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Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the text comes from those nine verses from the Gospel of St. John, the prayer in the garden. You may be seated.
Now that Jesus has ascended into heaven and lives and reigns to all eternity, he constantly intercedes or prays for you. For every single one of you. And it’s not as if he has to come up with a brand new and heartfelt prayer. For everything that he prays comes from his heart. And it is always applicable to you.
There are only two prayers that Jesus ever prayed that were recorded in Scripture. The first one is the obvious one, the Lord’s Prayer. But the only other prayer of Jesus ever recorded is the entire 17th chapter of the Gospel of John, which Jesus prayed in the garden. The whole chapter. If you have a Red Letter Edition, the whole chapter is in red. And it’s all His prayer to the Father as He struggled hours before He was betrayed into the hands A Lutheran Christian sermon.
Now, as I said, your mission is very clear and it’s very broad. Jesus prayed for you and said, “So Abhai sent them into the world,” regardless of how old you are chronologically or how young you are chronologically, regardless of how much education you’ve been given or the lack thereof. Regardless if you’ve gone to witness and evangelism workshops or not, whether you stutter or not, whether you live in a very affluent country like we or whether you live in a very poor country, all of us as his children have been sent out into this world.
There are some Christians in the last several years who have talked about this option of sequestering themselves away from the world and almost creating an enclave of a little Amish community almost. That flies in the face of Jesus’ prayer for you and every Christian who has ever been baptized into Christ. For all of us have been sent into the world by our Lord. We have not been called to cover ourselves up over into a corner and protect ourselves. He wishes us to get our hands dirty in serving and loving other people.
And don’t forget His promise: whoever hears you, hears me. You are his lips to speak to others. Remember also what he said through St. Paul: you are my ambassadors into this world, my representatives. I am sending you out to make my appeal to the world through you. Because you and only you bear the message of reconciliation, forgiveness of sins. That’s your mission.
The problem is, you don’t get to choose to take this mission or not. It’s been given to you. And he puts you and me into places and with people of which we would not normally have selected or chosen. In fact, lots of times he puts us in amongst people that in our most wildest dreams we would have never thought of doing. But that is your and my mission.
The second part of it is, if you’re going to accomplish that, you have to know your identity as a child of God, and you’ve got to know what your status is with God, and where is your source of strength as you accomplish this mission of God? Jesus prayed in the garden this prayer, and he prayed that the Father would keep them in your name. Regardless of your chronological age, you are and will remain a faithful child of God. You will never grow up to be an adult of God. You will always be a child of God. And God loves it that way.
Now, as a youth, we’re not troubled with that concept of being a child of God. And as we get older and grayer, you know, we also kind of go, it’s not so bad just to think in terms of being God’s child. It’s this in-between phase where most of us lie that we struggle with it. Because it all is about humility that God brings to remind us who’s the Father and who’s the child. But you’re His child. He calls you by His name. You bear His name: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Having been baptized into His name, you are being made not a part of the world.
And that’s the other part of your identity. You’re not a part of this world. But what is it that you and I struggle with the most is that this world continues to dominate us and our desires. And it is you who have been freed from this world’s desires and its dominance so that you dominate this world and use it to His glory and not get used by it to your and my shame.
The second part of it is your status. You, as a child of God, are not a lone ranger, no matter how much you think you wish to do it alone. There are some of us who think, you know, it’s so much easier just to do it alone. It takes so much effort to ask someone else or to involve someone else. I’ll just do it myself. Yeah, that’s me and a lot of you too. And that is not what God desired or designed. He knit you into a communion of saints.
Jesus prayed that they may be one even as we are one. Not one because you both cheer for UT. Not one because you all have the same Germanic or Scandinavian background. Not one because you share the same skin color or ethnicity. But one because you’ve been given the same salvation and one because you have no one else with which to break bread and eat the flesh and blood but the person in the pew with you. And that unity isn’t based on anything but the one place where true unity can be fostered and found: His word and His sacraments. Everything’s revealed there.
Now there are Christians who say, “But pastor, how can they read the same Bible and come up with two different points of view?” Looks like the Holy Spirit’s got work to do in you, doesn’t he? Because if there is a differing point of view, then you and I have to measure it according to the Scriptures. For St. Paul made it very clear, you were called to one hope, not many. You were called to one Lord, not many. And he only has one identity as the God-man. You were called to one faith, not many faiths. You were called to one baptism, not many baptisms, though there are many Christians who claim many different baptisms.
You have to come to terms with the Scripture by the Holy Spirit working in your heart. Is there only one? And if so, what is it? One God and Father of us all who is over all, through all, and in all. That’s the unity that He is fostering among us, only through His Word and sacrament and nothing else.
It’s not fostered by beating it into us, and it’s not fostered by condescending us into it. It’s fostered by His Spirit working within you and His Word and sacrament. The other part of your identity or status, I mean, not such a great status. The first part was great, that we’re being knit together into one. The second part is that the world has hated you because you are not of the world just as I am not of the world. Expect it.
Because of your status, your identity, the world hates you. And get this, the world will make allowances and indulge and excuse every other evil in this world, but not you and the Christian faith. The world will aid and pity and tolerate every single scoundrel, but they will not tolerate you, and they will not endure you.
Here’s your trump card. Last week, what did John say? You’ve been given something that overcomes the world. And what is it that overcomes the world but your faith? So, though the world will not tolerate or endure you, you’ve been given the gift because of your faith to tolerate and endure the world and bring that message. That’s your trump card.
What a comfort that only you are not of this world and the rest of the world is lock, stock, and barrel slaves to it, because by the faith that he has given you, you have overcome it. This is the most important part: your source of strength in your mission, your source of strength as a child of God’s identity, your source of strength of living out your status as being knit together as one and as being hated by the world.
Your source of strength comes only through that word preached and proclaimed and that sacrament given to you. What did he say in the text? He preserved his apostles. He didn’t preserve them by some magical power. He preserved them through his word. He protected and guarded them from the two masters in this world, this world or God, by that same word and sacrament. And he preserves and protects you from your own self and from Satan in this world only through this word and this sacrament.
And he gives you something. Jesus said it at the end of the text, that my joy may be fulfilled in them. It’s not an ecstatic, emotional outburst or outpouring. It’s a status of being in right relationship with God, and you smile while the world bawls and cries and is angry and all crunched up in hatred. You’re at peace and in joy because you know who wins. And you’re a part of that because you’ve been baptized into it.
Now granted, as we mentioned earlier, you’ve got to endure, as I have to endure, the misfortune and evil of this world. And we have to be surrounded by devils. That’s part of being in this world, but not of it. And we will be the lone sheep while all the wolves are about us. Remember your source of strength.
Though devils all the world should fill, all eager to devour us, we tremble not, we fear no ill, they shall not overpower us. This world’s prince may still scowl fierce as he will. He can harm us none. He’s judged. The deed is done. One little word can fell him.
So do you know what our greatest danger is in this entire world? Don’t worry, he’s still hearing it. Trust me. Not from his daddy, but he’s still hearing it. We only face one great danger in this world, and that great danger is losing the word in sacrament. Germany had it. Scandinavia had it, and for the most part it’s gone from those countries. America has had it, and it’s not like it once was. That’s our greatest danger, your greatest danger. God will preserve it, but he will not tolerate those who despise it. He will preserve it in you. He is making His appeal through you because you have tasted and seen that the Lord is good.
In the name of Jesus, amen. The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and your minds on Christ Jesus to life eternal. Amen.
