Easter 7B, 123 May 2024. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz
- Acts 1:15-17. The crowd numbered about one hundred..
- 1 John 5:9-13. So that you may know that you have eternal life.
- John 17:6-19. So that they may have my joy made complete in themselves.
O God of our complete joy, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may and cost what it will.
In the church year, we are now as deep into the Easter Season as we can go. We have just passed the Feast of the Ascension, which is a Principal Feast Day in the Episcopal Church, but a celebration that is perhaps a little embarrassing for many progressive Christians. I mean, it’s a little embarrassing to commemorate a day when, according to the writer of Luke and Acts, a full forty days after he was raised from the dead, Jesus opened their minds to the scriptures and gave his final blessing. He then was lifted up off of the ground, and a cloud took him out of his disciples’ sight. But as my friend Brother James Koester, the Superior at St. John the Evangelist across the river in Cambridge, recently wrote: [1]
The Ascension is not rocket science, and it loses its power if we reduce it to a literal description….Instead, the Ascension is about the mystery of Christ’s present reality: risen, ascended, and glorified. This not only shall be ours one day but it is ours today.
What I often say about the Resurrection is true about the Ascension: they are both true; and they are art, not science.
Our readings for the 7th Sunday in Easter make an assumption that we all know that we are in the octave (eight days) following the Ascension. According to Luke and Acts, the Risen Lord is gone, and we are commemorating the waiting period for the arrival of the Holy Spirit, or fiery Inspiration, on Pentecost, 50 days after Easter. (You might, however, remember that in the Gospel of John the Holy Spirit had already been received on the first day of the Resurrection, before the disciples then headed immediately back to Galilee.) According to Acts, however, the main thing that happened in the ten days after the Ascension was that the apostles, who had stayed joyfully in Jerusalem, decided that they were one short of a full complement because of Judas’ defection. In the verses omitted from our first reading, Acts tells of Judas buying a field with the money he got for betraying Jesus. Once settled on his new property, Judas’ body had swelled up “and burst open in the middle, and all of his bowels gushed out.” (I kid you not: that’s what it says.) This differs from Matthew’s version, in which Judas repented and returned the money, and the priests bought property with that money. Although they are in conflict about just who bought the property, both agree that it became known as the Field of Blood. The other Gospel writers don’t address this at all. Because they have always been a part of stories about our faith, I highlight these differences.
It’s an amazing story about the selection process for Judas’ replacement. Peter suggested to a gathering of about 120 that one of the group must join the other eleven as witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection. (I love that counting people was also an issue in the early church!) Having proposed two men: Matthias and Joseph, the group then prayed that God would show them God’s preference for a replacement apostle in the casting of lots. This was back in the day before discernment committees and ordination processes with examining chaplains, Commissions on Ministry, and Standing Committees of Dioceses, even before bishops. Now you might wonder if two were proposed, why couldn’t they just take them both (you know, have a baker’s dozen of apostles), twelve plus a spare. Surely there was more than enough work to do. What’s sobering is that the Greek word for witness is the same word for martyr. It means one who testifies to truth no matter what, “come when it may and cost what it will”, even if the cost is one’s life. My guess is that’s why it was better to cast lots than to take both Joseph and Matthias. Also, it was better to cast lots than to vote, because (as the Reverend Nancy Taylor taught me many years ago) voting does violence in community.
The First Letter of John probably sounds harsh to your ears, because our ears are tuned to our history of Christian imperialism. The passage read today, which is from the end of the letter or sermon, assumes that you remember that the whole letter, which defines God as Love and says that, if you say you love God but are not loving your neighbor, you either do not know what you’re talking about or you are lying. The fundamental sign of right-relationship with God is to love one another. That is what Jesus revealed with his entire being. Having eternal life is knowing God, Who is Love. Eternal life is knowing Love. True testimony about the Son of God is testimony about Love. Believing is beloving. Truly living is truly loving according to the writer of the First Letter of John.
For the last four Sundays we’ve heard passages of the Gospel of John from what is called the Farewell Discourse. Part speech and part prayer, it takes place before Jesus is arrested, still in the room where he had washed his disciples’ feet and commanded them to care for others in the same way. They are still in the room where they have had their last meal before his crucifixion. It’s an extremely long goodbye. Perhaps for early readers of John’s Gospel, when the words were newer, they were both comforting and refreshing. I often find, however, that listening to them makes me sleepy! What in the world is he talking about?
