John 17:6-19 is the Lectionary Gospel text for next Sunday, May 16.
Jesus was speaking with the Father in love for His disciples. Jesus lifted up His followers to God, summarizing how He fulfilled His mission in calling, preparing and sending them.
This is in such loving terms that it touches me deeply. It is an intimate and loving narrative about conversation within God, on our behalf. It moves me.
Jesus protected the disciples, and THEN gave His life for them. For us.
Jesus gave them God's Word, the Good News of Agape Love and Grace, which the world, empire, hated Jesus for and would hate the Apostles for sharing. Jesus claims that the disciples, now Apostles, do not belong to the world, to empire, but rather to the Kingdom, both of heaven and earth. They now belong to the Kingdom values of Agape Love and Grace, even as they lived under empire and its values of greed, lust for power and desire for status, even hatred. Jesus was sent into that world to resist, bring repentance and usher in the New Covenant with God in Agape Love and Grace, thus transforming the world to be in alignment with God's Kingdom values.
Jesus is handing the mission back to the Father in order for the Holy Spirit to continue to drive them toward the fulfillment of that mission in the fulfillment of Law and Prophets, all in the living of Agape Love and Grace.
The world resists God's Kingdom values because, under empire, a few benefit. They gain more wealth at the expense of the many. They exercise and abuse great power over them in order to get more, always more. They devise hierarchical systems of value based on status over one another defined by the empire values and gains achieved through the exploitation, abuse and hatred of the rest. They justify all this through a false narrative of superiority and divine entitlement. Their enslavement of others and genocide of others is justified by their wealth, power and status in their own eyes. To Jesus, it is hateful, ruthless, arrogant and ignorant hubris.
We ARE the world in this nation. We ARE empire. We ARE the ones Jesus resisted, the ones Jesus' Gospel counters, the ones who represent all that is NOT God's Will for the world. Now, there are some who get that and some who do not. There are some who see the insanity and unsustainable nature of living under empire values, others who do not like the game but work to play it for their own gain, and others who have swallowed it, hook, line and sinker. Some Politicians, Church Leaders, Corporate Executives, Stockholders, Bigots and Wall Street Manipulators have benefitted from selling this line of Bullshit for far too long, at the expense of the many. They have convinced a vast number of those victimized by the system that it is absolutely faithful and absolutely the best thing going, even as those they sell it to struggle to survive while settling for the trinkets and scraps that keep them hooked. They are the promoters and pushers of empire because they are among the few who benefit at the expense of the rest, and as long as they can invent divisions among us that keep us from seeing them as the real problem, they will continue to gain at our expense.
Jesus' Word, the Gospel, which is God's Word, condemns empire at its most basic levels. It calls for resistance to and repentance from empire, and our transformation through the living of Agape Love and Grace with one another. It really IS that simple, folks.
Jesus taught, commanded and modeled Agape Love and Grace for His disciples, and then sent them to continue the mission of spreading the wisdom and faithfulness of living it. Are WE those disciples here and now who Jesus so deeply loves, or are we a part of the world/empire that hates them and Jesus?
The world or the Kingdom? Empire or Jesus?
"You cannot serve two masters."
"Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."
On whose side are you?
Pastor Jamie
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