In the Word and In the World: Jesus Prays for His Church
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| One in the Spirit,
composite digital image by L. Lovett, 2006 |
Grace, mercy, and peace to
you from God the Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!
What has kept the Church
going for the last two thousand years?
How do you explain it? The Church
has survived persecution, false teaching, and gross mismanagement. It has survived dictatorships, demagogues,
and democracies. It has survived popes
and councils, voters’ assemblies and synodical conventions, and the meetings
that go on after the meetings. Any human
organization that operated this way would have long since disappeared, but the
Church goes on.
What is the key to the
Church’s survival? How could a ragtag
band of 120 Jewish followers grow into a Church that quite literally embraces
the world across all national and ethnic boundaries? How could a Church whose first recorded
official act is to cast lots to see who would succeed a traitor become, in a
matter of thirty years or so, a movement that embraced the entire Roman world
and dotted the Mediterranean with
congregations who proclaimed life in the death of Jesus? What protected them in a culture that was
hostile to their message? What propelled
them into the world already chock full of religions? How did the Church not only manage to survive
all those years, but to grow robustly and thrive?
One thing: Jesus prays for
His Church. That’s the thought of the
day for this seventh Sunday of Easter. The
same Lord Jesus, who hung on the cross and rose from the dead and ascended to
the right hand of His Father, prays for His Church.
Nowhere is this more
profoundly revealed to us than in the high priestly prayer of Jesus in the
upper room on the night of His betrayal.
This is the room where He washed the disciples’ feet as a servant, where
He instituted the sacramental meal of His Body and Blood, where He taught them
about His love for them, their love for one another, the coming of the Holy
Spirit, and their fruitful union with Him.
And now in this room, Jesus prays for His Church.
This prayer is the true
“Lord’s Prayer,” the prayer only the Lord Himself can pray as the High Priest
of the world. He lifts His nail-scarred
hands before the throne of grace, and He prays continually for His disciples
who are sprinkled like salt on the earth.
He prays for His Church, and His prayer upholds the Church.
What does Jesus pray for His
Church? That she be successful? Popular?
Powerful? Wealthy? Influential?
No. Jesus prays that His Church
be protected by the power of God’s Name, that the Church be one, that she be
protected from the assaults of the devil, and that she be sanctified to be a
sign of salvation for the world. In
other words, that she be “In the Word and in the World.”
In today’s text, Jesus
specifically prays for the apostles, those the Father gave Him to send into the
world. We believe that the apostles,
though unique, are not confined to those men who were with Jesus that night in
the upper room. We know that Matthias,
as we heard in our reading from the book of Acts, was added later to fill the
vacancy of Judas. Matthias was not there
in the upper room, but by the call of God was added to make a Twelve. And there was Paul, number thirteen, the
“untimely born” apostle no one really asked for or wanted.
We believe that the ministry
of the apostles continues today in what we have come to call the pastoral
office or the office of the holy ministry.
The apostolic Church has an apostolic office, not by succession of
persons, but by the action of the Word of the crucified, risen, and reigning
Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus prays for His
Church. He prays that His joy might be
fulfilled in His apostles. Apostolic
ministry is to be joyful ministry, filled with the joy of Jesus who in His joy
endured the cross and scorned its shame.
This is not the kind of joy that is based on outward circumstances. It is nothing less than the joy of sinners
justified for Jesus’ sake, the joy of sinners repenting and being forgiven.
I’ll be the first to admit
that the holy ministry can become a joyless task, and at times, even a
burden. Sometimes it’s our own
fault. We pastors can be a burdensome
lot—complaining, whining, carrying on as if Jesus were not reigning from the
right hand of God, acting as though everything is on our own shoulders, and the
whole world wants to see us fail. We
are, after all, men of clay, conceived and born in sin, just like you. We will, and do, sin. We will fail.
We will doubt.
Other times though, this joy
is lacking because the Church has come to expect anything and everything from
her pastors except the one needful thing—the Word of life and salvation. We want coaches, counselors, CEOs,
motivators, you name it—everything but shepherds who will lead the flock to
good pasture and clean, clear water. But
the joy of ministry is not in being liked or appreciated; rather, it is the joy
of people coming to a greater awareness of their sinfulness, yet growing to a
deeper faith in Jesus. The most joyful
work of a pastor happens at the font, at the altar, in the pulpit, in the
confessional, in the hospital room, beside the deathbed—in short, wherever the
Word of Christ is having its faith-making way.
Want to be a joy and not a
burden to your pastor? Be in the
Word. Come eagerly to hear the Word of
God he proclaims and teaches. Regularly
receive Christ’s Body and Blood from his hand and hear Christ’s Absolution from
his lips. That will bring him more joy
than you can ever imagine. That is the
joy of Jesus, who prays that His apostles would be filled with His joy.
But that’s not to say this
life will be easy. As the disciples
overhear this prayer, Jesus reminds them that the world will hate them on
account of the Word they have been set apart to proclaim. Like Jesus Himself, His ministry is “in the
world yet not of the world.” And here we
find the two great denials that occur.
The first is to remove oneself from the world, to live in
isolation. But Jesus prays that His
ministers not be removed from this world but be immersed in it. Jesus embraces the world in His death, and
His apostolic ministry embraces the world in His Name. That’ll bring you into contact with some
parts of the world you might rather avoid—the misfits of the world, the
untouchables, the lepers of our day.
