Congregational Church
of Amherst, NH
May 20, 2012
Seventh Sunday
of Easter – Ascension Sunday
“What Would Jesus Pray?”
John 17:6-19
The world is changing.
For most of us the world that we grew up in as
children and the world we’re living in now are vastly different. And that’s true for us whether we’re 80-years-old,
60-years-old, 40-years-old, or even 30-years-old.
If you’re under the age of 30 you may not be
able to fathom living in a world that did not have cell phones, 800 TV channels
to choose from, and the Internet, where the information contained in a billion libraries
is right there at your fingertips.
Those of us over 30 may be prone to fits of
nostalgia when we hear that most people in their twenties have never used or
even seen a typewriter, a rotary phone, or a vinyl record album.
Meanwhile,
my 86-year-old mother is still baffled by the VCR, as it continuously flashes
12:00 at her from across the room.
Things are changing so fast that the
technologies we’re using today will seem antiquated in just 5-10 years. An
editor at a Laptop Magazine recently compiled a list of things that will be hard
to find or obsolete by the time his newborn son enters middle school.
Wired internet connections, computer hard drives
and keyboards, landline telephones, movie theaters, DVDs and compact discs, and
dedicated digital cameras and video recorders are all being replaced with multi
function hand held devices like smart phones and instantly accessible media
stored on a cloud on the internet.
Technology aside, we’re living in a world that
has hit the accelerator in regards to change - as we cope with increasing
choices and decreasing attention spans, increasing population and decreasing
resources, and an ever widening gap between those who have power and wealth and
those who do not.
How do we even begin to keep up with a world
that is changing so fast?
This
is a question that many of us in the church have been asking of late –
in this church and in churches across the
country and the world.
With
a few exceptions, most mainline Protestant churches like ours are wrestling
with dwindling attendance, dwindling resources, and dwindling relevance in the
wider culture.
Our
churches are bleeding.
They’re
bleeding money, bleeding people, and bleeding energy to those things in our
lives that hold higher importance.
And
while those of us who love and value our faith communities form committees and
have discussions about what kind of band-aid to put on our churches to control
the bleeding, the world continues to change around us.
People
continue to drift away or drive by our historical buildings without ever
feeling the need to stop and take a look inside.
Now
let me stop right here and assure you that this is not a stewardship sermon.
This
is not a sermon that is intended to nudge you into digging a little deeper in
your pockets to ensure that 15, 10 or even 5 years from now, we will still have
a viable and vibrant UCC church community here in Amherst.
And
this is not a sermon that is intended to prod us change-fearing folks into
adapting to the culture around us. I assure you that there are no immediate
plans to install video screens in the sanctuary or throw our 18th
century hymns out the door.
And
despite the bleak picture I’ve just painted of the current state of our
churches in this ever changing world, this sermon is not intended to amplify
our anxiety or get us to act by tapping into our individual and collective fear
of what is to come.
This
sermon is not about any of that.
So
if you’re feeling anxious right now, I invite you to take a deep breath, and
relax.
This
is a sermon about prayer.
It’s
about the prayer that Jesus prayed to God on our behalf just before he left his
disciples and left this world.
And
this is a sermon about discipleship.
It’s
about what it means to be a follower of Christ in a world that is always
changing and always challenging us to maintain a foothold in both THAT world
and THIS world -
The
world of scarcity, and the world of abundance.
The world of fear, and the world of courageous
compassion.
The
world of self-preservation, and the world of sacrificial love.
When
Jesus had his disciples gathered around him on that Thursday evening before his
death, he knew that the time for teaching and training had come to an end.
The
twelve men who sat before him and the many followers who had come to know him
were about to have the rug ripped out from underneath them big time.
In
24 hours, their leader would be dead, their loyalties would be questioned,
their lives would be threatened, and the money that had been flowing freely to
support their cause would trickle down to almost nothing.
In
24 hours the world would close in around them and their response would be to
hide away in a locked room and keep the world at bay, until the resurrected Jesus
came to them and coaxed them back out.
Jesus
had already given the disciples a prayer to sustain them through this
challenging time - The Lord’s Prayer:
Our
father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy
kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
But
as a parting gift Jesus also offered a prayer FOR the disciples.
On
that Thursday night, Jesus prayed to God in their name:
Father, these are your people.
You gave them to me and I have cared for them and
now I give them back to you for you to watch over.
They know everything you have given me is from you.
I am not of this world – this world of fear and
scarcity and selfishness - and as my followers they too are not of this world,
but they must continue to live in this world even when I am gone.
I’m not asking for you to take them out of this
world but to guide them and protect them as they do your work and live as
truthful and grace filled people in your name.
Jesus
prayed this prayer not just for the disciples who sat before him on that
Thursday evening, or for those who would witness his resurrection and gather to
see his final ascension into heaven 50 days later.
Jesus
prayed this prayer for us – for all who come together and gather in his name.
Because
he knew that being a disciple of Christ would always be a precarious balancing
act. It will always be about straddling the divide between the world that
tempts us to give in to fear and self-preservation, and the world that calls us
to act out of love, and a sense of abundance.
In
this world where the Kingdom of God is both here and not yet here, there will
always be a tension between the church and the world that contains the church.
The
church is intended to be an enclave, a recreation of the Kingdom of God on
earth, a foreshadowing of what is to come, a place where we actually live and
behave as if the Kingdom has arrived and all barriers have been eradicated
between us, and there is enough to go around for all.
But
in the outside world this Kingdom does not yet exist, so there is a constant
push/pull going on inside of us as we struggle to live in both worlds at the
same time.
And
it is so hard for us to maintain that balance.
Jesus
told his disciples: "The world will hate you as it has hated me."
Hate
is a strong word, but here it is an appropriate word.
A
world that is built on a foundation of fear, distrust, and scarcity is one that
benefits those who have learned to manipulate those fears for their own gain.
If
you plant a group of Christians in that world, Christians who really act like
Christians and seek to live out of love and abundance rather than fear, then
you now have a group of folks who can’t be manipulated by those fears, and
they, like Jesus, come to be seen as a threat.
This
is not an easy path that we’ve signed up to follow here.
We
may come to church for the fellowship, or the music, or the children’s program,
but what we’re trying to accomplish here goes far beyond all of that.
We
are world straddlers building a community based on love in a world that is
dominated by fear. God calls us to live differently in the world.
The
disciples locked themselves away because they feared they were not up for the
challenge of being seen as outsiders who threatened the status quo.
Jesus
prayed to God to give them the strength to carry on in his name.
In
many ways our designation as outsiders has not changed.
Over
the course of 2,000 years the church has had times when it has become the
status quo, most often when it has adopted
the ways of the world rather than challenged them.
But
the church has also experienced many lean times as well, when folks tire of the
incessant balancing act or find that the church is not challenging them enough
and they begin to look elsewhere for ways to live out God’s Kingdom in the
world.
The
world is ever changing. And the church is ever changing.
But fear not.
The
church is not dying. It is evolving, just as it always has.
What
form it will take next we cannot say from where we are standing right now.
But
like the disciples, as we huddle in the locked room wondering what we’re called
to do next, and who we’re called to be as God’s people, we have Jesus’ prayer
to sustain us:
Creator God, as you have sent me into the world, so
I have sent them into the world. Sanctify them in the truth. I speak these
words so that they may have my joy, made complete in themselves.
Amen.
