Sermon: “God's Truth”

This text reminds me a lot of the balls of yarn that end up getting dragged through my house when our cats go digging into my knitting basket in the middle of the night.  The next morning there’s a huge a mess to get sorted out, and that’s what it would take to fully untangle John’s run-on sentences here, in what has come to be known as the "high priestly prayer" of Jesus.  I sure it wouldn’t surprise you to learn that there were no capital letters and no punctuation in the ancient Greek New Testament!  Walt read it well, but still, this chapter of John’s gospel is very difficult to hear clearly and to understand.  It’s best appreciated as a whole, like the work of a skilled knitter, it does reveal God’s Truth through its intricately interlocking strands of theology.  Don’t get lost trying to follow John’s circular loops of logic; just hear the love Jesus shows for his disciples … for us, in this intercessory prayer for the world: 

²²The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, ²³I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. …
²⁶I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

These verses are beautiful.  And it’s where we get the motto on the official seal of our denomination, The United Church of Christ, “that they may all be one.” It’s a hard thing to do, to try to summarize the truth of God’s hope for the world in just a few simple words – in many ways it’s the job of all preachers and evangelists – but I think John succeeds here in this prayer “that they may all be one.”  Like Sue’s story for the children about how zebra herds stick together, people of all stripes come together in the church – Gentile or Greek; red, yellow, black, or white; male or female; gay or straight; slave or free; rich or poor – and all are precious in God’s sight.  John has been called a “theological poet,” and like all the best poets, he has written somehow sings a song that speaks to the soul about the eternal Truth of what the Hebrews called the “steadfast love” of God for our human family.  What we most need to hear is how passionately Jesus longs for the whole world to know the love of God as he knows the love of God. 

Today’s sermon is actually the third in a 3-part Easter series I’ve been preaching on Johannine theology, which helped to build our Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity.  But I thought you might enjoy coming to church better if you didn’t know you were listening to a 3-part Easter series on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity!  The first two lessons, if you weren’t here over the past couple of Sundays, were very simple.  The first one was on Mother’s Day, about God the Father, who loves us.  The second sermon, last week, was about Jesus the Son, who leads us as “The Good Shepherd.” Today’s passage – with its mystical and spiritual language of our “oneness” with God in Christ, points us to next Sunday, to Pentecost, and to the arrival of the third “person” of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, who unites us as Christ’s church.  As anyone who read “The Shack” with us this past Lent knows, scripture weaves poetry and metaphor into a pattern of meaning that is not so much to be dissected and fully understood as it is to offer warmth and care and comfort.  On one level, a child truly can understand it.

There’s a legendary story I love about a famous theologian who was being presented an honorary doctorate at some seminary graduation, and he had been asked to speak, of course.  The only problem was that the dean introducing the speaker felt the need to show off his own intellect to the crowd– and so what was supposed to be just a brief introduction was stretching into a 15-minute, footnoted lecture covering the entire history of Western Civilization and detailed reviews of every book the honored guest had ever written.  So…being both a very humble man, and a hungry one eager to get on to lunch, after this long build-up, the great theologian finally cleared his throat and began to speak.  He said something like, “Dean, my esteemed colleagues, fellow pastors and teachers and soon-to-be graduated preachers, remember this:  Jesus loves us, this we know, for the Bible tells us so.”  And he sat down, to wild applause from the crowd.

That, my friends, is God’s Truth.  As John says 14 chapters earlier, in John 3:16, in what is arguably the best-known verse in the Christian Bible (at least among TV sports fans!), “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  Out of love for us, God sent his son Jesus into this broken and sinful Creation.  We are called to believe in the power of that Holy Love to save us, to save the world.  Through the power of the Holy Spirit, we can be changed into his likeness, from glory into glory.  We can be sanctified.

