The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for May 28, 2006

                            Texts: Psalm 1/John 17:6-19         

Title: “The Other Worldly”

              Before there was a movement called “Christian,” before anything resembling a church took form, before there were gospels, letters, or other such writings, before any of these there was an itinerant Jewish preacher and teacher (rabbi) who gathered to himself a band of followers. A movement difficult to categorize, all kinds of reports began to circulate about the activities the preacher and his band were engaged in. From those who had been present to hear the man preach and teach came impressive reports, reports in which the word “authority” was commonplace.               

                   Word of mouth being the typical conveyance for news in those days, it was difficult for the recipient of information to assign creditability to what he or she heard. “Authority” could, after all,  mean almost anything. The issue of authority would in time, however, become more and more muted, as the content of the teacher’s sermons and talks began to circulate.  Novelty invariably attracts attention, but what the teacher taught was not merely new, but widely regarded as inspired. 

                   The world is always in the market for the new and inspired, but not universally accepting of the new and inspired.  Even as word began to circulate that the preacher was someone special, perhaps even the messiah, (We know all about him don’t we? The guy who was going to restore Israel to the prominence she enjoyed under King David) even as word began to spread that the preacher/teacher was this exalted figure, dissenting voices were raised in important places.

                    The authorities who guarded the sacred symbols of the Jewish religious faith, the temple, the law, and the holy artifacts, were suspicious of the preacher.  They debated behind close doors on how best to deal with him.  Understand they had to be careful, because if they acted in a heavy-handed way, his followers might cause trouble, and trouble was not what the Jewish leaders wanted, for they feared giving their Roman overlords any pretext to clamp down on them.

                Though the preacher/teacher made no overt claims to power, the Jewish leaders felt threatened. He wasn’t one of them.  If he taught with authority, it was not authority conferred on him by them.  Not one of them, and not credentialed. Two strikes against the preacher/teacher, and the third (?), who was this guy to speak in God’s name?

                Before there was a movement called “Christian,” before anything resembling a church took form, before there were gospels, letters, or other such writings, before any of these there was an itinerant Jewish preacher and teacher (rabbi) who gathered to himself a band of followers. He gathered to himself a band of followers. Jesus could be dealt with, and in time was dealt with, but what about the band of followers?

                John’s Gospel takes up this topic of Jesus’ succession, his legacy, in a way unduplicated in the three other gospels. John uses no less than four chapters, chapters 14 through 17, to describe Jesus’ preparations for his departure from earth. In our morning’s lesson we come in at the point when Jesus’ adversaries are poised to act.  Aware that his time on earth is short, we find Jesus in prayer.   

                The lesson I earlier read is a portion of what has become know as the “high priestly prayer.”  Jesus uses this prayer to, in effect, place his stewardship of his disciples back in God’s hands. After summarizing his career on earth he offers a prayer on the disciples’ behalf, praying that God will protect his disciples from the “evil one.”  The evil one is depicted as the alien, subversive force at work in the world scheming to undermine the work Jesus accomplished. “The world” is the domain in which the “evil one” asserts his authority.  The prayer asks for God’s intervention to protect his disciples from the world. “I am not asking you to take them out of the world [Jesus declares], but I ask you to protect them from the evil one.  [And then these words] They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.” “Do not belong to the world.”

                  Before there was a movement called “Christian” there was an itinerant Jewish preacher and teacher who gathered to himself a band of followers.  This band of followers who took Jesus’ message to the world became popularly known as Christians, but the designation “other worldly” might have fit just as appropriately.

                   Of the four gospels John alone wants to stress the inherent conflict existing between the message that Jesus brought and the values the world embraced. The thrust of Jesus’ prayer is unavoidable. His disciples know the truth while the world has rejected it.  Alienated from God as it might be, the world is not evil. It is from the taint of evil that Jesus sought to protect his disciples.

                    Though Jesus’ disciples are praised in Jesus’ prayer as people who knew Jesus and completely identify with his program and purposes, the gospels as a whole do not depict them as such. The gospels reveal that the disciples struggled to conform to his program. They may have aspired to be other worldly, they were not, however, other worldly by nature. Other worldly was something they would eventually learn, but the learning curve was steep. 

                     The extraordinary shock attending Jesus crucifixion, soon to be followed by the even more extraordinary resurrection of the Lord from the grave, turned disciples, who are generally described as slow in comprehending and tentative, into spirit-filled and courageous ambassadors for Christ. It took time but the disciples and those who signed on to join them eventually began to embrace Jesus’ program.  They became other worldly.

