Foretaste of the Sermon to Come
A little nibble of the Revised Common Lectionary.
Sunday’s scriptures are Acts 1:6-14, 1 Peter 5:6-11, John 17:1-11
Our first reading in Acts gives Luke’s brief account of Jesus’ ascension on this Ascension Sunday. Our Gospel, though, is Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer which he prayed just before his crucifixion and is it ever packed with theology. It is the capstone of all Jesus has revealed himself to be to his disciples up to this point and who he will be in his crucifixion. It’s interesting that Jesus, the 2nd Person of the Trinity is giving this summary in the form of a prayer to the First Person of the Trinity, God talking to, well to God. Is it to fortify Jesus’ human nature with all of the Father’s promises as he heads to the cross? Is it to give another example of how to pray, like The Lord’s Prayer, to his disciples? Is it to ask God to care for his disciples during the 3 days he will be in the grave and in their ministries after his ascension? Perhaps all of these and I’m sure there are more reasons, but the point is this capstone of Jesus’ earthly ministry is in the form of a prayer.
The theological points in this prayer that aren’t to be missed are:
- The eternal intimate relationship between the Father and the Son, before the foundation of the world.
- Jesus role as priest, the only one who can mediate between humanity and God.
- The power of Jesus’ Word to bring people to know the Father through the Son, and thus bring them to eternal life through faith in Jesus.
- All that the disciples know about God is through Jesus’ Word, and this self-same Word will be the way all people through the eons will know about God.
- Eternal Life is knowing God through Jesus, and it happens once we receive faith through the Word – we don’t have to wait for it until we join him in heaven.
- Jesus is the manifestation, the revelation, of God’s essential nature as defined in their names: YHWH (I Am That I Am) and Jesus (God Saves). Jesus is God incarnate.
- Jesus is the embodiment of divine glory, which the Hebrew people knew to be a visible divine presence who displays mighty acts, the visual manifestation of God’s acts. Jesus will be glorified on the cross, which will glorify God. This is exactly the opposite of how the disciples and we modern people think of glory.
- Jesus is also glorified in the works of his disciples, then and through the ages, and his agape love will remain in all who hear his Word.
- Jesus prays for a Christian Church unified amongst itself and with him through his Word.
What does this mean for us modern Jesus People? Why is all this theology important? What I get from this is that all we know about God is what we read on the pages of the Bible, and specifically about Jesus. We can conjecture all we want about who God is, but we really need look no further than to the One who died on the cross to save humanity from our sin. Rather than being a God of the kind of glory we think of when we Americans think of glory, we have a self-sacrificial loving God who can be found in suffering. If the cross is the place where Jesus is glorified and where God’s glory is revealed, it is the last throne where humanity would look for its king. Humanity wants to look for a God that makes people feel good, a God who provides good jobs and happy families. A God who provides the things we think are blessings, like our good marriages, full pantries, vacations and health insurance. A God who wouldn’t send tsunamis or let our children be gunned down by our fellow Americans. Humanity wants to work hard to glorify God through our good works so we have these blessings and we think we are doing something wrong or worse that God is doing something wrong if we don’t have them.
But what we have is a God, through Christ Jesus, who is concerned about providing Godself to God’s people in a broken world. He is concerned with not leaving us orphaned after Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension as we heard in last week’s gospel. With revealing himself in his Word and in the faces of the people we love and serve because he first loved and served us. With having the promise that in the worst moments of our lives, God, though Christ, is with us, feeling firsthand our suffering and offering the kind of peace that passes all human understanding. With guaranteeing that his glory is not to be realized in our prosperity or achievement, but in what he has already done for us on the cross. With giving us the assurance that can only come from a God who is willing to bear our sins and give us his righteousness in exchange. Jesus prayed this prayer with his eyes lifted to heaven, the heaven to which he returns when he ascends on a cloud and from which he will return in the same way. But, through the Holy Spirit, and through his Word and sacraments, has ever really left us?
