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Lent
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
I'm off the clock right now. I don't pray unless I'm getting paid. And I laughed and they were deeply offended, and that's a joke, so don't send me angry emails. Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad to have you here.
Speaker 1:We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information. Today is the last Sunday in our one last thing series. And we have been working our way through a conversation that Jesus has with his friends over a meal, a meal that we often call the last supper. And Jesus has one last chance to say one last thing to some of his closest friends.
Speaker 1:And this conversation starts in John 13, it goes all the way to the end of John 17, and we have just been taking one chapter at a time, working our way through what Jesus has to say. And so today is John 17. It's the final section in that conversation. However, we need to look back one more time to gather up where we've been in this series. So four weeks ago, Jesus started by washing his friend's feet.
Speaker 1:That is all as awkward as it sounds. And it's not just the feet, it's also about the fact that Jesus, the one they look up to, is now taking the lowly place and choosing to lead not from above, but from below. Which, if we're really being honest with ourselves, is often not what we want from our leaders. We want a leader who we aspire to be, and often we don't aspire to serve. And so Jesus starts by reminding us of that uncomfortable fact within ourselves.
Speaker 1:Next, he talks about himself as way, and truth, and life. He says, if there is a way to God, that way looks like him. And all of our wisdom, everything that we have collectively imagined about the divine, ancient ideas from the Hebrew tradition like way and truth and life, they point to me, he says. They find their culmination here. And two weeks ago, we read as Jesus talks about gardens and gardeners and vines and branches.
Speaker 1:He talks about this incredible flow from the father to Jesus and through us to the world. And that led to this really beautiful idea that God is actually constantly pruning and shaping and helping us to become all that we were meant to be. And that is something to sink into rather than run away from. Because the image here is actually the tender care of a master gardener who longs to see us flourish. Then last week we spoke about the holy spirit.
Speaker 1:And in many ways, I think this is my favorite message of this series, and maybe my favorite that I've done in a while, because this is not a topic that I talk about regularly. As I joked last week, I am not a charismatic preacher. I like to think I have a modicum of charisma, but that's not really the same thing. I don't yell or spit or froth or jump up and down and fall down. There's nothing wrong with any of that.
Speaker 1:It's just not really me. And yet, the language of spirit and breath And gift and empowerment is something that resonates very deeply with part of my soul. I actually come out of the Pentecostal tradition. That's where I first encountered the story of Jesus. And I am deeply grateful for that expression of Christianity.
Speaker 1:Even though over the years, as I've continued to study and grow and develop my foundation in Jesus, I've left a lot of that behind. There is much in that tradition that I want to carry with me. Now there was certainly a lot of excess in the charismatic church that I experienced. And if you have a memory of that kind of religious tradition, it can all seem very chaotic and that's not really us. And yet, to experience the immediacy and the intimacy of spirit in and through us as we encounter the divine.
Speaker 1:And to recognize the breath of God breathing in us as we move through the world. To notice those moments where spirit enlivens wisdom and tenderness and awareness to each other as we speak. This is integral to the Christian story. Faith is not just ideas. It is the conviction that the divine desires to reside in and through you to the world.
Speaker 1:And if that's hard for you to make sense of right now, then maybe just rest in this idea that I introduced right at the end of the message last Sunday. That when Jesus wants to speak of this spiritual world, He reaches back to this ancient Hebrew idea of or Satan which means accuser. And then he speaks of the breath of God which he calls our paraclete or defender. Jesus' conviction is that there is a voice that will accuse and tear down and humiliate and interrogate you. And that voice is your enemy no matter where it comes from.
Speaker 1:Whether it's a parent or a coworker or just a voice in the back of your head, accusation is enemy. Because for Jesus to sense the divine and to feel the presence of the gardener in the world is to notice that there is also a voice that defends and heals and advocates for you no matter what. And this Paraclete language, this advocate that Jesus uses to speak of spirit. This is explicitly designed to contrast all that accuses and injures you. In fact, of the advocate, Jesus says that when the spirit comes, that one will prove the world to be wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment.
Speaker 1:And so where we have thought that our actions didn't matter, or we thought that righteousness was about following the rules, or we thought that judgment looked like vengeance and punishment. Jesus says, missed it. Because my spirit is always for you. Healing you from the inside over sin. Inviting you into relationship and righteousness.
Speaker 1:Pronouncing judgment that is meant for restoration and reconciliation. And any voice that speaks with less than grace and peace. This is not the voice of spirit. Now, today, we have one last chapter in this conversation. But first, let's pray.
Speaker 1:Spirit of God, who is present in and through every breath, with every rise and fall of our chest, might we slow ourselves enough to notice you here in this moment. To experience the gift of life and the presence of the divine here in this room. Where we have listened to accusation and begun to believe we are what it has told us we are. And where we have focused on what we're not and lost sight of your imagination for what we might become. Where we have given credence to the idea that we are less than we need to be loved, would you defend us?
