Sermon 05.12.24 – The Set-apart Community

7th Sunday of Easter

Acts 1:15-17, 21-26; Psalm 1; 1 John 5:9-13; John 17:6-19 

John 17:6-19

[Jesus prayed:] 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. ⁹I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. ¹⁰All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. ¹¹And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. ¹²While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. ¹³But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. ¹⁴I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. ¹⁵I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. ¹⁶They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. 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.”

. . .

The Set-apart Community

Grace to you, beloved of God, and peace from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

You may have heard that I like to cook. It goes back to my high school years when my mother used to leave behind to-do lists for my time after school. Sometimes, the list included preparing something for supper since she would return home later that day. Most of the time, the instructions were to make something specific. However, as my skills developed, she would ask me to look in the fridge and the pantry and come up with something. I have learned the basics from watching her and asking questions. Then, she let me do it with some supervision until she was confident I could cook myself.

Much later in my life came the Food Network and, especially, Emeril Live. In that life-transforming show for my culinary talents, Chef Emeril Lagasse would entertain, teach, and share some of the soul that goes into cooking for others. In one of the episodes, when Emeril had a young Bobby Flay as a guest, Flay asked what was in Emeril’s secret go-to blend of spices called “Emeril’s Essence.” “A lot of love,” Emeril answered without missing a beat and with a smile in the corner of his mouth.

As my love for cooking progressed, I moved from browning meat and opening a jar of store-brand spaghetti sauce to getting curious about how that would taste if I made my own source. Personal Note: pasta is a big deal for me. So I began adventuring myself in using canned or boxed tomato products, but adding fresh onion, garlic, peppers and herbs to my sauce. It was then that my mother-in-law told me, “Mauricio, you have to use fresh tomatoes.”

My mother was a working woman pioneer, so our meals were a mix of fresh and boxed. My mother-in-law, who was once upon a time also a working woman pioneer, had retired early due to a disability and had the necessary time to cook everything from scratch. I followed her and my future wife to the farmers market one day, and she showed me how to pick Roma tomatoes to make sauce. My life was forever transformed.

As Chef Emeril once taught, the love that goes into cooking begins by selecting the fresh ingredients that will make the dish. Each tomato, bell pepper, hot pepper—think “shrimp fettuccine fra diavolo”—onion, garlic, and herb is set apart from the pack and destined to be combined to become something sublime —yes, for our joy but also for the joy of those we love. Yep, life is busy; we can’t possibly cook using fresh ingredients every day, maybe once a month, maybe only on holidays and special days. Nonetheless, when we find the time to immerse ourselves in preparing delicious meals to be shared with loved ones and friends, we get glimpses of the collective joy made possible by the giving and receiving of gracious and generous love. More importantly, we get the necessary nourishment to rise up and face life.

So here is Jesus, praying hard on behalf of those who were set apart from the pack to be part of what God was preparing to be, not only God’s own joy but also the joy of everyone involved. The disciples, the students, have remained with him in love despite the suspicion and the lure of the world. They have kept Jesus’s word, and Jesus had kept them, but he was about to ascend, and they were to carry his good news, his love, to the world. They would need all the help and the prayers they could get, for they remained in the world, and the world would try hard to pull them back in from God in Jesus Christ and from each other. If the world did not succeed, it was bound to dislike them very much. Nonetheless, if they insisted, they would experience the glimpses of the complete joy in the fullness of God’s presence among them.

I suspect, God’s beloved, that when we hear Jesus’ ascension prayer in the Gospel of John, we tend to think that it was about those guys backing them and the challenges they would face in Jesus’ absence. That part is absolutely true. Nonetheless, this prayer continues beyond the verses we have today. In verses 20 and 21, Jesus prays, “I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”

Those who believe in Jesus through the word of the apostles. This is us. Disciples of all times and places set apart from the world. Chosen to have a love for one another and sent back into the world as witnesses of this love. Selected in by the streams of the water of life to insist on the joy that God has prepared for us and to world. The world may resist, but it cannot take away the love our teacher left for us. We belong to him, not the world, and in him, we have life and glimpses of the joy to come. Thanks be to God. Amen.