A sermon preached by Pastor Lewis Polzin on May 16, 2021 at St. Peter–Immanuel Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, WI, on John 17:11-19. You may play the audio of the sermon here.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text this morning is from the Gospel according to St. John, the 17th chapter:
And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.
Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
Since this is the Last Sunday of Easter, He is risen! He is risen, indeed! Alleluia! Jesus Christ is risen. And now he is ascended on high for you. We've talked about this in years past, that we often skip over the ascension and its importance for us. But the reality is the ascension is perhaps one of the most important things that Jesus did. Certainly his life, death, and resurrection were necessary, and those are all vitally important, but, if we had to rank Jesus’ actions, his ascension ranks over things like his miracles and his teachings, because it is from the ascension that we find that his miracles, his signs, his wonders, and his teachings find their fulfillment. If it were not for the ascension, Christ could do absolutely nothing. And nothing he gave to us would matter because it is in the ascension that Christ ascends to his Father and sits down at the right hand of God. And from there, he rules and reigns over all creation until everything is put under his feet and he returns upon the last day to make all things, including you in your very bodies, new.
The ascension is integral to our faith because it is in the ascension that our Lord sends to us the Holy Spirit, something that we'll celebrate next time we gather together, the day of Pentecost. The Spirit descends on the people in day of Pentecost and rests upon their heads and enables them to speak languages that they hadn't ever understood until that point, and that's a good thing, but the Spirit now dwells in you. He doesn't sit up on your head like a tongue of fire, but instead has chosen to reside in you by water and the word. And it is through the ascension that the Spirit is sent. So it is that the ascension of Jesus Christ is necessary for us and for our faith, it is necessary for our salvation.
We find Jesus tonight praying in the garden before his crucifixion to his Father and to our Father. And this is very important that you understand this, that God the Father is our Father because he is Jesus's Father. He is not our Father by our nature. It is true that he created us. It is true that within the Trinity, his name, his title is Father, but Jesus makes it very clear that we, according to our corrupted natures have a Father. And that Father is Satan. Satan would be our Father. He would tell us what to do with where to go and how to be. And if we were to listen to him and we are wont to listen to him, then life actually would be pretty good. We would all agree. We'd all be ordered in just the right categories. But we would not have Father who would save us, but a Father who instead would damn us along with himself. So it is that our corrupted natures have this being as our Father, but Christ here tonight prays to our Father. He makes it clear that we are belonging to God the Father, and we belong to him because Christ is in us and we are in Christ.
It is because we are in Christ, that he is now our Father for, we have been born again. That phrase gets misused very, very often. It comes from John 3. There Jesus tells us that we must be born again. Well, in John, and I've told you this before, I’ll tell it to you again, John loves his double entendres because that word born again in the Greek, anothen, does not just mean to be born again, but to be born from above. And so it is true that you have been born from above. Not that you sprang out of the womb of God and found your way upon this earth (your mothers might have something to say about that), but that your birth comes from the one who is above all things, the one whose name is higher than all names, the only name in all of heaven and earth by which we must be saved, Jesus, the Christ. You have been born again, and you have been born from above. You belong to God. And as much as you struggle against your sinful flesh in this life, this truth is always true, that God has made himself to be your Father. He has brought you into himself. He has adopted you as sons and daughters, as heirs of the living Christ.
And that is a beautiful and glorious thing. Take heart in this. Jesus says very clearly in his prayer, he has not lost one that the Father has given to him. And if you belong to Christ, then he has never, ever, ever lost you. Certainly we know that we can reject our faith. We can, if you will, spring out of the hand of God that holds us tight, right? Imagine God as a father holding the hand of his child as they walk down the street. If the child rips his hand away, is it the father who caused the child to be hit by a car? Of course it's not. The father will have fought against his child running away, but it’s still on the kid. And that is but a small picture of how we walk with God. He holds us and sustains us. Sometimes, we buck against him and try to run away, but he brings us back, and this is nowhere better shown than this morning as you are gathered here today to hear God's word, to receive his sacrament. He has guided you here, and you have not fought him but have listened to him.