                    John retains in his mind a clear picture of what the other worldly crowd looks like. He tells us that the other worldly are “sanctified in truth.”  An interesting phrase, but what does that mean?  It means that they are people who know the score, they, and this is important, they “live in the world, but they are not of the world.”  “Sanctified,” that is, made holy in truth, their orientation is focused on remembrance.  They remember what Jesus taught, while ever seeking to apply the lessons he taught to emerging circumstances.

                    Much might be said about the Christian enterprise, but John challenges us to think of it as an other worldly movement, a movement maintained by people whose familiarity with the truth Jesus brought to the world, made them a source of light for the world.

                     As each of us has discovered along the way, we only truly come to grips with and understand something when we are challenged to apply what we know.  While our Lord was still living in their midst the disciples could dependably turn to him if they got in a jam. Challenged to fend for themselves when he was gone, they had to use their own initiative to apply this other worldly truth he taught to new situations. The Book of Acts reports a series of accomplishments achieved by the Lord’s disciples, accomplishments demonstrating their commitment to maintaining Jesus’ legacy.  The record is clear, these once tentative and apprehensive followers of Jesus became men who preached and healed with authority conferred by the master himself.            

                    Scripture tells us that the other worldly program really took hold as a result of the event we will celebrate next week, Pentecost.  It was that event above all others that demonstrated to the disciples that Jesus’ program was truly in their hands, but just as importantly, they discovered that the equipment to do the work was in their hands as well.

                   The disciples met the challenge of living in the world without being of the world, and they did so in such a way that Jesus’ message was not lost in that critical hand off period between the first generation of believers and the second. The fact that we are here worshiping the Lord they knew in the flesh several centuries after Pentecost, bears testimony to the success of their other worldly program.

                    The disciples way of engaging the world, has not always been emulated. Fearing contamination by the world, some believers have withdrawn into desert cloisters or other such retreat settings in an attempt to preserve their other worldly identity. Desert hermits and others of that orientation have gone to great extremes, great extremes, at least as we would judge great extremes, to live their faith in purity. There, of course, is a great pre-Christian tradition of such practices, the Jews establishing rigid purity codes to guard the faithful from worldly contaminants.  The Gospel of John in which Jesus’ prayer for his disciples is set is an heir of that tradition, committed to holding the world at arm’s length.

                    In the history of Christianity on our shores we have seen serious efforts made to secure the church from worldly contaminants.  The sacred and profane were to operate in distinct spheres of influence. Sunday blue laws were an attempt to fend of the encroachment of commerce into time reserved for holy pursuits. My father was raised in a household where all non-church related activity was forbidden on Sunday. All worldly endeavors were to be suspended on the Lord’s day. Prohibition, placing a ban on alcohol, bans on dancing, smoking, and card playing all represent attempts to keep the world and its values at bay.  The applause of the gospel writer John, and those of his persuasion, can be heard echoing across the centuries.

                   We have seen the issue of other worldliness debated in the Christian household for generations. It is as current as today’s newspaper headlines.  On Wednesday of last week NPR did a story on the founder of Patrick Henry University.  This man with deep ties to the Christian home school movement, was inspired to establish the university to perpetuate the biblical values taught in the home school movement. Each enrollee in the university is expected to sign a pledge that he or she will not smoke, drink or use illegal drugs. He or she will reserve sexual activity for marriage.  He or she will notify his or her parent before becoming romantically involved with a member of the opposite sex.

                  The mission of Patrick Henry University as stated by its president is to prepare Christian citizens to assume public responsibility by running for office on God’s agenda.

                  The issue of other worldliness has been prominent on the campaign trail, where candidates for political office insistently proclaim their allegiance to traditional values. No one wants to be on the wrong side of God.  The other worldly values the candidates most often embrace, of course, tend very often to be those values the polling firms say the majority of the electorate support.

                   Jesus was prepared to leave this earth knowing that his disciples were other worldly.  “They were yours [he declares in his prayer to God] and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.” Yet the Lord still took seriously the real threat the world represented, calling upon God to “protect them from the evil one.” 

                 The man on the street today isn’t going down the street looking over his shoulder fearful that evil will pounce.  That same man on the street doesn’t feel threatened by the contaminating influences of the world.  Is that man so taken in by ways of the world for the threat not to register?