Speaker 1:And advocate for us, and remind us of how deeply we are loved in this moment. Lord, once that actually sinks in, might we begin to live from that place of welcome and embrace. And might it change us and transform us and send us back into the world with renewed vision and fierce compassion. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen.
Speaker 1:Okay. Today, we wanna talk about prayer and performance, and glory and gift, and full and forever, and all the things that pull us together. But as we have done in this series, we're gonna start at the start. And so this is chapter 17 verse one. After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed.
Speaker 1:And obviously we're gonna keep going, but this is important. Jesus is praying here. And that means a couple things for us. One, we're being invited to see a very tender moment between Jesus and the father. And prayer is, I think for a lot of us, hard.
Speaker 1:Often because we're not used to being open and vulnerable and tender with our words. We feel it, but we rarely vocalize it. And I have no interest in prescribing for you how you should pray. But know that there's a beauty and a stretching and a freedom in disciplining ourselves to express what is happening inside. So whether you speak it or write it or sing it, I'd encourage you to find some way to pray it.
Speaker 1:But second, hearing someone pray, anyone, but perhaps especially Jesus, this really is a privilege for us. Because prayer occupies this strange space in our lives, where it can be deeply intimate and private, and yet also public and performative all at the same time. Many of us, I'm sure, have experienced the awkwardness of being asked to pray in public. Right? Some of us, like myself, we actually do it for a But actually this week, I went down to say hello to the mom's group that meets at the church on Tuesdays.
Speaker 1:And by the way, if you're a mom with a young child and you haven't heard about this, it's great. All the details are at commons.church/event. But I went down just to say hi. We talked for a bit, But then, they asked me if I would pray for them before I left. And obviously, I said, no.
Speaker 1:I'm off the clock right now. I don't pray unless I'm getting paid. And I laughed and they were deeply offended. And that's a joke, so don't send me angry emails. But, of course.
Speaker 1:I was honored to. So I did, and I thanked God for being with each of us in this mess and stress of parenthood, and present to these children in the lives of their mothers. But those words were deeply personal for me. Because I'm a parent and I'm stumbling my way through the insecurity and joy that comes along with that as well. And so for me, these were words for me, but this was also for us.
Speaker 1:And Jesus is in the midst of that kind of a moment right here. He's speaking to the father, but he is also speaking for his friends. And most Sundays, you will hear me pray twice. At once, after I recap the previous week, and as I start into the real sermon, and then again at the end of the message. And most people realize this, but I script that first prayer very diligently.
Speaker 1:So I work really hard on crafting the words that I want to capture the intent of that moment. Because I wanna set the direction for the teaching, and I wanna soften us to the spirit as we begin. But then at the end of the sermon, I leave space for myself that I can pray again, but this time extemporaneously. And so I'm trying to reflect back on the message and notice where it seemed to resonate in the room and to pick up on where the energy was and what the spirit was doing as we spoke. But both of those are equally meaningful moments for me.
Speaker 1:Both the performance of a crafted prayer that I have worked really hard at creating so that it might invite us into an experience, and the reflective thankfulness for where God was present to us in ways I might not have imagined. And you may come from a tradition that values one of those expressions above the other. And perhaps even values one to the exclusion of the other. But looking at Jesus, what I would suggest is that there are moments where Jesus withdraws to pray in private response to God. And then there are moments like this, where he prays in a very deliberate performative manner in order to invite his friends into an experience with God.
Speaker 1:And both of those should be formative for us. And so if you are more familiar with praying off the top of your head and saying whatever comes into your mind, then I would invite you this week to sit and reflect and write a prayer that you can perform. Even if that performance is only ever for God. Craft something that you are honored to offer. And then, if you are more familiar with canned prayers read from a book, let's say for example, the Lord's prayer read from the Bible, then maybe this week, you might set aside time to speak with God in the free flowing language of friendship and conversation.
Speaker 1:Because I promise you that those encounters working in tandem will draw you far deeper than either will alone. And so Jesus looked toward heaven and prayed. And he said, father the hour has come. Glorify your son that your son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given to him.
Speaker 1:Now this is eternal life, that they know you. The only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. And now, father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began. Now, it's a really interesting prayer, and for a number of reasons.
Speaker 1:At first, there is this strange shift here from second person to third person to first person. Jesus looked up to heaven and prayed, for you granted him authority over all people, and now father glorify me in your presence. So what is going on here? And first of all, we should note that the rock gets far too much credit whenever anyone speaks in the third person. Jesus was doing this thousands of years ago if you smell what JC's cooking.
