C. Jarrett Gray, Jr. - "Sent Into the World" (May 11, 1997)
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Transcript
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- | The second lesson is from the Gospel of John, Chapter 17. | 0:05 |
Jesus is speaking to his father. | 0:10 | |
"I have made your name known to those | 0:16 | |
whom you gave me from the world. | 0:18 | |
They were yours, and you gave them to me, | 0:22 | |
and they have kept your word. | 0:25 | |
Now they know that everything | 0:28 | |
you have given me is from you. | 0:30 | |
For the words that you gave to me, | 0:33 | |
I have given to them, | 0:36 | |
and they have received them | 0:38 | |
and know in truth that I came from you, | 0:40 | |
and they have believed that you sent me. | 0:44 | |
I am asking on their behalf, | 0:49 | |
I am not asking on behalf of the world | 0:51 | |
but on behalf of those whom you gave me, | 0:54 | |
because they are yours. | 0:57 | |
All mine are yours, | 1:00 | |
and yours are mine, | 1:02 | |
and I have been glorified in them. | 1:04 | |
And now I am no longer in the world, | 1:07 | |
but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. | 1:10 | |
Holy Father, protect them | 1:15 | |
in your name that you have given me, | 1:18 | |
so that they may be one as we are one. | 1:20 | |
While I was with them, | 1:25 | |
I protected them in your name that you have given me. | 1:27 | |
I guarded them and not one of them was lost | 1:31 | |
except the one destined to be lost | 1:34 | |
so that the scripture might be fulfilled. | 1:37 | |
But now I am coming to you, | 1:40 | |
and I speak these things in the world | 1:43 | |
so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. | 1:45 | |
I have given them your word, | 1:50 | |
and the world has hated them | 1:53 | |
because they do not belong to the world | 1:55 | |
just as I do not belong to the world. | 1:57 | |
I am not asking you to take them out of the world, | 2:01 | |
but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. | 2:05 | |
They do not belong to the world, | 2:09 | |
just as I do not belong to the world. | 2:12 | |
Sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth. | 2:15 | |
As you have sent me into the world, | 2:20 | |
even so have I also sent them into the world, | 2:23 | |
and for their sakes I sanctify myself | 2:27 | |
so that they also may be sanctified in truth. | 2:30 | |
This is the word of the Lord. | 2:35 | |
Thanks be to god. | 2:38 | |
Male Pastor | I greet you this morning | 2:56 |
in the name of the risen Christ, | 2:57 | |
and I also want to wish to all of you a happy Mother's Day. | 3:00 | |
I'm very pleased to be here this morning, | 3:06 | |
in this august Institution with this august congregation. | 3:08 | |
I count it a privilege to have this opportunity | 3:14 | |
to share with you. | 3:16 | |
I might say just before I begin, | 3:19 | |
that I'm happy for all of the cooperation | 3:22 | |
and all of the kindnesses that have been shown me, | 3:25 | |
especially by Reverend Ferree-Clark, | 3:28 | |
she has welcomed me today, | 3:31 | |
and as we anticipated this moment. | 3:33 | |
But I'm particularly grateful this morning to the choir. | 3:35 | |
I'm so glad that they are here | 3:39 | |
and I like their music very much. | 3:41 | |
It reminds me of my first appointment in my first church, | 3:43 | |
and despite the way I look, it wasn't all that long ago. | 3:47 | |
(audience laughs) | 3:51 | |
But for some reason, I was a young-- | 3:53 | |
Well, not so young, but I was a new pastor, | 3:55 | |
and I was sort of feeling my oats, | 3:58 | |
and so I decided that one of the things | 4:00 | |
I wanted to do was to have communion every Sunday. | 4:03 | |
And being a young pastor, | 4:07 | |
my parishioners put up with me | 4:09 | |
and let me do that, | 4:13 | |
and I remember quite vividly on those mornings | 4:14 | |
when we would have communion, | 4:19 | |
and the pianist would start playing | 4:20 | |
"I Want Jesus To Walk With Me", | 4:23 | |
and the spirit that filled the place | 4:26 | |
as the congregation joined in. | 4:28 | |
So, thank you very much for singing | 4:31 | |
one of my favorite songs this morning. | 4:33 | |
Again, I am honored to be here this morning. | 4:36 | |
Let us pray. | 4:41 | |
Creator God, | 4:45 | |
we pray that you would be with us now | 4:46 | |
as we listen to hear you speak to us. | 4:49 | |
We pray that you would fill us with your spirit | 4:52 | |
