In The World, Not Of The World
On Sanctifying Sanctification
John 17.11-19
And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, k and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into thew world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.
I think it will come as no surprise to anyone here that I, as a preacher, am most at home when the appointed text is a story. Stories, after all, are what we remember more than just about anything. Stories stick with us. Stories shape us.
In fact, the very first thing I ever said from this pulpit was, “We are the stories we tell.”
Stories clue us in to things we would otherwise miss - they give us something to latch on to, someone to root for, something to resonate with.
When we were on our confirmation retreat last week I asked all the kids to share their favorite scriptures. David and Goliath. The woman at the well. Jesus calling the disciples.
All wonderful stories.
And I’ve asked that question a great many times, “What’s you favorite scripture?”
I’ve never once heard someone say, “The household codes of Ephesians.” Nor, “The genealogy from Matthew.” Nor, “The apolocaylptic poetry of Revelation.”
No, when it comes to the Bible, we connect with and resonate with story. I can sympathize with Thomas’ desperate need of proof of the Easter proclamation. I can understand the fear of the father who cried out to Jesus to help his son. I can understand Mary and Martha’s frustration that Jesus hadn’t arrived in time to save their brother Lazarus.
Perhaps that’s why I, and so many of you, flock to the parables. We return to the prodigal, the samaritan, the talents, over and over because they always have something new to reveal about who we are but most importantly whose we are.
Which is why I agree with so many of the theological statements of someone like Stanley Hauerwas who claims the church is a story-formed community. The stories of scripture are how God shapes us into storied people.
But then, today, we read not of a story, but of a prayer. Admittedly it’s one of the most important prayers in the Bible, but it is still a prayer. And how does one preach a prayer?
It’s the length of a chapter in the Bible, this odd moment of communication within the unity of the Trinity, right before Jesus leaves with the disciples for the Garden of Gethsemane.
It is a dense prayer.
And we only read part of it.
I ask on behalf of these who are in the world but no longer of the world, just as I am no longer of the world. I am asking on their behalf, not on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those you gave me, because they are yours. I am in you, just as you are in me, that they may be in us.
It’s rather unlike the compact prayer that Jesus taught the disciples to pray, that prayer we will all pray later in worship. The theologian NT Wright says this very long prayer of Jesus from John 17 is “so rich that we may choke on it unless we chew it slowly.”
One of the people who has chewed slowly on this text is Brian Zahnd. Brian is a gifted writer and the pastor of Word of Life Church in St. Joseph, Missouri. He’s got this knack for distilling the Gospel to chewable pieces.
Like this:
“God is like Jesus. God has always been like Jesus. There has never been a time when God was not like Jesus. We have not always known what God is like - but now we do.”
It took a couple decades of discipleship before Brian could write something like that.
It’s a sentiment that staggers. God, the incomprehensible Lord of the cosmos, is actually approachable in the person of Jesus Christ. And the claim that Brian makes comes straight from Jesus’ prayer.
Listen, the Gospel of John is weird. It includes all these strange stories that are not found in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the timeline of events is a bit off, and Jesus himself is all over the place. Jesus is elusive, cagey, enigmatic. In the beginning we read of Jesus in the beginning. The literal beginning of everything. In the beginning was the Word. And the word took on flesh and moved into the neighborhood.
The next we read of Jesus he is showing up at a wedding and 180 gallons of water become wine.
Then Jesus goes into the Temple, a place of prayer and public propriety, and kicks out all of the clergy with a whip.
Next, Jesus gets into an argument with a theologian, in the middle of the night, and leaves him scratching his head.
Then Jesus meets a woman at the well, spies into her personal life, tells her everything about herself, and she runs off overwhelmed by the whole encounter.
Next Jesus breaks the rules of his faith, heals a crippled man, and sends him straight home.
Then Jesus makes wonder bread.
I could go on. That’s just the highlight of the first 6 chapters of John’s Gospel.
On and on Jesus embodies the oddity of the Kingdom in the flesh. And the people approach the living Lord and say, “Who in the world are you?”
And Jesus says, “I’m bread. I’m life. I’m the vine. I’m the door. I’m the shepherd.”
His confusing words and actions lead to confusing questions with even more confusing answers.
But then, finally, in John 17, the veil is lifted, and Jesus gives it to us straight no chaser - I am God. The Father and I are one and the same. If you see me, you see the Father.
Or, God is like Jesus. God has always been like Jesus. There has never been a time when God was not like Jesus. We have not always known what God is like. But now we do.
And yet, how often do we speak of God, or Jesus, in this way? As being one and the same?
Jesus was not a little bit of God, nor was Jesus human some of the time and God the rest of the time. Jesus is the fullness of God.
Which means God is the one who turns water into wine, kicks the religious elites out of worship, feeds the hungry, and prays this prayer.
Think about that for a moment. It’s one thing to see the fullness of God in Jesus through the stories, the miracles the interactions the parables. It’s something else entirely to consider that God prays.
Which is why this prayer is so particularly important - this prayer reveals the heart of God. In theological speech we call it communicatio idiomatum - humanity and divinity in one moment.
This prayer teaches us who God is, and who we are in relation to God.
There’s been a temptation over the centuries for Christians to retreat from the world. That is, when things get tough, Christians can stand back and let it all crumble because the church will remain. And part of this sectarian temptation comes from the prayer. I am not longer in the world, but they are in the world, protect them. The world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.
And so, there have been times when the church has washed her hands of the world. So much so that today, faith has become so privatized that is something people like us do for an hour a week and we can scarcely imagine how what happens here can shape anything that happens out there.
It’s why Christians have time and time again done things in the name of the good without everything thinking about how nothing is good except God alone.
One need only take a cursory glance at history, even recent history, to see this at work.
For instance: Christians in the American South were told to support segregation because that just how things were supposed to be even though Paul speaks vociferously about destroying the inequities between people.
Christians were told that women have their own roles to maintain even though the New Testament is relentless in its examples of women in leadership.
Christians were told that wars were justified even though Jesus commands us to love our enemies.
And it’s all right here in the prayer: They don’t belong to the world, just as I don’t belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth - as you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.
Do you hear? Jesus sanctifies us in the truth, namely himself, that we might be bastions of his truth for the world. Jesus calls us to a life that is altogether different from the world for otherwise the world will never know there is an alternative to the way things are.
That is why the word sanctify is so important. Sanctification is as churchy of a word as we’ve got, rarely mentioned outside the walls of a sanctuary. Sanctification is the process by which we are made holy. And notice, sanctification is not how we make ourselves holy. Sanctification is the process by which God makes us holy.
To be sanctified in the truth is to participate in God’s continuous work of redemption and salvation. It is through the songs we sing, and the scriptures we read, and the prayer we pray that God changes us. God changes us to see the world differently, to imagine how beautiful the world could be, to enter straight into the muck and mire of our making because that exactly what God does for us.