Easter 7B
Grace Lutheran Church
Lakeland, FL
May 16, 2021
Acts 1:15-26
Psalm 1
1 John 5:9-15
John 17:6-19
Grace to you and peace from God and from our Lord and Savior, the risen Christ. Amen.
Some of us may have had times when we were present while others were having a very personal and important conversation. We know that we are witnessing something very special, almost holy. That’s somewhat like what is happening in today’s Gospel.
Celtic Christians speak of “thin places.” A thin place is where the veil that separates heaven and earth is lifted and one is able to receive a glimpse of the glory of God. Thin places – those times in life where the dividing line between the holy and the ordinary is very thin – maybe even to the point that the ordinary becomes holy and the holy becomes ordinary. Places where heaven and earth touch, where God seems more readily present, more easily accessed.
Today’s Gospel is a bit of a “flashback” of sorts. It is part of the 17th Chapter of John -- Jesus and the disciples are in some bittersweet hours – they are enjoying time together. Jesus then begins to prepare them for what is to come – a time when he will no longer be with them. He washes their feet despite their resistance. He tells them to dwell in the peace that he gives. He speaks to them for a good while about how things will change and how they will stay the same.
Then a very thin place emerges – right there in their midst, Jesus enters into a time of prayer. This was not one of the praying quietly in your heart times – no, Jesus spoke this prayer out loud. This wasn’t a group prayer where everyone takes a turn offering a petition. This was close friends listening to the things that are heaviest on the heart of their Lord and speaking with his Father about those things.
It is known as Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer – an impassioned prayer for his disciples offered the night that he was handed over to those who would crucify him.
Right in the middle of this portion of Jesus’ prayer, is this verse – keep them in your name Holy Father, so that they may be one as we are one. It sounds like a prayer for unity. But actually, Jesus is praying for something much deeper than simple unity. Jesus’ prayer is that his disciples become one – in the same way that he and the Father are one. From the Creed, we know that he and the Father are 2 persons “of one being.” Together with the Holy Spirit, they are a single being united in thought and action in the world. Perhaps something like what we know on this side of eternity as the one-ness between two people who have pledged themselves to one another for all time.
Jesus wants his disciples to be extremely close to one another. So close, that each knows what the other is feeling – that they have perfect empathy for one another. In other words, he prays that there be no gaps or divisions among them. He wants them to be able to think and act with common purpose. He wants them to share the same level of intimacy – the same degree of singleness – as God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit share.
Some of our Christian brothers and sisters, close their Holy Communion with these words -- “Send us now into the world in peace, and grant us strength and courage to love and serve you with gladness and singleness of heart.”
This is not a prayer that we all get along and agree on everything. This is not a prayer that each of us are all smiles with each other all the time. This is a much deeper prayer –a prayer that we may become so fully united not only with each other but with God. Jesus prays that we may be one in the same way that Jesus is in us and the Father is in him. That all may be perfectly one.
This unity, this one-ness, will be fully realized at the end of all time when God redeems the whole of creation, when Jesus comes again in glory. Jesus – the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. Jesus, the very one who prayed from his disciples and, indeed, for all of us.
I believe that our worship together each week even if online is one of these blessed “thin places” and I know that there are various parts of our service that touch each of us differently. But within our liturgy, there are places that are very thin. One of these is in the words that are part of our celebration of Communion that go like this – and so with Mary Magdalene and Peter and all the witnesses of the resurrection with angels and archangels, cherubim and seraphim, and all the hosts of heaven we praise your holy name – my friends at that time we join into the eternal song of praise that is sung around the throne on which the Lamb is seated even now! The veil separating the human and the divine is lifted a bit or becomes a bit more opaque and we glimpse a bit of the ultimate glory of God with our very limited eyes.
God gives us these thin places to sustain us because we are sent into the world as part of God’s mission to the world. Not my mission, not your mission, not even Grace’s mission. No, we are sent into the world as missionaries for God’s mission to the world – the world that needs God so.
May it be so.
