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“Already
Glorified”
a sermon by
Thomas L. Jenkins
Text: John 17:20-26
“The glory that you have given me I have given to them, so that they may
be one, as we are one.”
Dear Sisters and Brothers we
have just shared in one of the most beautiful prayers Christ makes on
our behalf. One of the
words of Christ that we may keep in our hearts, in what we are to
believe and hold onto, is that Christ is the same yesterday, today, and
tomorrow. Who Christ is and
what Christ does is always the same (in terms of love) in our lives.
In this passage, he has looked up into heaven, into the heart of
God the Father, and he has prayed for us.
And Jesus Christ is still praying this very prayer, for us, in
our lives, right here and now.
To the church in Rome, St. Paul wrote, “Likewise
the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as
we ought, but the very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.
(RM 8:26)” None of us truly know how to pray, perfectly.
And we often have desires to know exactly how to pray and how to
have the best kind of faith. The
good news is that we have a Lord, who is fully human and fully God, who
knows each one of us totally, and who has experienced this life’s most
serious suffering, death, and separation.
He has heard our cries for faith and prayer, and will carry us
through what we are experiencing, out of his love for us, and his own
accomplishment of human knowledge and faith.
When we are suffering through something, one of the best pieces of news
we hear is when family members, friends, and colleagues call us on the
phone, or look us in the eyes, and tell us that they are praying for us.
This makes us feel better. It
gives us hope in God. We
think of the power of prayer to be enriched when we learn about so many
people who are praying for us. And
this sure is a great sign from God.
However, the best sign, the greatest revelation being given to us in
this context, is that Christ is praying for us too.
Jesus Christ lives vicariously for us.
There is a special sense in which Jesus lives in our place.
This is essential to understanding the dynamics of this whole
gospel passage. Jesus is
living for us and Jesus is living in us.
We often place most of our understanding of Jesus in the truth that he
died on the cross for us. Every
Sunday School child knows that Jesus died for us.
He did die a substitutionary death.
He suffered in our place. This
is the one area where he really did replace us.
But the point of speaking of the vicarious humanity of Christ is
to say He presently takes our place, not only to take away
our guilt on the cross, which he certainly did, but also to continually
be the substitute of our entire human existence.
Even this might sound a little frightening at first if we hear it by
thinking he has replaced us completely.
That kind of substitution is only applied to real death.
Jesus has not replaced us in life.
Yes, he has taken our place within his new resurrected humanity,
but that is so he can share who he is with us.
Jesus Christ is with God the Father in the Holy Spirit, in your
and my new eternal human nature. He
is standing in our place, but not to replace us, rather to give his
humanity to us as our new life experience.
Christ’s prayer is “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also
on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they
all may be one.” He is praying for his first disciples and he is praying for
you and me, and each and very one of us.
One part of his prayer is that we may be one, yes with each
other, but also with the first believers of his.
Of course, there is much of what it means to be “one.”
When we have experiences with people in our lives, where we can
only describe them as being in touch with one another, seeing things in
the same way, feeling much the same about issues; we call this coming
together as one. This is describing something of a very deep personal
relationship. Christ is
praying for us, as his brothers and sisters, to be one.
And we certainly hope and pray, and actually know, that this very
kind of oneness is happening in our lives here in our church.
All this being true, something ever deeper and more astonishing is being
shown to us here. Christ is
praying that we all may be one.
Now, let’s hear this very carefully.
Our Lord Jesus Christ is praying for us each and every day in our
lives that we will be at one with his first disciples.
How many times have we had the thoughts in our minds that we wish we
could have known Jesus as his first disciples did?
I wish I knew what he looked like.
I wish I were sitting there under his first teaching during the Sermon
on the Mount. I wish I
could have been like that lady who crawled up behind him to merely to
touch his robe, so that I could be healed.
Don’t we have such thoughts, desires, and questions?
Well, we are being told this morning, that our Lord Jesus Christ is in
us, at one with us, and praying for us each and every day that we have
the very same kind of faith, hope, and love that his first disciples
had. And I promise you; God
the Father answers all the prayers Jesus prays for us.
In his letter to the Ephesians, the apostle Paul began his writing with
a burst of praise: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly
places in Christ Jesus.” This
is not from some bored old man trying to sound religious, so he can
appear self-righteous with God. This
is an outburst of genuine praise that comes from the excitement that
Paul has seen in what God has done for us in Christ.
This man has seen that something quite breathtaking and glorious
has already taken place in Jesus Christ and that it involves us—you,
me, and the whole world.
Jesus is praying for us to be one in this.
This very same passion and excitement is to be ours.
Again, let us listen to these words: “The glory that you
have given me I have given them…so that the world may know that you
have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”
God, may we hear what we have just been told?
We have already been blessed with every spiritual blessing in
Christ. Christ has given us the very same glory that God the Father
gave to him. And God the
Father loves you exactly the same as he loves Jesus.
These words can be almost overwhelming.
It is not that we have to fully understand them when we hear
them. We do not have to be
able to explain them perfectly, in order to believe them.
All we have to do is say “YES!”
“Okay, God I hear you. You
are telling me things about the truth of your gospel that are
overwhelming. But, I hear
you. And I do need to grow
in knowing more of what this means in my life.”
I remember having lunch with a young man from a church I was in, in
Mississippi. We were beginning to talk about this aspect of coming to be
astonished by the good news of God being for us. And he said to me, “One day I finally came to see and
realize and I, in my own form, in my own shape, in my own history, am
Jesus Christ.”
I know these words sound weird. And
he was not actually meaning that he is Jesus.
But, he had come, in his own faithful experience with God, to see
his oneness with God in Jesus.
This is wonderful. Today is
the 7th Sunday of Easter.
In the Bible, the number 7 means completion.
Next Sunday is Pentecost Sunday, where we celebrate our being
filled with the Holy Spirit. Today
may also be our Pentecost Sunday.
Let us pray.
Amen
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