1 John 5.9-13
John 17.6-19
Today’s readings are perhaps
not the easiest in the Easter season. The Gospel in particular may seem very
abstract and philosophical. Nothing happens in the passage we heard just now, there
is no action or dialogue, and indeed Jesus is not even teaching anything to his
disciples. Instead he is praying to the Father for his disciples and we are listening
in on his prayer. But it is this prayer that the Church wants us to pay
attention to, on this Sunday before Pentecost.
What is it then that Jesus
prays for, on behalf of his disciples, and how does it connect with our lives?
What difference does it make?
Firstly, he asks that they may
be protected in his name, so that they may be one, as Jesus and the Father are
one. And secondly he asks that they may be sanctified in the truth.
So what does this mean for the
disciples of Jesus? What does it mean, in fact, for us, because we are disciples
of Jesus too?
Truth is a big word here.
“Sanctify them in the truth”, Jesus prays. When Jesus was on trial before
Pontius Pilate he said that he had come into the world to bear witness to the
truth. And Pilate had replied, “what is truth?”. He got no answer. Because the
truth, in John’s Gospel, is not a set of ideas or facts that we have to agree
to. The truth is a person. “I am the way, the truth and the life”, says Jesus,
“no-one comes to the Father except through me”. The truth was standing in front
of Pontius Pilate, but he could not see it.
Jesus is the truth, not as a
set of ideas or facts but as God’s living expression of himself. Jesus is the
Word, the truth, of the Father. “Sanctify them in the truth”, says Jesus, “your
word is truth”.
To be sanctified is to be made
holy, dedicated and set apart. It is to belong to God. What we hold sacred is
what matters to us most. So if the truth is a person, to be sanctified in the
truth is to be in a relationship with that person in which we belong to God, a
relationship that matters more than anything else.
In other words Jesus in his
prayer is asking that his disciples may be drawn into the relationship that he
has with the Father, the life of God the Holy Trinity. God is the Father of
Jesus, and if we are in Jesus, “sanctified in the truth”, then God is our
Father too, and he sends his Spirit into our hearts.
To be sanctified in the truth,
then, is to be in the relationship with Jesus by which we can call God our
Father. And to be sanctified in that relationship, dedicated and set apart,
means that this is the highest purpose and centre and goal of our lives.
So this prayer of Jesus, which
may have seemed to be very abstract and disconnected from real life, in fact is
about life where it is most personal, most real. It is about our dwelling in
the relationship with Jesus in which we call God Father. That is the most
important thing there is, because it is what we were created for.
In fact to be sanctified in the
truth can be very real and concrete indeed. To give an example: I was in
Jerusalem just over a week ago on pilgrimage, and like many pilgrims we
followed the way of the Cross, the Via Dolorosa, through the walled city. The end
of the Via Dolorosa is historical – Calvary and the empty tomb are located
beyond reasonable dispute in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. But it’s by no
means clear where Pilate’s judgement hall was, and the way of the cross winds
through streets that are mediaeval, not first century. For part of the way it
goes through the souk, squeezed between shops selling spices and souvenirs or
hung with carpets and feather dusters.
So, following this route, I was
beginning to feel that it was all rather disconnected and abstract. What did
this really have to do with the Way of the Cross? And then we turned a corner –
the ninth station was in front of us, Jesus falls for the third time. The ninth
station is in a narrow street outside the headquarters of the Coptic Church.
And strung across the street was a banner showing the thirty Coptic martyrs
killed in Libya by ISIS just a couple of months ago. Then the tenth station was
by the Ethiopian church, and there was a banner showing the Ethiopian
Christians killed in Libya even more recently.
And suddenly the Way of the
Cross was very real indeed, and completely up to date. Here were pictures of
people who were alive a few weeks ago. But their relationship with God in
Jesus, the relationship in which they called God Father, was more important to
them than their lives. These were truly people who were sanctified in the
truth.
Elsewhere in the Holy Land we
encountered Christian communities who were absolutely committed to staying
where they were, even in increasingly difficult circumstances, committed to
peace and dialogue and reconciliation, determined to stay and make a
difference. We don’t hear much about them in the news here, but the Christians
in the Holy Land make a huge difference to the lives of all communities there
by running schools, hospitals and orphanages, by being committed to the poor
and excluded and taking risks for peace. To be committed in that way, also, is
to be sanctified in the truth. It is to see that being able to call God Father
is the most important thing there is, for us and for others, the one thing
above all that changes how we live in the world and how we value our fellow
human beings.
Radical commitment to the poor
and excluded is nearer to our experience than the risk of martyrdom – though let
us remember that the word “martyr” just means “witness”, and we are all
witnesses to Jesus Christ. It is certainly part of the way in which we are
committed to being the church in this place, making a real difference with the
people among whom we are set, amid the many needs of our society, which I
suspect are going to get more acute over the next five years.
Jesus the risen Lord calls us
into relationship with him, the relationship in which we, with him, can call
God our Father. And Jesus sends us, as he was sent, to draw others into that
relationship of love. He sanctifies us in the truth, so that our relationship
with him is the most important thing there is, the one thing that make life
totally different for us and for all those whom Jesus is calling, through us,
into that same relationship with him.
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