It is clear beyond all clarity that God is your Father. And he brings you back to himself. You may try to rip your hand away from him, but he brings you back to himself through your repentance and through his forgiveness. He is your Father and he will not lose you. Of course, Jesus says he did lose one, one who ran away from him. He indicates Judas, which really is kind of an interesting thing for us because by losing one, it must mean that Judas did at one point, belong to Christ. Judas then serves as the example: do not to take it upon yourself to dole out your punishment. See, Judas was so upset over what he had done to Jesus, that he went and hung himself. But the reality is, is if Judas had repented, he would have found the forgiveness of God. As soon as that rope burst his bowels out from inside of him, as we read an Acts today, perhaps he was sorry. But we know that Judas was prophesied to forsake the faith that he had in Jesus Christ and betray him over to the hands of sinful men. But Judas, in this forsaking of the faith, turned away from repentance and turned to his own punishment, thinking it would be enough. But we can’t do that. We can’t punish ourselves. We are not our own judges.
Don't punish yourself for all that you've done. If you look at your life, if you look at your choices, if you look at your heart, if you look at your mind, you know that you are a great and grievous sinner. To punish yourself over these things is not within the purview of your being. But instead your ultimate end is in God's hands. And what does God tell you? Not that he will punish you, not that he has it out for you, but that he will redeem you from the pit. And so he has.
And this is a fascinating thought as well, that Christ has brought us up out of the pit. He has brought us up out of the world and still yet, while we sit in this life, we are in the world. We did belong to the world, but now we belong to Christ. And yet we are still in this world. What a confusing thing this must be for some, that to live is Christ and to die is gain. And you go, all right, I'd rather get out of the world than be in it. But keep this in mind: our Lord has kept you in this world for one very real purpose, that you might live out the will of God.
Did you notice in our epistle lesson that John said whoever prays according to the will of God may be confident that he has what he prays for? Have you thought about this? When we are in Christ, we pray according to the will of God and it is necessary then, that as we live in this world, we look at what the will of God is. And what is the will of God? That you love him and that you love your neighbor as yourself. When we pray according to these things, we may have the confidence that we will get, whatever it is that we need. And what is it that we need? Forgiveness, life, and salvation. I don’t mean that you earn your way to Christ by your love of God or your love of your neighbor, but that, as we’ve discussed in weeks prior, as you do the will go God you discover your salvation by seeing it play out through your works.
And when we are living according to his will, we will find forgiveness, life, and salvation, not in our works, but in God’s promises, in His word and sacrament. There is forgiveness, life, and salvation. There we know we belong to God. There we find the strength to persevere in this sin-filled world. There we find the strength to endure. And there again, we know that we belong to God.
You wouldn't need forgiveness if you were not still in this world, but it delights God to forgive you your sins. You don't need forgiveness when you die to go to be with Jesus, you don't need forgiveness when you rise from your graves and there you live forever in Christ in his eternal glory, but you need forgiveness now. God has kept you in this world that he might forgive you your sins. God has kept you in this world so that you might bring other people to have their sins forgiven as well.
You see the ascension ties into all of our doctrines in life. It ties into evangelism. It ties into ministry. It ties into the word and sacraments and the efficacy of those two things. It ties into literally every piece of the Christian life. Most specifically, for us today, it ties into the idea that you are a child of God because your Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father. And that doesn't mean that God the Father has a right hand. God the Father doesn't have a right hand. God is Spirit; spirits don't have hands. Jesus does because he has bound up humanity in his divinity forever. But that right hand of God is a seat of power and Christ there is seated at the right hand of God. If he's got all the power in all of the cosmos, he uses it to make you his own. He uses it to bring you into himself. He uses it to place himself into you. And so you are bound up together with Christ. You are his brother. You are his sister. You are a child of God, forsaking this world, seeking out your Father’s loving face, forsaking all others for the sake of Christ, who turns you back to the world with a heart that has been kneaded, you know, like bread, a heart that has been softened to love those around you. You forsake everything for the love of Christ. And the love of Christ turns you back to this world. It's true.
My friends, our Jesus Christ is risen, not just from the dead, but now he is risen on high into all eternity. And this should bring us great joy and assurance, for here we find our belonging in him. We find our identity in him. We find our sanctification in him, our being made holy in him, all because he is risen and ascended. He is risen! He is risen, indeed! Alleluia! In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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