[Machine transcription]
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Brothers and sisters, looking at the Gospel reading today for the text, please be seated.
Musicians are an interesting bunch.
No, I’m not talking about our Minister of Music candidate in particular, so relax, Jonathan.
I’m talking about musicians in general.
They’re interesting.
Certainly, musicians have some sort of talent but oftentimes it’s the musician that appreciates
their talent the most.
That is to say, musicians have egos.
I once asked a music major at UT, do musicians have egos?
And they said, oh yes, just spend about five seconds at the UT School of Music and you’ll
see that. Musicians often think highly of themselves, they’re very self-conscious,
they’re very self-interested, self-focused, they enjoy hearing
themselves perform music, they have a concern for themselves and their talent,
and musicians will even joke about this, and there’s jokes like this. How does a
lead singer change a lightbulb?
Well, they just hold it in place
and the world will revolve around them.
Is a violin smaller than a viola?
No, it’s not, it just looks that way
because violin players’ heads are bigger.
And how many trumpet players
does it take to change a lightbulb?
Well, just one, but there’ll be 15 other of them
standing around saying
and how they would have done it better.
Musicians have egos.
And I think one of the best places to see this on display
is at a band or orchestra concert
before the concert begins, okay?
Audience is coming in and they’re sitting there
and the musicians kind of slowly trickle onto the stage
and they usually don’t talk to anybody else.
They just take their seat and sit there
and they know people are watching them,
so everything they do, they’re trying to look cool, okay?
I know, because I’ve done this, all right?
They sit there, and they check out their instrument,
and they adjust their music on their stand,
and they look around to check out who’s checking them out,
and then they’ll start to warm up,
but when they do, they only play music
that they know really well,
and they play it loud and others to hear and if they make a mistake while they’re
playing that they’ll look at their instrument and kind of make some
adjustments like it was the instruments fault you know it’s pathetic and soon
the stage is full of musicians trying to be cool and look impressive something
like a collective group of egos, but then it happens.
The conductor comes out.
The conductor walks onto the stage and gets on the podium and it gets quiet.
And everybody is focused on the conductor.
The conductor then raises their arms and starts to begin to lead the musicians in playing
together. At that point, it’s no longer a collection of a collective group of egos.
They’re all together. They’re one and they’re making beautiful harmonious
music together. The conductor has stepped in, taken away the selfish oneness of the
egos and giving them a new oneness of playing together.
In fact, the word symphony comes from a Greek word that means harmonious, or even more literally
to sound together.
Behind the word is the meaning of agreeing, of agreeing with those that you’re with.
And when musicians are led by the conductor, they agree to sound together.
All concern for self disappears and they’re in harmony. In fact, this word for
symphony is also the word that we get, it’s the Greek word we get the
word synod for from. I’ll just let you deal with that one on your own. The synod
doesn’t always agree with each other does it anyway now there’s a lot of talk
in the world sometimes among Christians that we need unity in Christianity
there’s too many denominations there’s too much disagreeing about practices and
doctrines and that we should all strive to be one and the verses that we just
heard in the gospel reading today are often cited as that those verses that
saying we’re supposed to be one. Jesus wants us to be one. Now John 17, the whole
chapter is a prayer. It’s called the high priestly prayer where on the
night of the Lord’s Supper, just after the Lord’s Supper with His disciples,
Jesus then prays for them and he’s praying for them but not just them maybe
you caught that in in the reading Jesus prayed I’m praying also for those who
will believe in me through their word through the teaching and message of the
Apostles others were going to come to believe in Jesus and he was praying for
them. He’s talking about us, really, and others who would believe in Jesus
through that same message. So does Jesus mean that Christians should drop
all of their differences and become completely one in all that they do? I
don’t think so, but he’s praying about a oneness for his disciples that I think
I think it’s a little bit bigger than that, actually.
But first of all, Christians and all of humanity,
we’re already one.
We already have a oneness together.
And Jesus is very concerned about that.
