Sermon for the Seventh Sunday of Easter
That They May Be One
Christ is Risen! (He is risen, indeed! Alleluia). In today's
Gospel, Jesus prays for His dear disciples, the men who also wrote the New
Testament. Jesus prays, "Holy Father, keep them in Your name, which You have
given Me, that they may be one." One verse after today's Gospel, your Lord
Jesus prays the same thing for you and for all who hear and believe the New
Testament that the disciples have written:
I do not ask for these [disciples] only, but also for those who will believe
in Me through their word [of the New Testament], that they may all be one,
just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you (John 17:20-21a).
With these Words, Jesus speaks about the unity of the Church. Just as God
the Father answers Jesus prayer by making His disciples one, the same Father
also uses the disciples Word of the New Testament to likewise make us one in
Spirit, one in faith, and one in the body of Christ on earth.
Dear Christian friends,
Since November 2000, forty-three (43) people-adults and children
alike-have attended confirmation classes here at Grace and have confessed
the Christian faith at our altar. Of those forty-three people,
· Fourteen (14) people have remained regular and faithful
worshippers, either here or at a sister congregation. (Some of these might
not attend every Sunday, but for the most part they are regular in worship.)
· Another four (4) people are occasional worshippers, worshipping
when their jobs allow them to come-but they come when they can.
· So eighteen (18) out of forty-three confirmation students have kept
a connection to Christian worship, hearing the Word and receiving the
Sacrament of the Altar with us. That leaves twenty-five (25) people who have
apparently grown bored with the Christian faith or who are horsing around in
some other church body, denying the faith they learned here in confirmation
class.
Eighteen people retained out of forty-three people trained. That tallies up
to a forty-two percent (42%) achievement, which is not a passing grade on
any planet. It is not just here at Grace that such things happen. I have a
feeling that my percentages are pretty much the same at my former
congregation in Illinois. I also have reason to believe that my numbers are
probably in line with the numbers produced by many of my colleagues in
similar situations.
· Am I telling you these things so you can pat me on the back after
worship and tell me, "No pastor, it's not your fault"? Thank you, NO.
· Am I telling you these things so we can medicate ourselves with the
knowledge that we are not alone in such losses, but that many pastors and
many congregations experience similar things? Again, NO: Other losses in
other places make for lousy consolation.
· Am I suggesting that we should purge our membership role of those
who never attend worship and who give no indication that they want anything
to do with us? Absolutely not. There may be some cases in which a person's
name on our membership role will one day bear fruit again, and they will
return to us. If we toss their membership, to whom shall they eventually go?
I am telling you about these losses for three reasons: 1) so that
you may grieve these losses, as you ought to grieve them; 2) so that you
yourself may repent continually, along with the whole Church, lest you also
fall away; 3) so that you may be given comfort from God's Word, the one
place where true comfort may be found.
1. Jesus prays for His disciples in today's Gospel, "Holy Father,
keep them in Your name, which You have given Me, that they may be one."
Jesus also prays for you and for me and for all "those who will believe in
[Jesus] through their Word" (John 17:20) Jesus wants all people to hear and
believe the New Testament "that they may all be one" (John 17:21).
That is why we should grieve those who depart our fellowship after
they have heard the Word of God and after they have confessed the faith and
after they have sworn "yes, with the help of God" that they do not wish to
be separated this faith. They once said these things in our presence and
hearing, but now their absence makes us think that they do not any more want
to be part of our faith. They do not want to be one with us in the unity of
the Word. By no longer hearing the Word with us, they are no longer part of
our unity one with another. They are torn from the fabric, as it were. They
are separated from the herd. They are, in truth, worshipping at different
altars. Such losses are somewhat like a death in the family, and such losses
should indeed be met with a measure of grief.
2. A forty-two percent (42%) achievement is exactly the same thing
as a fifty-eight percent (58%) failure. These many departures from our
fellowship and worship do more than give us reason to grieve. They also
constitute a divine call to our own continued repentance. There is no high
ground for any of us to occupy when it comes to sin. There is nothing that
any of us are above; there is no sin that is beneath any of us. You and I
are each fully capable of our own unbelief, and our potential departures
from the faith remain as near to us as all other temptations and sins.
Stated another way, God the Holy Spirit, working powerfully upon us through
His Word, is the one and only reason why we ourselves have not likewise
fallen away.
"Holy Father," prays Jesus, "keep [My disciples] in Your name,
which You have given Me, that they may be one." Then Jesus goes on to pray
for you and for me and for all who believe in Jesus as a result of the
disciples Word, that we also may be one.
· How shall we continue in our repentance and in our NOT falling away
from the faith, if not by means of the New Testament Word of the Apostles,
proclaimed to you here? Their words were Jesus' Words before them, and Jesus
alone has the Words of eternal life (John 6:68). Jesus' Words alone-spoken
to us by His disciples-these words alone have the power to create sorrow for
our sin and faith in the forgiveness that Jesus has earned for you.
· How shall we remain unified one with another, if not together in
the unity that only God the Father can provide? The Father and the Son are
perfectly unified in a miraculous way; theirs is a unity that no one can
imagine and no human being can ever create. Perhaps we could go so far as to
say that the unity of the Father with the Son is a unity of shared Words,
for Jesus speaks in today's Gospel about the Word the Father had given to
Him.
In today's Gospel, Jesus prays and provides that same unity to His dear
disciples. "Holy Father, keep them in Your name, which You have given Me,
that they may be one." Then, through the unity of the disciples, God's
unity and fellowship and oneness passes to us:
I do not ask for these [disciples] only, but also for those who will believe
in Me through their word [of the New Testament], that they may all be one,
just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you (John 17:20-21a).
3. Fifty-eight percent of our confirmation students in the past
nine years are no longer with us. That is the bad news. Good news is that
forty-two percent have remained. I tell you this so that you may be given
comfort from God's Word, the one place where true comfort may be found.
There are great personal benefits for you and for your family that come to
you through the unity of the disciples, which is the unity of the New
Testament, which is the unity that God gives to you in the preaching of the
Word and the administration of the sacraments.
1. The first and chief benefit you receive is the assurance of your
forgiveness. Jesus Christ died and rose for your sins, and in Him you are
fully and completely forgiven. Yes, those who make a habit of being absent
from our worship are likewise fully forgiven, but how can they know this?
How can they be certain of their eternal life with Christ? But for you who
remain here, your God in Christ never tires of giving you His assurances and
His certainties, so that you may never doubt.
2. The second benefit to your unity is the assurance that you are not alone.
It may seem to you that more and more people are throwing God's Word into
the wind; more and more are living amoral, idolatrous lives; more and more
show no concern for forgiveness and for peace. But look around you here. See
in this small gathering a sample of the unity God creates for you by His
Word. You do not all share the same goals in life. You do not have the all
the same political opinions and you do not face the same decisions. But you
do have the same faith. You have been given unity of the Spirit. You share a
common Word, the New Testament Word of the disciples. You have miraculously
been made one, even as Jesus and the Father are one. This unity, like
salvation itself, is God's eternal gift to you.
___________________________________________________________________________
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