7^th Sunday of Easter

Acts 16:16-34; Psalm 97; Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21; John 17:20-26

John 17:20-26

[Jesus prayed:] ²⁰ “I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their word, ²¹ 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. ²² The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, ²³ I 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. ²⁴ Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.
  ²⁵ “Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you, and these know that you have sent me. ²⁶ I 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.”

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When Jesus Prays for Us

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

I was recently asked what was the hardest sermon I ever preached. First and foremost, every sermon is hard to preach. And no, it does not get easier over time; the word of God remains the same, but the preacher must continually discover through prayer new inspirational ways to proclaim the same message. In the case of us preachers in the Lutheran tradition, that sermon gets to be “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be

saved.” That is justification, or the forgiveness of sins, by the Grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ. That, for us, is the article where the church stands or falls. 

You may have noticed that it is the same proclamation that Paul and Silas made in Acts, in the foreign Roman Colony of Philippi, at the beginning of the Church. Also in Acts, it says somewhere that Paul had to spend many hours preaching what that meant to a new community of believers. Nowadays, we have, on average, 15 minutes to accomplish the same thing. So, yeah, speaking on God’s behalf to the world can be a difficult thing to do. It helps a lot that the triune God answered Jesus’ prayers we heard today, and for us in the 21st century, he is at least somewhat known to us. 

My answer to that question I mentioned earlier, however, was that Easter sermons were usually the hardest for me to preach, and by extension, the Easter Season. Here is what I mean: for seven weeks, we have been declaring, Christ is Risen! … On Easter Sunday, we repeated that many times. That is pure good news. If one is a Holy Week devotee, it feels so good to say that finally! Christ is Risen! … Our Lord has defeated evil and left the tomb of our sins empty. The beloved community of all sinners made saints by faith in such an event is resurrected and forgiven!

Pastor, I believe that Jesus is my Savior and Lord! See you at Christmas! Hang on, beloved child of the most high God! I have a few more Sundays until Pentecost to deliver to you the not-so-good news that this is just the beginning of the pangs of being born anew!

See, there is a liturgical reason we get to proclaim, ‘Christ is risen!’ at the end of the service! After declaring that, beloved of God, the resurrected church is sent! We are sent to continue the transformation of hearts and minds that brings about the new city of many dwellings, where the triune God fulfills the promise of making a home among us and our neighbors of every nation, tribe, and language.

That is the hard part of the Easter proclamation. Being the resurrected beloved community of God means to remain stewards of God’s grace and keepers of Jesus’ words. It means becoming known as his disciple through the practice of sacrificial love, which can be challenging at times. It means listening, repeating, and doing the word that will make believers of generations yet unborn. It means becoming inspirational by not being afraid of being chained. It means being set free by the absolute trust in God’s promises. It means reaching out to the stranger who does not belong. It means becoming the revelation of Jesus even to those who may wish us harm. It means feeding Jesus’ lambs and sometimes being the sheep that is different from everybody else. It means sometimes going to places we did not wish to go, or finding ourselves in situations we did not wish to be in. 

That is work, hard, good work that brings about righteousness to the world. It, however, does not save us, but it makes us one with Jesus Christ.  It is a conundrum that we often find ourselves unequipped to understand, but it is the hope that the Lamb of God has for His church. 

Nonetheless, God’s beloved, when we find ourselves in that place, in that situation where everything comes together under Jesus’ name, it is priceless. That is the Kingdom becoming real. That is what we work for. That is the new city right before our eyes, and we don’t know where that may be; only the Holy Spirit of Truth does. That is faith, and that is the prayer of our Lord for us: that we will find ourselves in such a place where the love of God for the world reigns and where there will be salvation for all who believe. Thanks to the Lamb, the Alpha, the Omega, the beginning, and the end, who makes all things new. Amen!