You’d think we’d be a lot happier to hear Good News like that, but for some reason, most of us have no interest in becoming Saints – at least not until AFTER we die.  That’s almost worse than being a sheep, which we talked about last week.  You have to appreciate the courage it takes for our Confirmands to publicly profess their faith, as they will next Sunday.  Joining the Congregational Church of Brookfield …  I don’t know… cool or not cool?  Now joining the NBA or the NFL, joining the Marines – that’s cool!  But joining a little white congregational church?  What does it mean to be the few, the proud… the pure in heart?  Is it something most teenagers are aspiring to become? 

I loved what Brian Stoffregen wrote in a sermon for his Confirmation youth back in his Lutheran church in Northern California:  “Can ‘being weird’ be similar to ‘being sanctified’? I think so.”  He explains how in ancient times, to become “holy,” simply meant to be separated or set aside for special, religious use.  And that is what Jesus calls us Christians to do – all of us, not just pastors and priests.  We are to be different – our lives are set aside from a different purpose than the rest of the world.  Jesus sends us into the world “sanctified” by God’s Truth.  Weird.

In his on-line commentary for Crossmarks Christian Resources, Stoffregen writes this about those of us who choose to mark ourselves by the name “Christian.” 

Holiness comes about through the relationship the Holy God establishes with us. … It is not something we do for ourselves. It comes from God. …In simplest terms, I would say that the Truth of the Word is that we are forgiven sinners, which implies two differences between us and the people of the world.

1) We recognize and admit our sinfulness. We don't have to cover up or rationalize our mistakes. … We don't have to pretend to be more perfect or right than we are.

(2) We recognize and accept the fact that God has forgiven all our sins. We don't have to wallow in our mistakes. We live in the freedom of forgiveness. Out of that freedom, we can respond with praise and love towards God, and with love and forgiveness towards other people. We have the freedom to be weird -- different from people of the world -- and to invite them to share in the weirdness that God gives.

Hear that, Church Growth?  Let’s invite the world to join our weirdness!  Church members are called to confess our sin, and still pray to be made “saints” each day – disciples and ministers of Christ’s church.  Entering into covenant, then, is a big deal.  We’re offering our whole selves to unite with Christ’s body, his church.  We are responding to the call of Jesus, in this passionate final prayer for us – that we can be healed and sanctified by the Holy Spirit, God’s love. That  makes us different.  Going out into the world – as sheep among wolves – to serve God through loving others… that’s weird.  Telling the truth in a world full of lies – that’s really different.  It’s weird.

I grew up with this weird Christian upside-down worldview, and I’m so grateful that I did.  Since this is a day of remembrance, I want to close with a story – a favorite memory of my own grandfather Smallwood, my father’s dad.  He was a simple Baptist mill worker from Appalachia, but he was wise as only a Christian “sanctified” by God’s Truth can be.  He loved to read, and I think two of his favorite texts were The Holy Bible and The New Yorker magazine.  I learned to read sitting on his lap on a Sunday afternoon reading the Sunday funnies and New Yorker cartoons.  As a little girl I remember being intrigued by this one ad campaign – for either fur coats or jewelry – I’ve forgotten by now.  You could see under elegant mink coats and layers of diamonds, these beautiful rich New York models.  Wow, I said.  They sure were lucky.  But my grandfather, who was holding me in his lap, said, “No, honey.  I feel sorry for them.”  “Sorry?”  I said, “Why?”  “Because I expect they think money buys happiness,” he said.  “They probably don’t know that God’s love is the only real thing of true value – it’s the pearl of great price.  The grass withers, the flower fades, but the love of the Lord endures forever.” 

Thanks be to God for His precious Word of Truth.  Amen.

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John 17:1-3, 6-8, 17-19, 22-23, 25-26

After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, ²since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. ³And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. …

⁶”I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. ⁷Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; ⁸for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me.

¹⁷Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. ¹⁸As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. ¹⁹And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.

²²The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, ²³I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

²⁵“Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. ²⁶I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”