Keeping the Window Open

Keeping the Window Open
John 17:1-11; Acts 1:6-11; 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11

Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor Randy Pausch was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and succumbed to the disease in 2008. He left a wife and three young children, the youngest of which would hardly remember him. He wanted to leave a legacy for his children, a personal statement about who he was, what he believed, what he dreamed of, what he loved and celebrated. He gave one last lecture at Carnegie Mellon, and expanded it into a book which became a best seller.

This past week a true American treasure died at the age of 86. Maya Angelou matured from a damaged childhood through a tumultuous young adulthood to become more than merely adept as a singer, an actor, a linguist fluent in six languages, a writer, a professor, a mentor, a legend, and a purveyor of poetry for presidents and world leaders. Her early memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, began a literary publishing career that ended with a poem on behalf of the American people on the occasion of the death of Nelson Mandela, “His Day Is Done.” Her final public statement, via her Twitter account, sums up so much of what she has said and written for seven decades. She wrote May 23, “Listen to yourself and in that quietude you might hear the voice of God.”

According to the gospel writer John, Jesus gave the disciples a long (five chapters), urgent, passionate, prophetic last speech as they were gathered in the upper room that night before he went to the garden to be betrayed, arrested, tried, and executed. He began the farewell discourse by washing the feet of the disciples and concluded it with a poignant petitioning prayer. Like Maya Angelou’s last tweet and Randy Pausch’s last lecture, Jesus’ words were meant to be a legacy. They were for more than the ears of the immediate disciples.

Just hours from his crucifixion, Jesus focused on those things that mattered most from his entire ministry. For one last time, he wished to sum up and reiterate the things that were at the center of his life. Jesus spoke knowing that the Spirit, whom he has promised to attend the disciples, is already present and active in the hearts of believers and is more than able to keep his message alive.

The sum of Jesus’ message can be stated in two words: “Know God.” He had said earlier in his discourse in response to Philip’s request for Jesus to show the disciples the Father, “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been with you all this time? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).

Jesus’ final hopes are not a celebration of himself, but the recognition that his life and ministry are windows into God’s love and saving purposes. Jesus prays that people will come to know God through him.

We are too used to thinking of “knowing” in terms of data, such as knowing the multiplication table or the periodic table or Morse Code. Knowing God is not an intellectual activity. Knowing God has nothing to do with the cognitive domain. We may know some things about God, but that is not what knowing God means.

Knowing God is an experience that draws believers into a new reality. Knowing God changes, shifts, transforms people in such ways that eternal realities impinge upon temporal realities. God’s vision for love and justice and service is realized in relationships and communities of faith right now, not just at some far distant time. Our knowing God will be visible in the manner in which we love.

That commandment to love is also part of Jesus’ farewell discourse: “I give you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, so you also must love each other. This is how everyone will know that you are my disciples, when you love each other” (John 13:34-35).

That’s the contrast between God’s realm and the realm of human governance. When God’s rule is in full effect, everyone will love each other. The rule of the world is love yourself first and if there is any love left over, then you love other people. That’s why Jesus told his hearers the second part of the great commandment: “You will love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31). If we love our neighbor as much as we love ourselves, that is, if we accord our neighbor the dignity, the grace, the recognition of humanity that we expect to get and demand to receive, then we declare that our neighbor is our equal, not our inferior, not our superior, for we are all created in the image of God. Abusing another person physically, socially, mentally, sexually, psychologically, economically, or politically is an affront to God and an admission that we do not know God.

If truly knowing God is an attribute of a disciple of Christ, one of the original twelve or one two millennia removed, then that same approach is true for communities of disciples. Jesus prayed earnestly for the disciples whom God had given to him. “They were yours and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you.... I’m praying for them...because they are yours.”

It is hard to be prayed for. That suggests some sort of weakness, illness, need. Yet all of us, as the choir’s anthem several weeks ago affirmed, are “standing in the need of prayer.”

We routinely pray for our friends in long-term health care and those experiencing temporary physical need. We pray for health, for discernment, for release, for strength (as we have been praying for Meriam Ibrahim). We pray for safety and success, for ourselves and others. But to be the object of the prayers of other people is a very different experience. We have experienced the effect of prayer on our lives. We have felt spiritual energy that can only be explained as the work of God lifted up on the thoughts and words and sighs and tears of others.

It is a humbling, awe-striking realization to think that Christ two thousand years ago prayed for you and for me. He prayed for our strength. He prayed that we would truly know God. He prayed that we would withstand the pressures of the world, so many of which go against the ways of God by demeaning and debasing people by ripping their dignity and humanity from them. Jesus prayed for us because we all need God’s protection from our own worst impulses as well as those of other people whom God also created and loves. Jesus prayed for God’s grace and providential care. We can rely on it as he did.

Great divisions threaten the unity of Christ’s community more today than at any time in our memory, and seemingly as great as at any time in the history of the church. The poignancy of Jesus’ prayer that believers be one cannot be missed. He prays from the context of the profound intimacy which he enjoys with the Father and with the Spirit (variously described as advocate, companion, or comforter). The Trinitarian relationship gives a model for how Christians are to interact. Father, Son and Spirit are related but dynamically independent. But they are not necessarily identical in thought and practice. Yet together, following Christ’s lead, they provide a window in order to know God, the full God, the complete God, the God who creates, empowers and redeems the groaning creation, including human beings.

As we experience the work of the Spirit enabling us to love each other more perfectly and fully, we participate in the work of revealing God to the world. We need to keep open the window which Christ was. The Spirit helps us to see the dirt, the smudges, the grime that makes our windows less than useful in presenting God to the world, or for that matter, in knowing God ourselves. May we confess our dirty windows and seek Christ’s forgiving Windex wipe.

May we know God through Christ, who has shown God to us. May the world see Christ in us and know God through us. May we be one with Christ and with each other, unified in love for each other, for creation, for eternity.

General source: Nancy J. Ramsey, “John 17:1-11, Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word (Lousiville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), Year A, vol. 2, p. 538ff.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.

Copyright 2014 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.