in which Jesus talked about both His Father’s love for Him and His love for His disciples (John 15:9‑17), and after four weeks of Epistle Readings from 1 John talking about God’s love (John 1:3-7; 3:16‑24; 4:1-21; 5:1-8), today’s Gospel Reading in which Jesus mentions the world’s hating His disciples is striking, although several of the recent Epistle Readings have contrasted believers and the world (1 John 3:3-7; 4:1-21; 5:1-8), and one verse omitted from that more-or-less continuous reading of 1 John specifically tells believers not to be surprised that the world hates them (1 John 3:13). Indeed, if we had continued two verses further into John 15, we would have heard Jesus say both that the world hated Him before the world hated His disciples and that the world hates His disciples because He has chosen them out of the world (John 15:18-19). Similarly, earlier in St. John’s Gospel account, Jesus told His unbelieving relatives both that the world could not hate them (presumably because they then were still “of” the world) but that the world hated Him because He testified that its works were evil (John 7:7). Primarily in light of today’s Gospel Reading, this morning we consider “God’s love and the world’s hate”.
Today’s Gospel Reading is part of Jesus’s so-called “High Priestly Prayer” on the night when He was betrayed. In the Prayer, Jesus refers to His “coming” to the Father, presumably in His Ascension, and each year on this Sunday that falls between Jesus’s Ascension and Pentecost, we hear part of the Prayer (John 17:1-11, 11-19, 20-26), essentially as the Prayer is naturally divided into Jesus’s praying for Himself (John 17:1-5), for His disciples (John 17:6-19), and for those who would believe in Him through their word (John 17:20-26). You and I most obviously are included in Jesus’s petition for those who would believe in Him through His disciples’ word, but what Jesus prays for His disciples, most of which we heard this morning, can also apply to us, especially what Jesus says about the world’s hating us because we are not of the world.
Of course, originally we are of the world. Holy Scripture says that we are conceived sinful and brought forth in iniquity (Psalm 51:5); we are flesh born of the flesh (John 3:6); we are by nature children of wrath like the rest of humankind (Ephesians 2:3). As one of Job’s friends rightly asked, “What is man, that he can be pure? Or he who is born of a woman, that he can be righteous?” (Job 15:14 ESV). As we sang in today’s Psalm, the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous, but will perish eternally (Psalm 1:1-6; antiphon: v.6). But, thanks be to God, He has chosen us out of the world and enables us to repent and believe! To those who believe in Jesus, God gives the right (or “power”) to become children of God, children born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but born of God (John 1:12‑13), born from above by water and the Spirit and so spirit (John 3:3, 5-6; confer Sasse, TDNT 3:895). Yet, we still remain in the world and so are exposed to temptations and in danger of falling away (Risenfeld, TDNT 8:142). We do not want to be hated by the world, and so at times we may ally ourselves with the world. At times we may forget that there is work to be done on earth, and so we may long for heaven too much. In His “High Priestly Prayer”, Jesus essentially asks His Holy Father to do what we cannot do ourselves: to keep us in His Name, to keep us from the Evil One, to sanctify us (or “make us holy”) in the truth.
“God’s love” is in sharp contrast to the “world’s hate”. Out of God’s great love for even the unholy world, our Holy Father sent His Holy Son, Who consecrated (or “sanctified”) Himself for our sake, so that, by the power of the Holy Spirit working through His Means of Grace, we also may be sanctified (or “made holy”) in truth. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit share “one” Divine substance but They are not identical: They are three distinct Persons. By the power of the Father and the Holy Spirit, the Son was incarnate of the Virgin Mary. As true God in human flesh Jesus could sanctify Himself (Procksch, TDNT 1:111-112). Jesus prepared Himself as a holy priest and a holy sacrifice. But, unlike other priests, who offer something else as a sacrifice for themselves, Jesus as our High Priest offered Himself for us. Jesus gave Himself to death on the cross in our place, as our substitute (confer Luther, ad loc Jn 17:19, AE 69:98-99). As today’s Epistle Reading said, God gives us eternal life in His Son (1 John 5:9-15). When we trust God to forgive us for Jesus’s sake, then God does forgive us. God forgives our sinful nature and all our actual sin, whatever our actual sin might be. God keeps us in His Name, keeps us from the Evil One, and makes us holy through the truth of His Word in all of its forms.
As we heard emphasized in today’s Gospel Reading, God the Father gave His Name to God the Son, and God puts His Name upon us and protects us by it. We are baptized in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and so our sins are forgiven; we are rescued from death and power of the devil; and we are given eternal salvation as we believe God’s words and promises about Holy Baptism. Likewise, we are absolved in God’s Triune Name by those sent with His authority to forgive and retain sins (John 20:21-23). And, those who are examined and absolved are admitted to the Holy Supper, where bread and wine are Jesus’s Body and Blood, given and shed for us (Mark 14:24; 1 Corinthians 11:24). Jesus’s Ascension does not mean that He is absent from His Church, but His Ascension means that He is present with His Church in a different way. And, as God in human flesh, already present everywhere according to both natures, He can be uniquely present in His Supper, in order to unite His Church in Him and to sanctify us and assure us that He has chosen us out of the world for eternal life with Him.
As we heard in today’s Gospel Reading, God knew in advance that Judas Iscariot would be eternally lost and prophesied about it, but God did not cause it to happen: Judas was lost by his own despair of unbelief, and, as we heard in today’s First Reading, Matthias took his Office (Acts 1:12-26). As we also heard in that First Reading, the early Church devoted itself to prayer, and, as we heard in the Epistle Reading. St. John wrote about our confidence in prayer. In the Gospel Reading, Jesus Himself prayed that we be kept from the Evil One, and our Lord also taught us to pray for our Father in heaven to deliver us from the Evil One (Matthew 16:13; confer 1 John 5:18). As we believe, teach, and confess in the Small Catechism, we pray that our Father in heaven would rescue us from every evil of body and soul, possessions and reputation, and finally, when our last hour comes, give us a blessed end, and graciously take us from this valley of sorrow to Himself in heaven (Small Catechism III:20). In this world we will have tribulation, but we take heart, for Christ has overcome the world (John 16:33). We are kept in His Name, kept from the Evil One, made holy, and His words let us have His joy fulfilled in us even now.
Scripture suggests that God and the world never both love the same thing nor hate the same thing (for example, compare Isaiah 61:8 and Micah 3:2). This morning, we have considered “God’s love and the world’s hate”: we are the objects of both. We are the objects of God’s love, and so we are the objects of the world’s hate. Elsewhere Jesus says that when people hate us because of Him we are blessed and should leap for joy because our reward is great in heaven (Luke 6:22; confer Matthew 5:12).
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 + + +