Ascension Sunday
May 28, 2017
Acts 1:1-14; Ephesians 1:15-23; John 17:1-11
The
picture in your bulletin this morning is a prayer labyrinth. Has
anyone ever seen one or used one? There is one over at Johns Hopkins Bayview
Hospital that they put in a year or two ago. Another option is to pray as you
move your finger along the path. I first came across a prayer labyrinth at my
sending church in North Carolina. The fellowship hall there is not a rectangle
shape but a circle and during a season when the spiritual development of the
church was really developing, we bought a floor-sized prayer labyrinth that
took up most of the space of the hall. One year it was put up during Holy Week
and you could sign up for a shift of a prayer vigil that was to last the whole
week and come and pray by walking around the labyrinth during your shift. So
(this is the kind of 24 year old I was), I did. There were some basic
instructions for walking an indoor floor labyrinth, like wearing only socks,
with a basket of socks available in case you didn’t have any on. There was soft
music playing and soft lighting. And you entered the path. And then you just
keep following it, and you follow it all the way around to the center, where
some tissue boxes were placed and you could stop in the center and stay until
you ready to follow the labyrinth back out again. I didn’t know exactly what to
pray when I entered the labyrinth, and so I started to just pray for each
person in my life. I said a name with each footstep, not moving to the next
step until I had the next name in my mind. Nothing specific about each person,
just their name, and I worked my way through my family and friends, through my
students I was teaching, through my extended family, through the names of each
person whose life touched mine. I reached the end of my list before I reached
the center, and by then my mind and heart could move into deeper praying. But
that was where I began, and where I began every time I have walked a labyrinth.
It focuses my mind, by praying for and naming each person given to me.
This
morning’s Scripture readings are a combination from Ascension Day and the 7th
Sunday after Easter. It was important to read of Jesus’ ascension to heaven,
lest we find ourselves wondering where is he now, post-resurrection. And it was
important to read this prayer Jesus prays before leaving the disciples. His
prayer for his disciples, for the people given to him, is not too different
from my praying for each person given to me. Jesus prays, “Father, the time has
come. Glorify your Son, so that the Son can glorify you. You gave him authority
over everyone so that he could give eternal life to everyone you gave him. And
eternal life means to know you, the only true God, and to know Jesus Christ,
whom you sent. I have shown your glory on earth; I have finished the work you
gave me to do.”[1]
And Jesus continues, praying for his disciples, “asking for the help that his
loved ones needed at that time and would need in the future.”[2]
This is the same thing we ask for our loved ones, for God to help them, both
now and down the road. Jesus knows that keeping the disciples “united [would
be] a challenge. Without cohesion, they would not survive.”[3]
Back in March I shared with y’all a quote from a change theorist who said that
the best way to prepare for change and for the unknown was to attend to the
quality of our relationships.[4] I think that’s what Jesus is doing here. He’s
praying for his disciples to be united because it’s the best way they can
prepare for the coming change of not having Jesus with them in the flesh
anymore. We prepare for change by caring for our relationships, including
praying for the people given to us. There are three specific truths I want to
pull out from Jesus’ prayer for his loved ones.
The
first is farther on in the prayer. Jesus says to God the Father, “I have
revealed your name to the people you gave me from this world. They were yours…”
Before anything else, we are God’s.
We belong to God. The verse from 1 Chronicles, “All things come of thee, O
Lord…” that we pray at the offering: that includes us. We are God’s. In a
couple weeks we’ll read the story of creation from Genesis 1, when God created
everything, including people. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth,” and on the sixth day, God made people, in God’s own image. Imago dei is the Latin phrase, the image
of God. God made us, intricately and wondrously weaved us together. In the
words of the psalm, we are fearfully and wonderfully made, knitted together in
the womb.[5]
We come from God. Before we belong to anyone or anywhere else, we belong to
God. You may hear the phrase, remember who you are and whose you are, and the
answer is we are God’s. In one of my favorite passages, through the prophet
Isaiah, God says, “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by
name, you are mine.”[6]
God calls us by name. Just like I prayed by naming each person in my life, God
calls each of us by name, because we belong to God. And belonging to God means
is that “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the
rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not
be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the
Holy One of Israel, your Savior.” We are God’s, and God is with us through
thick and thin, regardless of where in the labyrinth of life we may find
ourselves. God does not leave us or abandon us. God does not leave us alone.
Besides
always staying with us, God also gives
us to each other. Jesus prays, “They were yours, and you gave them to me.” We are given to each other. We are given to
our families. We are given to our
communities. We are given to each other, “to have and to hold, from this
forward.”[7]
And it is a bit like marriage vows, being given to each other “for better, for
worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health, to love and to cherish.”[8]
God gives us to each other to care for each other, to love each other, to pray
for each other. If you don’t care for the marriage analogy, how about baptism? “Through
the sacrament of baptism we are initiated into Christ’s holy church…” and
Christ’s holy church promises to nurture the person being baptized, “that by
your teaching and example they may be guided to accept God’s grace for
themselves, to profess their faith openly, and to lead a Christian life.”[9]
We are given to each other by God. In The United Methodist Church, both a
baptism and the reception of a new member end with that person being commended to our love and care and we,
the congregation, are instructed to “Do all in your power to increase their
faith, confirm their hope, and perfect them in love.”[10]
God gives us to each other. God commends us to each other to love and care for
each other, for our families, for our neighborhood, for our church family, for
our school, for our coworkers, for our community. Who are all the people you
would list if you were to name in prayer each person whose life touches yours? Who
are the people given to you to love and care? Let’s take a moment and name some
of them out loud.
[Pause]
Amen.
Finally,
to finish that sentence from Jesus’ prayer, “I have revealed your name to the
people you gave me… They were yours and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.”[11]
We, God’s people, keep God’s Word. We
give ourselves back to God by keeping God’s Word. There’s a billboard on I-95
going into Baltimore that says, “Real Christians obey Jesus’ teachings.” We are
God’s; we belong to God. God gives us to each other to love and care. According
to the Bible of all the rules and laws and commandments and teachings, Jesus says
the greatest commandment is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and
with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first
commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as
yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”[12]
Love God. Love your neighbor. Everything else goes back to those two
commandments. Love your maker. Love the people given to you to love. That’s how
we keep God’s Word. That’s how we honor God and show thanks and love to our
creator, redeemer, and sustainer.
These
three years, y’all have been the people given to me to love, and my family and
me to you. Thank you. And thank God, for the privilege and honor of serving God
with you these three years. We are
God’s and we are given to each other. Sometimes for all our lives, like with
our families. Sometimes only for a season, like in school or with Methodist
pastors. I can no longer name all of my students I used to pray for. Instead, I
can name y’all. And together, we keep God’s Word. We love each other. We care
for each other. We encourage each other. We pray for each other.
If
you ever have the opportunity to pray using a labyrinth, please don’t feel
obligated to do it the same way as me. I simply shared it as an example of
naming and praying for those whom God has given to me just as Jesus prayed for
those God gave to him. This week, take time in your prayers to name the people
God has given to you. You can be like
Paul in our Ephesians reading who never “stops giving thanks to God for you
when I remember you in my prayers.” Thank God for each person God has put in
your life. Thank God for each season that person has walked with you through.
Whether good times or bad, sickness or health, the storms of life or a calm
sea, we are given to each other to love and to cherish. Thanks be to God. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment