[Jesus said] “They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent Me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”
+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Twenty years ago this month, I graduated from Nashotah House seminary in Wisconsin. As a gift to myself for graduating, I went on a guided tour of the UK led by one of my seminary professors. It was marvelous! It was fun being a part of a group and it was fun moving around from place to place. Two of the places that we visited really stood out for me: Iona and Lindisfarne. Iona is a remote coastal outpost in western Scotland, on the Irish Sea. Lindisfarne is in northern England, near the Scottish border on the North Sea. Both sites are known in history as the locations of famous Celtic monasteries. Celtic monks from Iona and Lindisfarne not only created a vibrant Christian community, where God was worshipped and beautiful manuscripts were made, but they also served as a base of operations for missionary work throughout the British Isles and Western Europe during the Dark Ages. These monasteries flourished during the 6th, 7th, and 8th centuries, after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West. Unlike earlier Christians who lived during the time of the Roman Empire, they did not have the benefit of Rome’s sophisticated transportation system, nor the peace and prosperity that Rome provided. Nor were they located in major cities, such as London, Paris, or Rome, but they chose to operate from remote areas. Yet they took the Gospel to places where it had never been preached, and to places where the Church had once existed, but had reverted to paganism. They took the Gospel to Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales, France, Switzerland, and Germany. They did not follow conquering armies, but came as peaceful missionaries, who brought the light of the Gospel and preserved the knowledge of earlier times through the copying of manuscripts. They lived in the time we call the Dark Ages, a time of chaos, warfare, with no stability or safety and a loss of knowledge. These Celtic monks were in the world, but they were not of the world. It was their zeal for the Gospel that led them to go out from their remote outposts to difficult and sometimes dangerous places. In a dark time, they brought the light of the Gospel and of knowledge to places that desperately needed it. Thomas Cahill wrote a book about what these men did, and he titled it, “How the Irish Saved Civilization.” The monks certainly must have understood the words that Jesus spoke to the disciples in today’s Gospel from St. John. In His valedictory address to His disciples, Jesus prays the High Priestly Prayer over them. It is His prayer of blessing, of exhortation, and of commissioning. Jesus is looking ahead to the time when He is no longer with them, after He has completed His mission on earth and ascended back to the Father. Jesus knows that they will start off as a small group of people in a hostile world. They have already witnessed the hostility to Jesus and His ministry, which will culminate in His arrest and crucifixion. And Jesus knows that even after His resurrection and ascension, that hostility will still be present and ongoing. So, Jesus prays that they would be properly equipped to go out into a dark and hostile work to proclaim the life saving message of the Gospel. First, Jesus prays, “Father, keep them in your name, which you have given Me, that they may be one, even as we are one.” Jesus prays that we, who are His holy and set apart people, would remain connected to the Father through the Son. This connection is to be as strong and as intimate as the Father’s connection to the Son. The organization that Christ established to accomplish this is the Church. Through the Church, we enjoy fellowship God and with other believers, we receive the Sacraments, and we are taught from the Word of God. Furthermore, the Church serves as the place of refuge from a hostile and dark world. Just as the Celtic monks established monasteries as refuges from a hostile barbarian Europe, so the Church is our safe place where we can worship God, love each other, learn the Word of God, and then reach out to a lost and hurting world. Second, Jesus prays, “I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.” Although the world is a dark and dangerous place, Jesus did not take us out of it, but instead, calls us to go out into it. Rather than escape this hostile world, we can expect God to protect us and help us as we go out in His Name. Now this protection does not always mean protection from physical harm; throughout history Christians have suffered persecution—in the Book of Acts we read about how the early Christians and Paul suffered the loss of property, beatings, imprisonment, and even death because they believed in Jesus Christ. What Jesus is praying for is that we would remain spiritually secure in Him and would have the power to resist the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Third, Jesus prays, “Sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth.” Jesus prays that you and I would remain in the faith that was given to us from the Apostles; that we would be made holy by the Word of God. With this prayer, Jesus foreshadows His own great and mighty acts which He accomplished for our salvation, His death, resurrection, and ascension. Because of what Christ has done, we are sanctified and saved to be His people who are in the world, but not of it. Finally, Jesus prays, “As you sent Me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake, I consecrate Myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.” Jesus forshadows the Great Commission that He gives the disciples at His ascension. He commissions them to go out into the world in His Name, in the same way that the Father sent Him into the world for the salvation of the world. The Church is to continue the ministry of the Son of God to bring life and salvation to humanity enslaved by sin and death. The Church’s power and authority comes from Christ Himself, who, through His death, resurrection and ascension has sanctified the Church, and imparted His divine life into the Church. The past few weeks in Adult Sunday School, we’ve been talking about the Ten Commandments. Our discussion has caused many of us to lament the current state of American culture and society that has forgotten the Ten Commandments and has forgotten God. While American seems in many ways to be more prosperous than it was sixty years ago, morally and spiritually, it is a much darker place. And throughout what was once known as the Christian West, the Gospel has been forgotten and paganism has reasserted itself. That’s where we come in. Jesus Christ has commissioned you and me to go out into the world in His name and with His authority and power. And we can look to those faithful and brave Celtic Christian monks as our inspiration and an example. In a dark and dangerous time they went out into the world with the light of the Gospel, bringing truth and salvation to people who had never heard about Jesus Christ or who had forgotten about Him. They didn’t come from large cities, but from simple outposts of faith in remote areas. St. John the Divine Church is a small mustard seed of faith, a small outpost in a darkening world. Jesus Christ has commissioned us to bring the light of the Gospel to dark places. As St. Peter writes in 1 Peter 2:9, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.” +In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
October 2024
Categories |