Sermon for Easter 7 John 17: 20 - 26 Sunday, May 23, 2004 The Rev. Diane Livingston, Interim Chaplain and Deacon Church of the Resurrection, Starkville, Mississippi Cut to the heart of it for a few minutes. Have you ever loved others, let's say outside of the bonds of your family which hopefully include many for whom you have felt strong love, loved others so much that you have prayed, as Jesus did, not only for these people but for those who will be affected by what the ones you pray for do? Or the flip side, have YOU ever been loved in such a way that you felt God's love was visible and tangible? Possibly you were seeing God through those who were loving you and in turn you felt God's love and knew that the Love of God and Jesus were in you. The Gospel today is a prayer that Jesus is praying to God. Jesus loves God and Jesus loves his disciples and also those in future years whom the disciples will lead to God. Jesus prays that all of these people may be one and he compares this to the oneness that he and God experience. Jesus longs for the world to know that God has sent him and that God loves the disciples (and those the disciples will call) in the same way that God has loved him. In his prayer Jesus admits that the world does not know God but at least to those whom Jesus has loved and talked with he has made God known to them. The scripture for today concludes with the powerful desire of Jesus that the love he has known from God may now be in his followers and that he also will be in his followers. Though the syntax is tricky and one has to read and reread - or at least I had to - there is a tremendous acknowledgment of Jesus' love for God, of Jesus' love for his disciples and those will come to know Jesus through his disciples, of God's love for Jesus and the prayerful request that this love Jesus knows will also be with the disciples. The more I pondered this the more I became in awe of what selfless love Jesus had that he makes very clear only came to him through God. We are taught and we say in our statements of belief that Jesus was human and Jesus was divine. Saying such things and then seeing it in our lives sometimes are two entirely different levels. Because Jesus was human, he could live on the earth having been born of a human and grow up and experience a typical life of the culture of his day but because Jesus was also divine he could love in ways that truly must be only from God. There is no selfishness in his prayer that he keep some of God's love just for himself and only issue a certain proportion of this love to his disciples and that they in turn then limit to whom they give their love. That way of thinking is sadly our human nature and though we do remain humans there is a grandness and a freedom that we also can come to know through God's love. As we live with and experience God's love we in turn can love others so that they will know God. What I am talking about probably each of us has our own experiences or examples to draw on. Think of times when you have been empowered to love others in ways that you recognized were only possible because that love came from God or when you felt through others a love that just had to come from God because it was so unconditional and complete. We may have given credit to the individual or group that the love came through but chances are that the person or group was being faithful to God and was allowing themselves to be a vessel for that love to flow from God to you. One of the most remote examples of loving someone that surely had to come from God happened to me a long time ago when I was part of the Episcopal Church in Clinton shortly after Bill and I had married. Though I don't even remember the details now, the husband of someone in the parish had been in an accident that resulted in his being badly burned. The husband had never attended church and so I and many others in the parish had never met him but prayers began and continued for this man. Then the plea came for blood which was desperately needed by him in his healing process. I had never given blood before but I definitely signed up and rode to the center in Jackson with two others one afternoon to give. Many in the parish responded to this request and of course, prayers continued as we thought about and were concerned for the man. Actually, I had a bad experience giving blood that day - was too anxious and almost hyperventilated and had to breathe in a bag and keep my friends there longer because I had to be observed longer. In honesty maybe it was my own suffering that helps plant this experience in my mind. But then there was the service where the man we had prayed for and given blood for was present. I will always remember seeing him and being overcome with such a tremendous feeling of love. I felt compassion for all that he had endured but mainly I felt a feeling of love. He had been touched by the outpouring of the congregations' concerns and wanted to see this group. Though we did love him, there is no doubt that the love we gave to this person was from God. As best as I can recall, he did not begin to attend regularly or become active in the church but I know that he was truly loved by many in the church. We had not loved to get any benefits for the church but we had loved in the most complete way we could think of and we trusted God to handle the future. I have also felt the love that Jesus prayed for his disciples to know - that love from God that was also in him, that would allow Jesus to be in them. Even before I could have intellectually explained the love, I knew that I felt it and later I have realized that it was God's love coming through two elderly persons in the church where I grew up. Though my parents were not church going people, they made sure that their 3 children got to Sunday School regularly. I, being the youngest by several years, eventually was there by myself as my brother and sister went off to college. I don't know if other children felt this way but I longed to go to church as a family. When I would stay for the worship service after Sunday School I would sit with one of my friends. I never told anyone what I longed for but somehow along the way I came to know Navy and Miss Eerie, as everyone affectionately called them. They always sat up near the front and they had warm faces and gentle spirits. It was clear to me that they loved each other and I saw easily that they offered their love to lots of people. I began to seek them out and I liked that they seemed to look for me and to really love me too. They bragged on me and thought I was very special. To give you an example of how unconditional their love was, when my sister married I was in junior high school and was a junior bridesmaid in the wedding. Navy and Miss Eerie attended the wedding - they actually knew my whole family even though the friendship I had entered into with them had been an independent action apart from my family. Several years later in high school a friend of mine and I were looking at my sister's wedding pictures and being a very blunt person, she told me that I didn't look too great at that period of my life. What can I say? She was absolutely right! Her words though made me recall a conversation I had with Navy and Miss Eerie after the wedding ceremony: they sought me out and told me how beautiful I looked and went on and on about me. I had believed them completely and now this day several years later as I sat with my friend, I could not dispute the reality of the pictures but I was warmed by the words of my older friends. I believe that they truly saw me with complete love and acceptance. After I had my driver's license, I would visit Navy and Miss Eerie in their home. Sometimes my parents went with me or sometimes one of my friends. I even wrote notes to them after I left MS to attend college. Though my family of origin was loving and positive, somehow the love of these two special people early on made my life in the church a happy experience and one that I wanted to continue. Each of us will have our own journeys. There will be times possibly in the small groups we meet with regularly or in our vocations or in encounters with neighbors or even with strangers - at times in very unexpected moments - where we will know this love that Jesus prayed would be in all those who know Jesus. The world out there has so many needs and at times it would seem impossible that all the differences in the world could bring the oneness that Jesus longed for. This oneness is not uniformity of opinion or practice but rather this oneness is about membership in a fellowship of people all related to God in the same way: beloved of God, known by God, redeemed by Christ. Healthy churches give their love away freely, trusting God to handle the future. Healthy churches reach across the gulf of our differences and truly allow the love from God to flow through them. When this happens, the world will see Jesus' face when they look at us and indeed we will see Jesus' face in those we reach out to.