Tuesday, May 30, 2017

The People You Gave Me

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.


[1] John 17:1b-4, combination of CEB and GNB
[3] Ibid.
[5] Psalm 139:13b-14a
[6] Isaiah 43:1
[7] UMH 867
[8] Ibid.
[9] UMH 33-34
[10] UMH 38
[11] John 17:6
[12] Matthew 22:37-40

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