Speaker 1:So let's just say Jesus was doing it before it was cool. However, the debate here in biblical studies is whether this is actually all a prayer from Jesus or whether the third person parts are commentary by the author. In the gospel of John, the author actually does this frequently. So in John two, Jesus says, if you destroy this temple, I will raise it again in three days. And then the author jumps in to add, oh and by the way the temple he's talking about was his body.
Speaker 1:And so it could be here that Jesus prays, father glorify me in your presence with the glory I had before the world began. And the third person parts are actually the author of John providing some context for what Jesus is saying. Now that's possible. Except that remember, we just talked about how this is a performative prayer. And so yes, this is Jesus speaking with God, but this is also Jesus speaking for his friends to listen in.
Speaker 1:And so to see Jesus speak in a slightly more theatrical way really should not be surprising for us. If you speak with me over coffee, if we get together and go out and have a conversation, I'm not gonna speak the same way I do on stage. Or at least I'm gonna try really hard not to talk at you for thirty minutes. We try not to do that there. But then even on stage, right, I don't talk the same way in the middle of the sermon as I do at the end.
Speaker 1:I don't speak the same way in the sermon as I do in the prayer. And so to see specialized language in specialized moments is not really surprising. It's actually part of how we communicate well, and that's important. When you go for a job interview, please remember not to speak Twitter. That's not going to work out well for you.
Speaker 1:There are times we speak for the moment. What is surprising here is some of what Jesus says. So let's start with this glory part. Glorify your son that your son might glorify you. Allow me to glory in the presence I had before the world began.
Speaker 1:And that is some bold language. Last week, we talked about this mysterious idea of trinity. That God is one, and yet God is community. Last week, it was all about the ways in which Jesus speaks of spirit as distinct from and yet integral to the divine. Now Jesus says, not only is he the divine son of God who is going to be with God, but that he has actually always been with God.
Speaker 1:Since before the cosmos began. Such a Greek word that he uses here. And this is about as close as Jesus gets to declaring divinity outright for himself in the gospels. And yet there's more than that. Because perhaps what is even more remarkable is this mutuality that Jesus speaks of between himself and the father.
Speaker 1:So he's already told us that to see one is to see the father. Now he says to glorify one is to glorify the other. But notice here, the way that Jesus identifies himself with God, The way Jesus glorifies the father is through gift. So three times in this verse, it's the Greek verb, to give or to gift that's used. It's repeated over and over again.
Speaker 1:All authority is gifted to Jesus. So that all those gifted to him might be gifted eternal life. And that movement, that gift, that receiving and then giving away. This is how God is glorified in the world. Now let's pause there just for a second.
Speaker 1:Because sometimes I think that we imagine, we glorify God with our words and our prayers and our songs and all of that is true, But we will never point to God with more clarity than when we gratefully receive God's blessing, and then generously give it away. That generous flow from God to Jesus to you and then through you, that is divine. Now before we move on, we have to talk about what this gift is. Now the NIV calls it eternal life and in Greek it's And eternal life is exactly right except that when we read eternal life, we tend to imagine living forever. And the problem with that is it's not wrong, it's just missing the point.
Speaker 1:So we have an Amazon Echo in our house. And I have conflicted feelings about Amazon, but they sure make things easy for me. And now they are apparently gathering information on everything that we say in our kitchen just so they can sell us more stuff. However, sometimes, we will ask Alexa to play some music for us. It's very funny to watch my son, who has decided that his favorite band is the White Stripes.
Speaker 1:And so he will ask Alexa to play the White Stripes whenever he gets a chance. It's no Pearl Jam, but White Stripes is pretty good taste for a four year old, so I'll take it. Anyway, last week, we're about to eat, and so I lean back and I say, Alexa, can you play some dinner music for us? To which she answered, I don't have any songs for dinner. And so I tried again, Alexa, can you play some music for a dinner party?
Speaker 1:This time she answered, I don't know any songs called dinner party. So I'm a little frustrated. I try one more time. Alexa, can you just play some soft music in the background? And Alexa responds, sure.
Speaker 1:Here's a playlist, 50 songs for a dinner party. Now, she's still better than Siri and that breaks my heart because you know how much I love Apple. But the thing is, we got to where we were going, we just took a few detours along the way. And that's kind of how I imagine Jesus thinking when he hears us speak of eternal life. Because you see this Greek word, aionios, is so much more than just forever.
Speaker 1:And because of that, people have variously tried to translate this as life of the ages, or life without end, or life to the full. And all of those are fine, but they don't quite get it either. Because Ionias can be everything from a long period of time, to a time without beginning or ending, to a time that starts in one moment and then goes on forever. Now, Plato even uses this term to describe a reality apart from time, whatever that means. So it's quite a semantic range here.
