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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!)
You probably already know that the world hates Christians. This past week, for example, came word that the government in Finland has charged Lutherans there with a crime for confessing the historic Christian teaching on human sexuality (LCC). During the pandemic, some other countries and states even in this country (though not Texas) closed churches but left open such places as liquor stores and abortion clinics. And, even before the pandemic, when we either condemned sin as the Bible does or declared forgiveness for Jesus’s sake, we ourselves may have experienced the world’s hatred of Christianity, from people in society, our friends, or even our family. So, Jesus’s statement in today’s Gospel Reading, that the world has hated His disciples, probably does not surprise you, and so you can all the more appreciate Jesus’s praying in the Gospel Reading that God the Father keep His disciples in His Name, keep them from the evil one, and sanctify them in the truth—petitions that in a sense are different ways of asking for the same thing. Considering the Gospel Reading this morning, we realize that “The world hates Christians, but God keeps them.”
Today’s Gospel Reading, like the Gospel Reading for the Seventh Sunday of Easter in the other two years of our three-year cycle of Readings, is an excerpt from what is usually called Jesus’s “High-Priestly Prayer”, prayed to the Father in the presence of His disciples on the night when He was betrayed, and uniquely recorded in the seventeenth chapter of St. John’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account. Given the Prayer’s timing and its focus on Jesus’s “return” to the Father while the disciples remain in the world, portions of the Prayer are particularly well‑suited to be the Gospel Reading on this Sunday between Ascension and Pentecost. Although the portion of the Prayer that we heard today comes from the section of the prayer that Jesus prayed primarily for His disciples, it is not without its applications to us, also.
As we heard, Jesus said that the world hates His followers because they are not of the world, just as Jesus was not of the world. Earlier on the night when He was betrayed, Jesus had told His disciples that the world hated them because He had chosen them out of the world (John 15:19). One of the ways that that choice is evident is Jesus’s giving the Father’s Word and people’s receiving that Word in faith. That Word is truth and sanctifies people who receive it in faith, but then the world hates those people, as the world hated Jesus and the Father before them (John 15:18, 24), because Jesus testifies about the world that its works are evil (John 7:7).
Normally, no one wants to be hated; we want to be loved. Normally, no one wants to be ex‑cluded; we want to be in-cluded. The desire to fit in, to belong, can be so strong that, unlike Jesus, at times we do not testify about the world that its works are evil. We may by our silence approve of wrongdoing by people in society, our friends, or even our family. And, too often, we even join in with the world’s wrongdoing. We are born into the world and by nature are part of the world. We do not avail ourselves, as often as we should, of God’s Word and Sacraments that sanctify us, but we let our sinful nature hold sway over our redeemed nature. On account of our sinful nature and all of our actual sin, we deserve both death here in time and torment in hell for eternity, except so far as, with repentance and faith, we are in Christ, Who saves us.
In sharp contrast to the world’s hate is God’s love. St. John’s Gospel account especially depicts the climactic conflict between the world’s hate and God’s love (Michel, TDNT 4:691)! God’s love is associated with His choosing His people and His delivering them (for example, Deuteronomy 4:37). God loved the fallen, hating world by giving His only Son to death on the cross, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16). God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but God sent His Son into the world in order that the world might be saved through Him (John 3:17). However, those who do not repent and believe in Him are condemned by their impenitence and unbelief (John 3:18). In today’s Epistle Reading (1 John 5:9-15) the Divinely-inspired St. John even said unbelievers make God a liar by their unbelief! Not long after Jesus spoke the words of today’s Gospel Reading (Park, CPR 31:2, p.48), Jesus as the Great High Priest sacrificed Himself on the cross for His disciples, for us, and for the rest of the sinful world—dying in our place, the death that we deserved—so that all who are unholy might be made holy, sanctified—sanctified through—and, our Lutheran Confessions say, only through (Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration II:51)—God’s Word, in all of its forms.
As the Father sent Jesus into the world, so Jesus sent His apostles into the world, to preach the Gospel and administer the Sacraments. We believe through their word (confer John 17:20). So important is the ministry of Word and Sacraments that, as we heard in the First Reading (Acts 1:12-26), through the Early Church God chose Matthias to have Judas’s share in that ministry (Park, CPR 31:2, p.49). Truly the ministry of Word and Sacraments is important, especially the Sacraments’ applying the Gospel to us as individuals! For, by the water and Word of Holy Baptism those born into and of the world are born from above by water and the Spirit (John 3:3, 5-7), marked with and protected by God’s Triune Name. As Jesus sent His apostles with the authority to forgive sins and withhold forgiveness (John 20:21-23), so are the apostles’ successors, pastors today, sent and in that same Triune Name do they absolve the sins of those who privately confess to them. And, with the bread and wine of the Sacrament of the Altar, we receive the Body of Christ given for us (1 Corinthians 11:24) and the Blood of Christ shed for us (Mark 14:24), and so also we receive the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Though Jesus ascended and so is no longer in the world in the same way that He was present, He is not absent from the world, and He is especially not absent from His Church but is present and active in all of these ways. So, we preach God’s Word and administer His Sacraments even if only to a few of His loved and chosen people, for their sake, as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther noted, since they are “daily exposed to the danger of being torn from the Word” (Luther, ad loc John 17:15, cited by Plass, #3582, p.1121; confer AE 69:88).
We do not per se pray Jesus’s “High-Priestly Prayer”, but we do pray as He prayed, for example in the Lord’s Prayer, including petitions that His Name be holy among us and that we be kept from the evil one (confer Matthew 6:9-13; compare Luke 11:2-4). God answers our prayers, making us holy and working in and through us, as we do good works appropriate to our various callings in life. We do not go out of our way to make the world hate us, but, speaking the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15), we do testify about the world that its works are evil. And, when we fail so to testify and when we sin in other ways, with daily repentance and faith, we live in God’s forgiveness of sins, and so the Lord’s joy is fulfilled in us.
“The world hates Christians, but God keeps them.” As the world hates us, God blesses us; as Jesus says elsewhere, we can rejoice and leap for joy, for the one who endures to the end is saved, and our reward is great in heaven (Luke 6:22; Matthew 10:22).
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 Gloria + + +