and send us forth to minister in your name, Amen. | 4:55 | |
So much of our time is spent thinking about, | 5:05 | |
concerned about, the world. | 5:09 | |
The world. | 5:13 | |
It scares, almost escapes our imagination, | 5:15 | |
the world is so big it seems as though | 5:19 | |
we can hardly conceive of it, | 5:22 | |
but we talk about it all the time. | 5:23 | |
Think, for example, when we're in school, | 5:26 | |
we study world history. | 5:28 | |
As we look at the news and we read the newspapers, | 5:31 | |
we think often about world peace. | 5:34 | |
Conferences are held and people devote their lives | 5:37 | |
to the seeking of world peace. | 5:40 | |
We lament the fact | 5:43 | |
that there is so much hunger in the world, | 5:45 | |
and so we are concerned about world hunger. | 5:46 | |
The world is ever on our minds. | 5:51 | |
In our Gospel lection today, | 5:56 | |
we have Jesus offering a prayer for his disciples, | 5:58 | |
he is just preparing to leave them | 6:01 | |
and he prays for them, lifting them up, | 6:05 | |
telling them what he has done during his life, | 6:07 | |
telling them what to expect, | 6:10 | |
but also turning them over to God. | 6:12 | |
He, having almost completed his work, | 6:15 | |
is ready now to send them forth into the world, | 6:17 | |
and so during the prayer he explains a number of things. | 6:23 | |
What he has done, and what he intends for them. | 6:26 | |
But there near the end, | 6:31 | |
he says that he is sending them into the world. | 6:33 | |
It seems to me that to be a Christian | 6:39 | |
is to be sent into the world. | 6:41 | |
Now, it's not quite that simple, | 6:45 | |
it's not quite that simple. | 6:47 | |
Christians, it seems to me, | 6:49 | |
have always had a sort of a love-hate relationship | 6:50 | |
with the world, | 6:53 | |
and if you look at John's Gospel you'll see that | 6:54 | |
the world is seen as an entity that is at odds with God, | 6:57 | |
as a matter of fact, in rebellion against God. | 7:02 | |
Jesus talks about the fact that the world had hated him | 7:07 | |
and so the disciples can expect | 7:11 | |
that the world will hate them as well. | 7:12 | |
It has been very popular among Evangelical Christians | 7:17 | |
to talk about being in the world but not of the world, | 7:20 | |
and as we look around ourselves we must say that, indeed, | 7:27 | |
the world is in rebellion against God. | 7:30 | |
As we look around, we see the hatred, | 7:34 | |
we see the strife, we see the wars, | 7:37 | |
we see rumors of wars, we hear rumors of wars, | 7:39 | |
and as we count the roll today of the countries of the world | 7:43 | |
there are very few where there are not problems. | 7:46 | |
Isn't it ironic that just a few years ago | 7:50 | |
we were so happy that the Berlin Wall had come down | 7:52 | |
and there was the ending of the Cold War? | 7:56 | |
But now we find ourselves in a position that is even, | 8:00 | |
in some ways, more precarious than it was | 8:03 | |
during the Cold War. | 8:07 | |
There are more tensions now in many ways. | 8:10 | |
The world, what are we to do with the world? | 8:14 | |
What are we to make of it? | 8:17 | |
As I've mentioned, John's attitude is against the world. | 8:20 | |
It is against the world, the world is in opposition to God. | 8:25 | |
Perhaps what we should do is wash our hands of the world, | 8:29 | |
we should do away with it after all? | 8:32 | |
Aren't we Christians? | 8:35 | |
Haven't we been saved? | 8:36 | |
Haven't we learned the truth of Jesus Christ in heaven? | 8:37 | |
We've been in some sense redeemed, | 8:41 | |
why do we need the world? | 8:45 | |
Why don't we just form our own society, | 8:46 | |
an ideal society, a christocentric society | 8:48 | |
in which we might go about our business | 8:52 | |
and perform the tasks that Jesus and God have lain upon us? | 8:54 | |
So, one way of handling the situation | 9:03 | |
would be to withdraw from the world. | 9:05 | |
To have no dealings with it, | 9:08 | |
and certainly as we look at Christian history | 9:10 | |
we know that there are numbers of examples of groups | 9:12 | |
who have tried to make that choice. | 9:16 | |
The world isn't as it should be, | 9:21 | |
it's in rebellion, and we should not be a part of it, | 9:22 | |
let's leave it and have our own communities! | 9:26 | |
And yet, it's not that easy. | 9:31 | |
When we are honest, when we really look at ourselves, | 9:37 | |