Speaker 1:Now, the truth is, it's no different than how we speak in English, is it? Oh, man. I was working on that paper, and it took me forever. Or maybe her work was so important, nothing will ever be the same again. Maybe we are never ever getting back together.
Speaker 1:That's a little Tay Tay just to stay hip with the kids. But the unifying idea here that sits behind the use of in Greek is this idea of intent and purpose. So the reign of a good king can be eternal because that king accomplishes what the king was intended to do. And punishment can be eternal if it results in the transformation and reconciliation it was designed for. And God who exists as community from before time can be eternal because God is what God was meant to be.
Speaker 1:And life can be eternal because life was meant to be lived. But life that simply goes on forever is not Ionias. Not unless it is really lived. And this is the problem when we compare the way that we speak about eternal life with the way that Jesus does. I mean, sure we might get to the same place, but there are these detours along the way.
Speaker 1:See, I firmly believe that Jesus imagines himself offering us a life that never ends. It's just that the quantity of life is firmly secondary to the quality of life in Jesus' imagination. Now listen to how he describes what eternal life is here in chapter 17. Now this is eternal life that they might know God. Look, we are coming up on Easter in two weeks where we will celebrate together resurrection and the victory of life over death.
Speaker 1:Because that's what life was designed to do. To renew and to return and to spring back out of death. And at Easter, Jesus ushers that reality into human history. But listen to Jesus when he tells you that that kind of eternal life starts right now. Life isn't what happens after you die.
Speaker 1:It is only what continues after you transition into what comes next. And if you are not very deeply engaged in the process of discovering what it means to live, right now, right here, then I worry that you won't know how to live then and there. Because this thing called life is not meant to be endured. It's meant to be wrestled and loved and provoked and enjoyed. And that's why I find Jesus words so compelling when he finally turns them to us.
Speaker 1:Same chapter, same prayer. Verse 20 he says, my prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe or trust in me through their message. That all of them may be one. Father just as you are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us.
Speaker 1:Which sounds a lot like Jesus' description of eternal life. So that the world may believe you have sent me. Now, if Jesus hasn't had your attention yet in this conversation he should now. Because this is you and I he's speaking about here. This is in a lot of ways really one of the more remarkable things that Jesus says anywhere.
Speaker 1:If only because of how badly we have often missed the mark on this one. And he says in verse 23, I am in them and you in me so that they may be brought to complete unity then the world will know. And if there is a verse that should make the church squirm a little bit, this is probably it. Because we love to divide and subdivide and break up over everything. Taylor Swift's love life got nothing on church politics, and yes, that was two Taylor Swift references today for the win.
Speaker 1:But here's the thing. Last week, we spoke of this mysterious, benevolent dance that the Christian faith holds at the center of all things. That God is community and diversity held together as one through gift and reception from before time. And now, it is that image of diversity and unity of father, son and spirit dancing together into which Jesus invites us. He says, this is how you will image the divine in the world.
Speaker 1:When you can give and take. And when you can speak and listen. When you can lead and you can be led by each other all at the same time. In my experience, this is probably one of the hardest things we can do. To actually value unity over conformity.
Speaker 1:And to honestly follow each other particularly when we have the gifts to lead. To listen to those we disagree with. To learn from those with different perspectives. To hold ourselves in community even when and maybe especially when it scares us a little bit. And yet maybe this is part of what life to the full, life eternally was always meant to do.
Speaker 1:To push us and to challenge us, to face us with new ideas, and to help us become more than we could ever be on our own. You see if we love Jesus, then there should always be more holding us together than there will ever be pulling us apart. And when we actually get that, that we're gonna see things differently. We're gonna have different perspectives and sometimes we're gonna disagree, but we are united by a faith that sits at the center of all things. Then we just might find ourselves closer to the gift that God desperately wants to offer us.
Speaker 1:Let's pray. God, as we take these final steps now towards Easter, and we close this Lenten chapter, and we celebrate your entry into Jerusalem as we prepare ourselves for the depth of Good Friday and the celebration of resurrection. Might we do that together. And as we walk this journey, might we figure out what it means to do that side by side with those who see things slightly differently. And speak of you in a slightly different way.
Speaker 1:Who conceptualize the divine in ways that might even challenge and scare us. Trusting that if we place our trust in Jesus, we will be inevitably drawn to the truth that sits at the center of all things. Grace and peace is the way of the world Because it is divine community that sits at the center of everything. God help us to recognize our diversity as beautiful. As an expression of the generous overflow of the creative energy that defines you.
Speaker 1:And God as we come to know you more and more one step at a time. Until each of us all together are perfectly aware of who you are. Might we learn what it means to love each other in the meantime. One step at a time. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray.
Speaker 1:Amen.