Easter 7

It's graduation season. Over these next few weekends, our local high schools (not to mention our own St Paul's jr high) will be saying goodbye to their graduating classes. The students have completed their obligations, they have done all that needs to be done. And the students are ready to depart; to move on to the next thing and to take their next step.
The students have prepared for their departure. They have prepared personally and academically. They have grown in their personal responsibility on their march toward adulthood. They have grown in the competency and knowledge with the academic subjects: they have met the necessary standards and completed the necessary courses to make them ready to take on the next thing.
As we observe the departure of seniors from their high school class or seventh graders from our own seventh grade class, we also take note of another departure – not the departure of students, but the departure of a teacher. And not just any teacher, the teacher. The one who came to teach and to preach the Word of God as the very Word Made Flesh. Today we observe the departure of Jesus from his disciples. This past Thursday was Ascension Day. The day 40 days after Easter when Jesus was taken up into the heavens and returned to His heavenly Father after he had completed his work on earth.
Just as our high school and jr high students are preparing to depart because they have fulfilled their obligations in school, In our Gospel text today we see Jesus as He is preparing to depart because he in on the verge of fulfilling his obligations. Jesus speaks the words of our text as he was preparing for his death and the culmination of the things he was sent among us to do.
While students prepare for the departure that is graduation with study and with testing and with course work, Jesus prepared for His departure with teaching & preaching, He prepared for his departure with his perfect sacrificial death and resurrection to pay the penalty for the sin of the whole world. And finally, as we see here in our text, Jesus prepares for His departure with prayer. Jesus prays for his disciples. Just as the parents of our graduates are sure to be praying for their children who will be out of the house, away at college or working, and off on their own; Jesus prays for those who he has taught and guarded and kept and who will be out performing the tasks that He has prepared for them to do..
In our text, Jesus prays that God the Father would guard those who had been given to him as his disciples. “I am no longer in the world,” prays Jesus, “but they are in the world and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in Your name that you have given to me that they may be one even as we are one.”
“Guard them. Keep them. Watch over them.” This is Jesus' prayer. Jesus understands, he knows, he foresees the dangers that the disciples will face. He knows that he will be sending them into a world that will not receive them with warmth and welcome but that will hate them, that will seek to silence them and that will seek to intimidate them and force them into submission. Jesus prays that His Heavenly Father would preserve them from the attacks that they are sure to undergo.
As we pray our own prayers, we would do well to take note of Jesus' prayer, to notice the things that he prays for. His prayer demonstrates a much greater faith and wisdom than what ours so often do. More often than not, when we pray, the things that we pray for have to do with the immediate concerns of our bodies. These days and under our current economic climate, there are likely to be lots of prayers that have to do with employment, with finding or keeping or maintaining a well paying job. Because of the constant talk of the economy we are worried about our finances. Or, a recent concern has been the swine flu – perhaps people have prayed that God would keep them healthy and protect them from this virus or from some other type of illness.
God has given to us the gift of our bodies. God is absolutely concerned to provide for the care of our bodies. This includes your health, preserving you from sickness so that you don't get sick in the first place and/or helping you to heal when you find that you are. This also includes your occupation. God knows you need a place to live, a roof over your head, clothes for your body and food to eat and he provides these things for you.
We often become very overly concerned with the pursuit of these things and are tempted to think that they are the most important, the most necessary of the things that God should provide. They are not. They are further down the list. They are, at best, secondary. When Jesus prays his prayer, he doesn't even mention those things. God knows that we need them and He will provide them for us in abundance. Instead Jesus prays for that thing that we most need. Jesus prays that God keep us in the name that he has given to us. That he keep us in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the name that was given to us in our baptism, Jesus prays that God the father would preserve us in the Christian faith.
To be preserved in the Name is the same as to receive the Word and the preaching of Jesus. It is to be a Christian. To be a Christian is to have God's name. It is to have written into our hearts the Word of Christ; that He is our savior, that He is the one who has died for us to save us from sin. That our salvation is caught up in him.