The word that gets translated world is cosmos. The Gospel of John uses it 78 times compared with its appearance 15 times in the other three Gospels combined. The ways John uses cosmos are wide, deep, mundane, and mystical. Cosmos is a term of awe, like you’re my favorite in the whole wide world! Cosmos is a common place when compared with that which is otherworldly or out of this world! In the cosmos can mean alive versus dead; while someone was in the world means while they were alive. Cosmos can also be a place of danger, like the world is a jungle or in the real world, not inherently evil, but definitely risky. Mark Davis writes that for John: [2]
The cosmos is a place of wonder, beauty, and purpose, as well as…that place where protection, a prophetic word, or a community of resistance is required…a place crying out for transformation and the revelation of the children of God.
In this lengthy farewell Jesus is praying to God to protect those whom he loves. In the narrative his words anticipate his departure. When the words were written in the Gospel of John, Jesus and his earliest disciples had been gone for two or three generations. These words are written in the voice of Jesus to an early church feeling very threatened, very unprotected, very vulnerable, unconvinced of the dream of God. “Sanctify them in your truth,” Jesus prays, in other words: “Set them apart and make them holy in your sincerity, in your frankness, in your candor, O God.” Set them apart from what is untrue, insincere, evasive, deceptive, and unjust.
Jesus says, “I speak these things so that (for the purpose that) they may have my joy made complete in themselves.” My hunch is that this prayer is addressing a community that is not feeling his joy made complete in themselves. If they were already feeling it, he would have been praying another prayer, perhaps a thanksgiving for complete joy, or perhaps something else altogether; but here he’s praying for something they do not have. We can consider something complete, perfect or fulfilling, even while we hold in tension a recognition that all is not reconciled, that we carry grief and pain of loss in our hearts, that we often feel vulnerable and unprotected. Our truth is often all mixed in with untruth: sincerity mixed with insincerity, frankness and candor mixed with evasion and deception. Even with all of that Jesus’ prayer is, “That they may have my joy made fulfilled in themselves.” It’s worth noting that he wasn’t asking for them to be taken out of the world; and he wasn’t praying that they would go to heaven after they died. He was praying for their sense of oneness with one another and with God, for their joy in the midst of danger and sorrow, and for the distinctive truth of their witness to and in the world.
You know, joy doesn’t depend on how much money or other material resources we have (although money and resources can obscure joy, according to Jesus). Joy doesn’t depend on how old or young we are, whether our bodies are robust or frail, whether our careers are skyrocketing, plummeting, flat-lining, or non-existent. Joy has everything to do with relationships with friends and strangers, meaningful encounters and endeavors, and service to others. Joy has everything to do with generosity and patience, with humility and deep appreciation for all the blessings of this life. Joy is a gift of the Spirit; yes, and joy can be cultivated, be practiced.
And so I wonder, how is this prayer of Jesus’ a prayer for you today? What nascent joy does Jesus long for God (also known as Love) to complete, to make perfect and full in you? How is his prayer a prayer for us? What nascent joy longs to be complete, to be made perfect and full in this parish? How is his prayer for Emmanuel Church? How might we be even more set apart generously, patiently, and humbly in Love’s sincerity, frankness, and candor? What might be different if we renew our commitment to the dream of God for joy made complete in us and all around us?
Sometimes I end my sermons with a poem, and I can’t think of a better one for today than Psalm 100, which we heard in today’s motet. Listen to it again with a different translation:
Be joyful in Love, all you peoples.
Serve Love with gladness and come before Love’s presence with a song.
Know this: God is Love.
It is Love who made us and we belong to Love.
We are Love’s people and the sheep of Love’s pasture.
Enter Love’s gates with thanksgiving and go into Love’s courts with praise.
Give thanks to Love and call upon Love’s name.
For Love is good; Love’s mercy is everlasting;
And Love’s faithfulness endures from age to age.
- James Koester, Look to the Glory, “Brother, Give Us a Word” (Cambridge MA: Society of St. John the Evangelist), 18 May 2023.
- D. Mark Davis, “The Politics of Location,” May 15, 2015, https://politicaltheology.com/the-politics-of-location-john-176-19/.