May 16, 2021 – John 17:6-19
John 17:6-19
God’s Mission of Love
Seventh Sunday of Easter – May 16, 2021
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
There is always so much unpacking to do with John’s Gospel!
What is a preacher to do!
Today I will just speak from the heart.
John’s Gospel is all about love.
It is about sharing with the world the love that binds together the Father and the Son.
That is Jesus’ mission – that is why Jesus is sent: Jesus is on God’s mission of love.
But here, on the eve before his death, Jesus knows he is about to return to the Father.
And so he speaks from his heart: he prays for those whom he is leaving – for those he loves.
The scene is very intimate.
Jesus has shared a meal with his disciples and he has washed their feet.
His “beloved disciple” has reclined with his head on Jesus’ chest.
And then Jesus prays.
He prays out of a deep love that they might be protected.
For they now are being handed the same mission the Father had given the Son.
“As the Father sent me,” Jesus says to them, “so I am sending you.”
I am sending you to love the world.
The problem, however, is that the world is a difficult, broken place.
The world is not perfect.
There is resistance to love in the world.
Jesus will take this resistance into himself on the very next day and seek to redeem it.
The disciples will encounter the same resistance and the same difficulty.
And so Jesus prays for them – with all his heart he prays for them. And he prays for 3 things.
First, he prays for their protection in the world.
He protected them and guarded them with his love while he was with them, he says.
And now he prays that they will still be surrounded and supported by the Father’s love
in his absence.
Second, he prays that they might be protected from the evil one –
and we have already seen what the evil one can do, for Judas has already betrayed Jesus.
Third, he prays that they might be “sanctified” or “hallowed,” that is,
set apart for God’s purposes, which is to love the world.
In the beautiful words of Meda Stamper,
“Jesus’ own are set apart for . . . God’s act of love in the world.”
Jesus’ own are set apart for God’s act of love in the broken, difficult world, pandemic-filled,
racism-filled world.
For that is the world God so loves.
And that is the world Jesus’ own are sent to love.
God wants the world to know the same love that exists between the Father and the Son.
God wants the world to know the same love that Jesus has for his own.
And God wants the world to know the love that exists within
the beloved community of Jesus’ followers.
Meda Stamper continues that Jesus’ prayer can be summarized in this way:
That the disciples should be protected for love by the one in whose love they dwell.
Jesus loves his own:
that is why he beautifully and agonizingly prays for them as he is leaving them.
He asks for them to be protected in love because he is leaving them.
He asks because he loves.
For prayer is what those who love do.
Isn’t it interesting that here, in his last scene with his disciples, what he does is prays?
As Debie Thomas notes this week,
He didn’t awe them with miracles. Neither did he contemplate their futures and despair.
Rather, he prayed for them.
And he asked two simple things for them:
that they might be protected by love and that they might be set apart for love in the world.
This is a beautiful thing to ask.
Those of us who have children have probably uttered this prayer in some form or another
since the day our children were born.
It is what Jesus prays for us: that we might be protected by love and set apart for love.
When Jesus sends us into the world, Jesus knows what he is asking.
He knows loving is hard work.
He knows participating in God’s mission to
love, bless, heal, feed and set free this whole world and every person in it is not easy.
He knows there is resistance to love, he knows there are those who resist love,
and he is familiar with the temptations there are not to love.
And so he prays that we might be protected by love and set apart for love.
I think we know that we are set apart for love: God’s mission of love is what the church is for.
To share God’s love among one another and to spread that love into the world in
as many ways as we can is why we are First Lutheran Church.
But do we know we are always protected by love?
That we can trust that love, because Jesus himself has asked for that protection on our behalf?
For the past year I have been saying (as much for my own benefit as for yours) that
God’s love was here long before the universe was created and
will be here long after it is gone.
That love will protect us, in the end, from succumbing to the evil one,
that is from despair, cynicism, and the thought that nothing we do can make a difference.
Love protects us by insisting that loving is always worth it.
Love protects us by insisting that no loving action is ever wasted in the divine economy.
Love protects us by insisting that no matter how much we love, we will never run out,
for we have an endless source of love welling up in us when we abide in Jesus the vine.
God’s love surrounds and fills all that is.
God’s love protects us and holds us and fills us and God’s love will find a way. Amen
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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