In His prayer Jesus says of the disciples and of us, that he has given to us His Word and that the world has hated us. The world hates those who bear the name of Christ. The world hates Christians.
I recently saw a bumper sticker that read, “I don't have any problem with God, it's his fan club I don't like.” Now, to some extent Christians have made themselves targets of the world's hatred because of their own at times bad behavior and at other times short-sitedness. We need to remember who we are talking to. Christians live in two kingdoms. In the right hand kingdom the Gospel rules and the Word of God holds sway. In the left hand kingdom, that is to say, in the civil realm we are ruled by the law, and thus by reason. At times Christians loose sight of this. While Christians can engage the world in topics of abortion, the definition of marriage and even questions of science we would do well to use God's gift of human reason. We would do well to remember Paul's example who used the scriptures as his authority when talking in the synagogues, but then used secular poets and philosophers as his authority when he spoke in the Areopagus.
That being the case, there is a hatred of Christians and people of faith. There is a cultural push to cast Christians in the light of ignorance and stupidity. There is an intolerance that is unleashed on those who do not hold to atheistic and pseudo-scientific ideals.
Paul talks about a man of lawlessness. The spirit of the Antichrist who will come into the world. Paul tells us that the spirit of lawlessness is already at work in the world. There is a desire among sinful men to be a law unto themselves, to have no rule of law, to be able to wiggle out from under morality if it suits your purposes. We want to make morality situational; you do your best to obey the commandments, but lets face it, there are times when being moral is just impractical and you do what you've got to do. We are all lawless. We all struggle with lawlessness in our own hearts and in our own lives and we all have behaved as if the law did not apply to us.
Jesus was only too well aware of this struggle that we would find ourselves embroiled in, that we would be tempted to see ourselves as above the law, and outside the law. We would be tempted to dismiss the law when it did not fit our needs or when it got in the way of our goals. And so Jesus prayed for his disciples. Jesus prayed for us. “Keep them in the name that you have given to me.”
When we are tempted to see ourselves as above the law, when we are tempted to believe that the law does not apply to us, the danger is that we forget how greatly we need God's forgiveness. We tell ourselves that God's law has not applied to us because of our special circumstances. We justify ourselves in setting aside the truth and therefore we don't need Jesus.
We do need Jesus. We are absolutely sunk without Jesus. Every last one of us is corrupt through to the core, is hell bent on destruction and is convinced that we are not that bad. We need Jesus who teaches us the fullness of God's law. We need Jesus who teaches us the depth of our falleness. We need Jesus who reveals to us the height of God's forgiveness and love. Who while we were yet sinners came to die for us on the cross, to pay for all of sin and to save us from our certain destruction in hell.
Jesus prays for us that we may be one even as He and the Father are one. When we have heard the preaching of Christ, when we have taken into our own hearts the truth of God's Word, it proclaims us to be sinners. What causes division among sinners is pride that points out the sins in others and denies the sin in the self. When we have all seen ourselves as equally sinful we are unified in that we are condemned. We all deserve God's punishment. We all deserve to go to hell. Likewise then are we unified in forgiveness. While we all deserve hell, we have been given heaven. While we have deserved punishment we have been given blessing. While we have deserved destruction we have been given life. We are unified as common recipients of God's grace, his love, his peace, his blessing, his forgiveness, his salvation.
When in faith we see ourselves as bringing nothing to the table and taking away from it every good gift that God has to offer, we are nothing but joy filled. We are unified in the fullness of Joy that God has done with us that very thing that we have not deserved. We are brought together by the satisfaction of salvation. What can we express but joy? What can our hearts express but praise and thanks to a God who has dealt so graciously and generously with us.
Jesus was on his way. His time on earth was nearly done. He knew he was coming to the end. He also knew his disciples and the would-be Christians who would follow them; he knew us. We are foolish. We are sinful. We are prideful. We are easily misled and easily deceived. So he prayed for us. He prayed that we would be preserved, that we would not so easily abandon all the good gifts he had given to us.
Christ has prayed for you. May you be preserved in the blessings of salvation he has won for you.