May 12, 2024

by | May 12, 2024 | sermons

Gospel Reading: John 17:6-19

6 You have given me some followers from this world, and I have shown them what you are like. They were yours, but you gave them to me, and they have obeyed you. 7 They know that you gave me everything I have. 8I told my followers what you told me, and they accepted it. They know I came from you, and they believe you are the one who sent me. 9I am praying for them, but not for those who belong to this world. My followers belong to you, and I am praying for them. 10 All I have is yours, and all you have is mine, and they will bring glory to me. 11 Holy Father/Mother, I am no longer in the world. I am coming to you, but my followers are still in the world. So keep them safe by the power of the name you have given me. Then they will be one with each other, just as you and I are one.

12 While I was with them, I kept them safe by the power you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost, except the one who had to be lost. This happened so that what the Scriptures say would come true.

13 I am on my way to you. But I say these things while I am still in the world, so my followers will have the same complete joy that I do. 14 I have told them your message. But the people of this world hate them, because they don’t belong to this world, just as I don’t. Mother/Father, I don’t ask you to take my followers out of the world, but keep them safe from the evil one. 16 They don’t belong to this world, and neither do I. 17 Your word is the truth. So let this truth make them completely yours. 18 I am sending them into the world, just as you sent me. 19 I have given myself completely for their sake, so they may belong completely to the truth.

  1. Today in John’s Gospel we hear a portion of the “farewell discourse” in which Jesus speaks to his disciples and prays for them at the last supper, shortly before his arrest and crucifixion.
    1. This section stretches from Ch. 14 through 17, but today’s reading is Jesus’ prayer out loud for his dear friends, knowing they will soon be separated.
    2. The words sound to me like a parent or older brother expressing concern for their children:
      1. They were yours, but you gave them to me
      2. They belong to you and I am praying for them
      3. Keep them safe
      4. Let them be one, as you and I are one
      5. Let them have the same joy I have in you
      6. I have given myself completely for their sake
      7. I am sending them into the world
      8. Bittersweet words!
    3. If you think of Jesus as being like a parent figure to his disciples, his words reveal a familiar paradox for parents and children:
      1. On the one hand, we want to bond with the people God sends us to love, to hold them close and be at one with them;
      2. But at the same time, there is this higher calling to gradually let go, set them free, to let them grow and thrive separately from us.
      3. And there is a kind of sad joy in seeing them leave us!
      4. Whether you’ve been a parent or a child, you can relate to that push/pull of connection and separation from the people close to us;
      5. That’s what I hear Jesus feeling in his prayer here.
  2. A couple weeks ago, we had a baptism of three young people from First Church; they walked into the water of their own volition—no one pushed them– and submitted to being dunked by the pastor.
    1. Can you imagine the parents’ hearts skipping a beat when they went down?
    2. Baptism, whether of a believer or an infant, is a moment when the child is separated from the parents and taken into the arms of the Church, or maybe a sponsor or godparent—symbolically given back to God.
    3. A Greek Orthodox friend once told me her baby was literally taken out of her arms at the beginning of the baptism; the parents had to go sit down; the baby was not returned to them until the entire liturgy was over.
    4. All this to remind us that our children are not our little possessions; not ours to keep! They belong to God.
  3. It’s a little bittersweet for those of us whose children are grown to think about their baptisms;
      1. Like Jesus in this story, we prayed for their protection and faith,
      2. We tried to be that living water in the Psalm, to help them grow and be fruitful.
      3. But little by little, we had to let go of these people who had once been physically connected to us– in our wombs, at our breasts, or with their sticky backsides on our laps.
    2. Because they grew up and left us,
    3. We said goodbye at day care, and summer camp, and at the curb of college dorms
    4. We went to their graduations and weddings;
  4. And then, many of them left our churches too.
    1. We aren’t sure how to feel about this;
      1. Maybe you judge your kids for leaving the church
      2. Or you may judge yourself for not making them go to Confirmation class
      3. I try to tell myself our children are finding other pathways to the Divine;
  5. My own daughter doesn’t go to church often, but she has some positive associations with churches, mostly involving food.
      1. When the George Floyd uprising happened here, she looked online for a way to help in the community.
      2. She found her way to a church that needed help bagging groceries to hand out when all the stores were boarded up; and she went there and helped a bunch of strangers until late one night.
    2. That act expressed her understanding that the church is, at the very least, a place where people share food.
  6. It’s not easy to stay unified with our children–in family, in the Church
    1. younger generations can seem so different from us;
    2. it’s not easy to let go, to send them out and see what effect they have on the world, even without the Christian disciplines that guide us.
    3. Historically, we’re in a time when the baby boom is gradually letting go of the reins of our culture and allowing younger generations to catch and re-shape the world we made for them.
      1. We’re not good at letting go: think of the age of our presidents!
      2. We are having trouble trusting younger generations to manage the world.
  7. But some of you have responded to this dilemma
    1. Maybe by gracefully letting go of your own children,
    2. but also by finding opportunities to connect with/embrace other people’s kids—
    3. Claire’s testimony a couple weeks ago reminded me there are younger people who find meaningful connections with older generations in the church; and local churches are perfectly designed for that potential.
    4. So some of you have found young adults to connect with here, or in your neighborhoods or among the children of friends
    5. You’ve adopted grandchildren who need your attention and guidance
    6. You’ve been mentors for people in your workplace
    7. The woman on the cover of the bulletin is my friend Anne, who visited here recently;
      1. She and her husband found me when I was in my late 20’s, adrift after losing my mom and moving to the Midwest
    8. Maybe you don’t even know that you are a steady point for someone younger;
  8. Loving younger generations is a constant dance between holding on, finding deeper intimacy, and then letting go again and allowing them to grow outward into the world.
    1. Sometimes that separation happens through mobility, or being estranged from each other, sometimes we are separated by death
    2. Sometimes a young person sees the light of some calling God has for them, and they have to leave us to follow it.
    3. They may not even realize it is God who is doing the calling…
  9. I want to mention an anxious message I sometimes hear in churches about younger generations; it is the message that young people are the key to the church’s institutional survival
    1. If only we can lure them in, this message goes, we can persuade them to give financially, join our committees and keep the church alive
    2. It suggests that we need young people to justify our existence as the Church
    3. I believe this message is not only a disservice to young people;
    4. It also lacks trust in God’s ability to build the Church’s vitality with any and all ages of Christians.
  10. But we can still practice being a positive influence in the lives of young people.
    1. I like to think that, if we leave all the tools of our faith formation laying out, younger generations will stumble on them, pick them up and wonder about them
      1. Tools like the bible, with all its land mines; and all its juicy stories!
      2. Tools like prayer; this is one area where researchers are finding young people do want spiritual connection, but they may not get it in the traditional church and they’re looking for other ways to find it.
      3. The Nerd Squad book group is an example of a tool a group has found for gathering with other reflective thinkers to explore theology through reading fiction.
      4. Music and group singing, whether sacred or secular, might be a spiritual opening for some people;
      5. The Queer Prom borrows from an old tool used in the Church: social events and fun, especially for people who may have experienced rejection in other settings, help us find healthy connection and acceptance that might to lead to deeper intimacy down the road.
  11. Jesus was never a biological parent, but he understood this dance of trusting God and holding loosely the lives God gives and takes from us.
    1. Maybe the best we can do is keep praying, as he did, for those who are given to us for a time,
      1. To trust we will maintain some kind of unity with them,
      2. even as we send them out into God’s hands.