the church non-conforming: a sermon from john 17

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]