I had the privilege recently of being asked to preach at
First Presbyterian Church in Salt Lake.
The new sermon series was on the Church’s relationship with the world,
and the topic of the week was “non-conforming” from Jesus’ prayer for his
disciples in John 17:6-19 [full text here]. I thought
I’d share an edited version J
*****
I was about ten years old when my family started going to
church. It was a little
non-denominational Christian church in the small town where I grew up, and on
one of my first Sundays, someone gave me a pocket-sized copy of the Gospel of
John. As a ten-year-old I didn’t
understand half of it as I read it, but that didn’t matter… I carried it around
with me all the time. As I kept
leafing through that little Gospel and we kept going to that church, I learned
very quickly that what Jesus mentions in John 17 is a large part of the reality
of being Christian:
That we are in this world, but not of this world.
That the world would hate us because we don’t belong to it... but that we can “take heart!” as Jesus said, because he has overcome the world.
In other words, that we are a non-conforming people.
There’s something about being in relationship with Christ—being
part of the Church—that should make us look and speak and act
differently from the rest of the world.
I began to notice even at that young age that
“non-conforming” could actually be pretty easy on the surface level. I started listening to Christian music, found
a Christian bookstore, made friends that went to the Christian school, and
started buying those plastic bracelets that said “WWJD” on them (shout out to
anyone who did youth group in the nineties).
I learned that I could surround myself with a distinct
Christian subculture that would reinforce my new identity and keep me a
little safer from the rest of the world.
And in many ways it did: I had a
great childhood and I loved my church, and I managed to avoid a lot of the drama
of my teenage peers. Still now, when I
listen to Christian music or read John Ortberg or Tim Keller or C.S. Lewis, I am
both refined and encouraged.
Now, on the one hand, some people accuse Christians today of
not looking much different at all from the rest of the world—and in many
ways, if we’re honest, they’re right.
On the other hand, we can stay set apart by insulating
ourselves from the surrounding culture… staying safe from the temptations of
the Evil One in the world… waiting faithfully under God’s protection until we,
like Jesus, “remain in the world no longer.”
Unfortunately, the more I’ve come to understand this
passage, the more I think that’s not what Jesus is praying for.
As he prays, he knows that he’s about to be taken to the cross—that
he will be crucified, resurrected, and ascend to heaven in glory—and he is
clearly concerned about the ones he’s leaving behind… but why? Because they’re still in the world!
Thirteen times in these fourteen verses Jesus mentions “the
world.” The Greek term (kosmos)
has a variety of meanings in Scripture, but here Jesus seems to use it to refer
to that within creation that is broken… the systems and principles that
are hostile to God, and particularly to the truth of Christ.
If the world is hostile to the truth, surely it will be
hostile to the ones who believe in that truth—that Jesus is, in fact, one with
God as he says he is.
So Jesus prays for their protection.
But we need to pay attention to who he’s praying for.
He’s with his eleven remaining disciples (after Judas peaced
out at the Last Supper). These are his
friends, and they have been with him for three long years during his ministry. But they didn’t all start out as friends…
One of them (Simon) was a zealot—what we might call
today a violent religious extremist, a fanatic.
Zealots believed that the best way to reestablish Israel was to physically
overthrow Rome.
One of them (Matthew) was a tax collector—a sellout
to Rome. He was the one who would hound
his fellow Jews for money to pay the Roman empire; and tax collectors were
notorious for being shady and corrupt and holding money for themselves on the
side.
Several of them were fisherman—blue collar, perhaps
poorly educated, working class guys… the kind who hated both the zealots and
the tax collectors.
Another one, Thomas, was a skeptic, who later
wouldn’t believe any of the rest of the group that Jesus had been
resurrected… and who could blame him?
Some of these guys hadn’t exactly been trustworthy to begin with.
Three years may not have been long enough.
And later, to top it all off, Jesus would call Paul, a Pharisee,
to go into the world and share the good news with the Gentiles and be part of
this group of apostles.
So in today’s terms, we essentially have a violent extremist,
a corrupt IRS employee, a handful of union factory workers, a cynic, and
eventually a fundamentalist… all about to be left alone together without Jesus. If you added a condo in southern California
and a few dozen cameras you could have a hit reality TV show. Heaven have mercy on us all.
But here’s what Jesus says, in verse 11: “Holy
Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so
that they may be one as we are one.”
These disciples are no longer of the world… because they
have accepted who Jesus is and obeyed what he taught. But they still need God’s protection… because hostility
is a tough thing to break.
Today our churches are full of people with different
backgrounds:
Some of us had loving childhoods, and some of us come from
more difficult homes.
Some of us are Republican and some are Democrat.
Some of us are financially stable (perhaps even with significantly
more than we need), while others may be living paycheck to paycheck—or with no
paycheck at all.
Some of us are held down by systemic racism, while some of
us get the benefit of societal privilege because of the whiteness of our
skin.
We have people who are old and young, male, female, and non-binary,
gay and straight, loud and quiet, stubborn and easy-going.
In all likelihood, we already know how difficult it is to be
one, as Jesus as the Father are one… if such a thing is even humanly
possible.
But if this is what Jesus is praying for—this needs to be
our goal. This is how the
Church will show the world that we refuse to conform to its hostility and
brokenness.
Right now the world is full of tribalism and mud-slinging
and violence. Especially with the
internet and social media—people say things now that they would never say to
another person face to face. It is all
too easy to draw ourselves into our own camps with people who think and act
like us… and it happens even, and sometimes especially, within our churches. Being Christian takes a backseat to other qualifiers.
We draw lines based on how liberal or conservative
we are, which type of music we want to sing in worship, or even how we voted on
church policies. More than once I’ve looked
at other Christians and resented them for giving me a “bad name.”
But Jesus seems very clear in what he says in John 13: “By this everyone will know you are my
disciples, if you love one another.” “By
this everyone will know you are not of the world… if you love one
another.”
It’s often about as easy as cutting off your own right hand. But here’s why it matters:
Just after this text in John 17, Jesus continues…
“My prayer is not for
them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,
that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May
they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have
given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one-- I
in them and you in me-- so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the
world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”
This is radical non-conformity.
In his day, Jesus claiming to be one with the Father
would have sounded blasphemous, and impossible.
Today—given the state of the world—it sounds just as impossible that
people from different places, cultures, backgrounds, political affiliations,
ages, genders, sexualities, and skin colors—that we all might be one in
the same way that Jesus and the Father are one.
But THAT is how we have been called. To one Body, in one Spirit, and one baptism…
out of every tribe and tongue and nation… everyone who has received the word of
Jesus and known in truth that he came from the Holy Father, the one whose name
is over every name.
When zealots sit next to tax collectors who sit next to
fisherman and skeptics and Pharisees and all of them have to figure out how to
honor the oneness of God in and amongst themselves… to be brought to complete
unity so that the world will come to know the one who was sent… that is the Church’s
task.
Jesus left the world, but he didn’t leave us alone. We have been given the Holy Spirit and the
truth of Christ, and they are powerful.
So I think it’s time we understand the Church’s non-conformity as
less about who and what we stay away from, and more about who we dare to be
near.
 |
| [Photo credit: link] |