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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
E pluribus unum: you may have it written down in your pocket or purse. As the United States’s unofficial motto, the Latin phrase is engraved or printed on most of the country’s coins and currency, and I suspect that most of us know that E pluribus unum means “Out of many, one”. The origin of the phrase is apparently somewhat debated; for example, in one of my Latin classes, I was taught it came from a poem referring to many vegetables becoming one salad. Traditionally, E pluribus unum is understood to mean that out of many colonies or states comes one country, but more recently the phrase has been taken to suggest that out of many individuals, races, and religions comes one people and nation—America seen as a melting pot, even if the country in practice is arguably more of a stew (and, with the greater polarization over political policy and individual immorality, we might question whether there is even that much unity in this country). In today’s Third Reading, Jesus clearly speaks of “all being one”, and so this sermon has as its theme “Unity”.
Today’s Third Reading in some sense again picks up right where last week’s left off. On the night when Jesus was betrayed, after He finished giving His final teaching to His disciples, He prayed what is usually called His “High Priestly Prayer”; in it He prayed for Himself, for His disciples, and for all believers. Our three-year series of readings distributes that prayer over each year’s Seventh Sunday of Easter, and this year we have the portion in which Jesus prays for all believers.
In today’s Third Reading, a passage of Holy Scripture largely unique to St. John’s divinely-inspired account, Jesus prays for all who believe in Him through the apostles’ Word, and He prays “that they all may be one”—not that they may “become” one but that they continually “be” one. More than a decade ago now, “That They May Be One” was the title of a paper put out by a group of pastors primarily from the Northern Illinois District of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. The group produced the paper to address divisions in our church body—divisions that became more evident in the wake of the events after September 11, 2001, and divisions that, to at least some extent, still remain today. In the Third Reading, Jesus clearly speaks of all believers being one, and He links their unity to the apostles’ Word. There should be no divisions, but, sadly, not all continue (or remain) in that Word. Some outright reject Holy Scripture, and others in one way or another reject what it makes known. Similarly, you and I may not continue in the apostles’ Word, perhaps giving greater authority to personal revelation, to our own experience, to our own thoughts and ideas, or to the thoughts and ideas of others, maybe even to the decrees or decisions of the Synod. You may want to ignore differences between religious traditions or denominations, and you and I may want to live in a way other than that which the apostles’ Word describes. In one way or another, you and I do not continue (or remain) in the apostles’ Word, even as by nature we are like the world that Jesus in today’s Third Reading says does not know the Father.
In the Third Reading, Jesus calls the Father “righteous”, and in so doing He reminds us that we by nature are un-righteous. The Father righteously or justly judges all those in the world who reject Him. As in the Second Reading (Revelation 22:1-6, 12-20), where the dogs, sorcerers, sexually immoral, murderers, idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood are found outside the gates of the New Jerusalem, so we by nature deserve to be outside its gates unless we repent. So, we turn in sorrow from our sin, we trust God the Father to forgive our sin, and we want to do better. When we so repent, then God forgives our sin. God forgives our sin, whatever our sin might be.
God the Father forgives our sin for the sake of His Son Jesus. The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are three different Persons of the same one God. In today’s Third Reading, we hear of their plurality, and we hear of their unity. In today’s Third Reading we also hear of the Father giving the Son, according to the Son’s human nature, glory, arguably His giving Him the divine nature itself, given as that divine nature dwells bodily in the man Jesus. In turn, the Son gives that same divine nature to all who believe, by dwelling in them. Before the foundation of the world, the Father loved the Son, Who carried out His will by dying on the cross and rising from the grave—dying and rising for your sins and for mine—and in the Son the Father loves all who believe. By grace, through faith in Him, you and I “become perfectly one”—we are perfected, forgiven our sins, made holy, and enabled to worship God the Father, Who in love sent Jesus to save us from our sins through the apostles’ Word.
The apostles at least understood the importance of their apostleship, the office of ministry Jesus entrusted to them. In the First Reading (Acts 1:12-26), while the apostles waited the ten days between Jesus’s Ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, God used them to select Matthias to replace Judas as an apostle. Now, through the apostles’ Word—that is, through the Word God inspired the apostles to record without error—and only through that Word, in all of its forms, God now works to create faith and so to forgive sins and to save from eternal damnation. The Church we confess in the Nicene Creed to be “one holy Christian and apostolic” is “apostolic” because it continues in the apostles’ Word, in the faith that Word makes known, such as that faith confessed in the Apostles’ Creed. (At a minimum one must wonder about those who seldom, if ever, make use of those two creeds, much less the third ecumenical creed.)
Through the apostolic Church, Jesus, as He says in today’s Third Reading, continues to make known the Father’s Name. Usually that Name is first put on us in Holy Baptism, with the sign of the cross, the mark of the Name, upon our foreheads, as we heard in the Second Reading, and upon our hearts. God’s dwelling in us and so uniting us with Him and with one another usually begins there, at the Baptismal Font. St. Paul writes by divine inspiration to the Ephesians:
There is one body and one Spirit… one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. (Ephesians 4:4-6 ESV)
The baptized privately confess the sins that trouble them most in order to receive individual absolution from their pastor as from God Himself. And, so absolved, they partake of the body and blood of Christ, really, physically present on this altar, distributed by their pastor, and received by them. As many grains go into one loaf and many grapes go into one wine, so we who are many eat the one bread and drink of the one cup and so are one (1 Corinthians 10:16-17). Those who show they are continuing in the apostles’ Word by making the same confession of faith commune only at an altar making that same confession of faith, and they exclude from that communion those who do not make the same confession of faith because they do not continue in the apostles’ Word. Thus, that communion gives evidence of their existing unity in the Word, and it further brings about their unity by uniting them not only with God but also with one another.
After a particularly significant victory, football players and other athletes might dump a cooler of Gatorade over their coach’s head, soaking him or her with the sticky stuff from head to toe. Not completely dissimilar is the head-to-toe anointing of Aaron in today’s Psalm (Psalm 133). The oil that anointed Aaron and his successors as priests was to run from the top of their heads, down their beards, down their collars, and down their whole robes—as out an outward sign of their being set apart for their office. So, too, believers’ living together in unity is a “good and pleasant” outward sign of their being set apart from the world. Their unity with the indwelling of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit gives witness to the world so that the world might know and believe both that the Father sent the Son and that the Father loved the world even as the Father loved the Son. Note well that Christ does not say that all in the world will believe, as many will reject the apostles’ Word, perhaps even blaming their rejection on necessary divisions among those claiming to be Christians. Nevertheless, the unity of true believers will have its effect on the world. People will profess the Christian faith, as here this morning, and faithful mothers (and fathers) will bring up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
Look around at us! We all have differences in background, occupation, social standing, education, residence, race, age, gender, and relationship, and, yet, E pluribus unum, from the many, one. There is unity here. Through the apostles’ Word, God has made and keeps us united as believers in and confessors of His Son, Jesus Christ. United in Him, other differences disappear (Galatians 3:28). United in Him, we live together in the forgiveness of sins. And, united in Him, His will for us expressed in His prayer of today’s Third Reading will be fulfilled: on the Last Day, we will be with Him where He is. So, with the Church of all times and places we pray as in the Second Reading, “Come, Lord Jesus!”
Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Glo§ria + + +