And to see this, we need to think back to the musicians,
okay, that I was talking about.
Because we’re all a lot like them.
We, too, can think highly of ourselves
and be self-conscious, self-promoting, self-interested. We like hearing
ourselves. We have a concern and appreciation for our own talent. We, too,
have egos. We like to admire ourselves. Basically, we’re all selfish. We all think
that our way of changing light bulbs is the best.
More compactly, this is to say that we’re all sinful.
We’re one in sin.
We sound together in sin.
Our whole world, all of us, it’s like a collective group of egos on a stage.
But it happened.
The conductor came.
The conductor walked onto the stage and at a point in history everybody was
focused on him when he got onto the podium of the cross and raised his arms
and spread them out and was crucified on it and died there and through this the
conductor leads his people and makes them one in the forgiveness of their
sins of course I’m talking about Jesus as our conductor and he leads us into
that forgiveness of sins taking the oneness of our sin that we all have
together and giving us a oneness of salvation we’re we’re no longer a
collective group of egos. We’re together and one in Christ. Sounding together,
making harmonious music in His grace. With Jesus as our conductor, He takes
away the oneness of sin and gives us a oneness of forgiveness to those who
believe in Him. In the prayer, Jesus talks about His oneness with the Father and
that oneness being then with us. That close, that intimate, that fulfilling kind
of oneness. That’s the oneness that Jesus wants for us, not just denominations
dropping their names or dropping their doctrines or anything like that. We’re
always going to have some sort of differences in Christianity with
different groups. This could be physically in locations or in
cultures or any of those where we’re always going to have some sort of
differences in that. But our oneness is always in Jesus. Ephesians chapter 4
says, there’s one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, but
grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ.
That’s truly what makes us one. Not particularly some doctrines that we
have or some traditions that we have or something about our culture that we have
Christianity but the oneness of faith in Christ and we experience that oneness
here at st. Paul every time we gather for worship we experience it several
times actually in worship that literally we sound together several times in
confession we sound together the oneness of our sin confessing that together and
receiving the oneness of Christ’s forgiveness. Then we share that oneness.
We move about shaking hands and sharing the peace of the Lord, that oneness
that we share together, physically bringing it together in a handshake. And
we enjoy that oneness in the creeds when we confess them. We’re confessing the
the same message of Jesus that was confessed by the Apostles that same
message from 2,000 years ago we still confess that today that
oneness together that we’re saying all together we believe in this and we
sound together that confession of this is what makes us one that same message
that Jesus passed to His Apostles
and they’ve passed on to the entire world.
And we enjoy that oneness in Holy Communion.
When we come together here to eat and drink,
we sound together as we agree on what’s going on up here,
but also in eating and drinking
in the oneness of Christ’s forgiveness of our sins.
and we have the privilege of passing on that oneness to others. I mean why does
Jesus want us to be one? He prays for us to be one for our benefit, yeah, so that
we can enjoy that oneness and sounding together and agreeing and making
harmonious music in our Christian life together, but also for those who aren’t
yet part of that oneness.
Jesus wants us to be one for
those who don’t yet believe
in him.
That’s very much what he
said in the prayer.
He prayed, Father, may they
also be in us so that the
world may know that you sent
me and love them.
Jesus wants us to be one so
that the world will know
about him, so that we’re one
in that same message that Jesus died and rose again for them.
We’re to be one for those that don’t yet believe in Jesus,
who don’t know the Conductor,
whose lives are maybe out of control
and their egos have taken over
and they’re only concerned about themselves and selfishness,
and maybe they really want to change,
they want something else,
they’re looking for more in their life,
And we have that for them.
We can proclaim that oneness in Christ
to forgive them and make them part of the oneness too.
So Jesus, our conductor, if you will,
He stands on the podium of the cross
and brings us together in His death and resurrection.
It’s not oneness that comes from our talent or our egos,
but oneness in his salvation for us. May we always enjoy oneness under that same
conductor. Amen. And now may the peace of God which passes all understanding keep
your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