we must say that we are part of the world indeed. | 9:39 | |
Many of the tensions and the ambitions and longings | 9:44 | |
that we see in the world we see within our own hearts. | 9:47 | |
We see within the church as well, | 9:51 | |
I know that some years ago, | 9:55 | |
they started thinking about the church, | 9:57 | |
they started introducing some of the techniques | 9:58 | |
and some of the thinking from | 10:02 | |
the business world into the church | 10:03 | |
and so we talked about management by objectives | 10:05 | |
and we talked about ways in which we could | 10:08 | |
do the business of the church that would be more efficient. | 10:10 | |
We're accepting the ethos of the business world, | 10:14 | |
or again as we look at the church, | 10:19 | |
we see that the same kinds of tensions, | 10:21 | |
the same kinds of brokenness that we see | 10:23 | |
in the world at large. | 10:26 | |
So, what started out as being rather promising, | 10:31 | |
that is, escaping the world and trying to go our own ways | 10:34 | |
in a rather pure form as a covenant community | 10:38 | |
isn't quite as simple as it first appeared, | 10:42 | |
because when we're honest with ourselves we must admit | 10:47 | |
that we too, in many ways, | 10:50 | |
are in rebellion against God. | 10:54 | |
So, where does that leave us? | 10:58 | |
What are we to do then? | 10:59 | |
Are we to forsake the world, | 11:01 | |
are we to try to live in it wholeheartedly? | 11:02 | |
Then we're reminded, | 11:10 | |
that John told us also that God so loved the world. | 11:12 | |
So we have another way of looking at the world, | 11:20 | |
not one that's quite as negative, | 11:23 | |
but one that's much more positive. | 11:25 | |
One that sees the world not merely as being | 11:26 | |
in rebellion to God, | 11:30 | |
as being antithetical to the will of God, | 11:32 | |
but we see the world as the object of divine love and care. | 11:35 | |
We see the world as the place where God | 11:41 | |
is acting to redeem the world, and indeed, | 11:44 | |
to redeem the cosmos, | 11:47 | |
and so this gives us a very different view of the world. | 11:51 | |
One that's more positive, | 11:55 | |
one that will allow us to engage it, | 11:56 | |
one that will allow us to become a part of it, | 11:58 | |
and to take our rightful place in it. | 12:04 | |
Today we will have the opportunity to take communion, | 12:09 | |
and Jesus told us that as oft' as we take it, | 12:12 | |
we should do it in remembrance of him, | 12:15 | |
and as we think of him and as we think about his life | 12:19 | |
and his ministry, his death and resurrection, | 12:22 | |
we'll know that he was the one who demonstrated to us | 12:26 | |
that God indeed loved the world, | 12:32 | |
and as he went around he taught | 12:35 | |
and he was concerned for the world | 12:37 | |
and he engaged in the lives of people | 12:40 | |
and he involved himself in their lives | 12:42 | |
and he met their needs, whatever they might have been. | 12:44 | |
Where people were hungry, he fed them. | 12:47 | |
Where they were sick, he cured them. | 12:50 | |
Where they were spiritually hungry, | 12:53 | |
he fed them in that instance as well. | 12:56 | |
God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son, | 13:04 | |
and it is in that son that we see the way | 13:10 | |
in which we are supposed to engage the world. | 13:14 | |
And so as Jesus is praying, then, for his disciples, | 13:20 | |
he says finally that he is sending them into the world | 13:23 | |
and so this is the option that we must take. | 13:32 | |
We can't turn our backs on the world | 13:37 | |
and look down our noses at it. | 13:40 | |
We must engage it, we must love it, | 13:42 | |
we must minister to it, we must engage it, | 13:44 | |
yes indeed we must argue with it, | 13:47 | |
but always and everywhere we must love it and minister to it | 13:51 | |
because it's the object of God's love, | 13:58 | |
not because we are so great. | 14:02 | |
Not because we know how to answer | 14:05 | |
all the problems of the world | 14:08 | |
but merely because of our relationship with Christ | 14:09 | |
and the fact that he has sent us into the world. | 14:12 | |
We are called upon to love it and minister to it. | 14:16 | |
As we come to the table this morning, | 14:22 | |
we should keep these things in mind. | 14:26 | |
That Jesus has indeed sent us into the world | 14:27 | |
to be his ambassadors, and to be his spokespeople. | 14:31 | |
Amen. | 14:38 |