The other great denial is
that we become “of the world.” We lose
our saltiness. We hide our lamp. We become indistinguishable from the
world. “Not of the world” means that we
are different. You don’t expect your
pastor to get drunk on Saturday, or any other night. It wouldn’t be good if your pastor cheated on
his income tax or didn’t show up for church on Sunday. And this is not just because he’s the pastor
and paid to be the pastor, but because he is to be an example to everyone of
what it means to be in this world but not of this world.
Jesus prays for His
Church. And so, although in this passage
He is praying for His apostles (and the pastors who follow in the office of
holy ministry), He is praying for you, too.
You, who are the Body of believers gathered around the marks of the
Church—“the pure doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacrament
in accordance with the Gospel of Christ” (Ap VII and VIII (IV) 5).
And notice what the goal of
Jesus’ prayer is: “That they be one, just as We are one.” Jesus is praying for the unity of His
Church. Now, that might sound a bit
far-fetched today, with thousands of denominations, everyone claiming a
monopoly on the truth. We might wonder,
what happened to this prayer of Jesus? Did
the heavenly Father miss His Son’s memo?
What began as a fairly, though not entirely, unified movement that swept
across the Mediterranean world, is today a movement so fragmented the idea of external
unity is almost a joke.
Jesus prays that His Church
be one as He and the Father are one. We
Lutherans worry a great deal about “unionism,” about uniting with false
teachers, and rightly so. Even if
Scripture was not clear about avoiding such entanglements the history of the
Church would be enough to prove the folly of worshiping with others of differing
confessions of faith. The truth always
ends up getting lost as everyone seeks a lowest common denominator to gain an
outward show of unity.
But we should also expend
just as much energy worrying about separatism, about creating needless
divisions with the Church based simply on matters of personal preference. There is one Lord, one faith, one Baptism,
one God and Father of us all. There is
only one Bread and one Cup, one Body and Blood of one Savior named Jesus. And wherever you see and hear Baptism and the
Lord’s Supper and forgiveness spoken in the Name of the crucified and risen
Jesus, you have an infallible and inerrant sign that the prayer of Jesus is
having its way, keeping the Church together in the Name of God.
Jesus prays for His
Church. Jesus prays that the Church will
be protected from the evil one. Jesus
knows the enemy well. He tangled with
him one-on-one in the wilderness. That
very night He’ll wrestle with Him in Gethsemane . And Jesus knows that the devil will give His
Church no rest. Doubts will creep
in. Unbelief. Despair.
Failure. Success. All of these will seek to derail the Church
from its mission. And so Jesus prays for
the Church’s protection.
Notice that Jesus does not
pray that His disciples be taken out of the world. He’s sending them into the world, where the
action is. Jesus doesn’t set up some cloistered
camp or utopian society. Oh, the Church
has tried that route, and it still does.
But isolationism never sits well with Good News that demands to be
preached. The Church exists to proclaim
the reign of Jesus, His death and resurrection for the life of the world. And you can’t do that in isolation—whether
that isolation is locked up in a monastery or locked away in your living room
watching one of the “Christian networks” on cable television. Jesus sends His disciples out into the world
with His Word and His protection against the evil one.
I think we sometimes
underestimate the danger. We think the
greatest enemy of the Church is mismanagement or disorganization, or perhaps a
bad economy or shrinking population base.
But the greatest threat to the Church is the one you can’t see—the devil,
who hates for people to be free, who hates when sins are forgiven, and who
hates to hear the great Good News of Jesus’ death and resurrection for the
justification of sinners.
Jesus prays for His
Church. We are in constant need of this
prayer. We cannot stop the devil or
protect ourselves from him. But we have
the Lord’s high priestly prayer, His intercession for us in which He pleads:
“keep them from the evil one.” That’s
what ensures that Satan cannot harm us.
Oh, he may work some mischief; he may make our life miserable for awhile,
as he is prone to do. But as the Large
Catechism reminds us, he is “God’s devil,” and whatever he does, God uses for
His ultimate purpose to unite all things in Christ.
Toward that end, Jesus
prays: “Sanctify them in the truth; Your Word is truth.” As baptized believers in Christ, you are
called to be different from the world; you are sanctified, consecrated,
“holy.” You are set apart by the Word
that is truth. You know the awful truth
of your sin. And you know the greater
truth of salvation in Jesus Christ crucified for the forgiveness of your sins
and risen from the dead for your justification.
Jesus prays for His
Church. Remember this when you doubt,
when you despair, when you fall and don’t have the strength to get back
up. Remember this when you think there
is no future for the Church, when the Church looks so helpless, so out of touch
with the world, so ill-equipped to meet the challenges of our day. Remember who prays for the Church, for
you—the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Word and the prayer of
Jesus are what keeps the Church and her ministry going even after all these
years. It’s been nearly 2,000 years
since Jesus ascended into heaven, and yet His Word is as living and active
today as ever, creating faith, bestowing salvation and everlasting life, calling
you to repent and believe this Good News:
For the sake of Jesus Christ crucified and risen, you are forgiven for
all of your sins. In the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
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