                 Most people with whom we have to do have no real complaint to issue against the world.  They perceive no threat. They may protest the demise of “traditional values,” whatever they are, but they will blame television, the movies, or obscene music lyrics, not the world.

                So why do we Christians want to pursue an other worldly agenda if no one, perhaps even ourselves, is finding much fault with the world as it is? Perhaps we don’t find fault because we in our comfortable circumstances sitting atop the heap internationally, are too removed from the realities the world perpetuates, realities that keep our brothers and sisters marginalized.

                 We might do well to look at the world from the view point of one of the immigrants whose work status and citizenship are currently being debated in Congress. Perhaps we need to be open to the realities the immigrant billions around the world are facing as they attempt to eke out a living for themselves and their children. 

                We in America have the luxury of debating worldly values without serious regard for how the unequal distribution of wealth and opportunity keeps billions marginalized even as the list of the world’s millionaires and billionaires continues to swell. Christ has given us an other worldly agenda, but let us not no be so consumed by debates over sexual mores, the right to life, what can be taught or prayed in the classroom, evolution, or what the moviemaker or television producer might legally present, that we fail to take seriously the real threats the world poses, particularly for our brothers and sisters who are most vulnerable.  Other worldly?  “When you have done it [fed, clothed, sheltered] to one who is the least of these who are members of my family, you did to me.” The words of Jesus, our Lord.  It also happens to be the otherworldly agenda of our Lord Jesus.

PRAYER

                Heavenly Father, our heart’s true home, let your light shine brightly on your people, that our light may reflect your glory.  Light of light, God Most High, sanctify our gathering today that wreathed in holiness we may go forth from this place a people whose commitment to thy divine purposes has been renewed. We pray that the professions of faith we make here today not merely echo in this sanctuary, but echo far beyond this space as we individually place our faith in service to our fellow man and the world.   

                  A denomination with a long and proud mission heritage, we thank you for the saints of our church who have lived that your name, O God, be broadcast to the world.  We thank you for Francis Makemie, “the father of American Presbyterianism,” who journeyed to our shores from his native Ireland in 1683 and was instrumental in  organizing the first Presbyterian churches on our continent.  We thank you for John Chavis, a free black man, who preached to slaves and mixed audiences for three decades in the nineteenth century.  We thank you for Lillias Stirling Horton Underwood, who served as a mission doctor in Korea from 1888-1921.  We remember and give thanks for the legacy of faithfulness and courage to the gospel that these brothers and sisters, enduring great hardship, so zealously built over so many years.

                 As our thoughts linger over the heritage in which we stand as Presbyterians, we remember with gratitude the numerous Presbyterians who have responded to a call to serve in government; presidents of the United States, secretaries of state and defense, senators and members of the House of Representatives, and numerous other public servants who have enriched their souls in Presbyterian worship and fellowship. We remember the saints of the local churches with which we have been united, silently giving thanks for those individuals who have touched our lives. We give particular thanks for those who work behind the scenes to prepare our churches for worship, the people who unlock the doors and turn on the lights and do whatever else is necessary to welcome the Sunday morning gathering.

               On this Memorial Day weekend we solemnly acknowledge the sacrifices made by our countrymen to guarantee our freedom and secure the values we uphold.  Men and women voluntarily committed blood, sweat and tears at substantial personal cost seeking no prize except the personal satisfaction of knowing that they executed their responsibilities with honor.   

                 God of grace, we pray for those whose lives hang in the balance today. Support those who linger between life and death, and the loved ones who maintain vigil at their bedside.  Support those maimed in wars who struggle to resume their active lives deprived of a limb, their vision, or their hearing.  Support those who struggle with severe depression, who ponder suicide as the only source of relief they believe they can find. Support the houseless, the unemployed, and all those who struggle to make ends meet on the minimum wage.

               O Christ, our brother, even as you prayed for the disciples you loved we know that you pray with and for us. You are present even when our senses have become dulled to your presence.  You are present when we have forgotten to pray, when are too distracted to pray, or have become too angry to pray. Though you are present to us, many times we are not present to you.  Renew our prayer life, O Lord, by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit.  Open our eyes to witness the wonders you have wrought, and embolden our wills to participate with you in the recreation of the world in your holy image.

              For worship, the gospel of Lord Jesus, for the saints among whom we worship, we give thanks, O God, praying the prayer your son taught us….