John 17: 1-11
- Who can tell me what this is?
- Crazes at school:
- Fidget spinners
- Professional wrestling
- Pokemon cards
- Scooters
- All of these have one thing in common – the desire to belong
- Not just kids
- Looking back in my life there are times when I tried so hard to belong, that I lost track of who I really was. I said and did things that I regret because that desire to belong was so strong, that I was prepared to compromise just about anything else
- Mostly when I was young, but if I’m honest, it is not only when I was young.
- The truth is, that everyone yearns to belong.
- There is nothing so isolating as not knowing who are are, or where you belong.
- There is nothing so liberating as knowing that you belong.
- When Lois was asking me earlier in the week what the theme for my service was, the answer was simple “we belong to Jesus.”
- But the more time that I spent in the text, the more complicated my message became
- This passage makes for very complicated reading.
- As I was going over the sermon late last night, I realized that, somewhere along the way, my message had become complicated too.
- Rather than a simple theme of belonging, I had ended up with a hodge podge of competing ideas.
- All of it comes back to one simple idea: we belong in and to Jesus.
- Let’s think back to last week’s reading.
- If you remember, Jesus was telling his disciples that he would send them the Holy Spirit, and that through the Spirit they would participate in the life of God.
- Again, this week, there are three parties to Jesus’ prayer – the Holy Father, Jesus, and “those whom you have given me” in other words, the Church.
- Let’s listen to our reading again: (Read John 17:1-5)
- John is at pains to show the relationship between Jesus, God the Father, and the Church that Jesus has been given.
- Through this web of relationships we are shown our identity as the church. We belong to Jesus
- Knowing who you are, when you belong, and who you belong to is an incredibly powerful thing.
- I was talking to a friend of mine recently, who shared the story of returning to his ancestral marae in the North Island. He didn’t know much about his own past except for the names of a couple of grannies, and the name of a place. He was feeling nervous, anxious and intimidated by the prospect of turning up in this little place in the middle of nowhere and saying to the local people “this is where I come from.” What if they turned him away?
- It might not seem like a big deal to you and I, but Maori understand that belonging lies at the very heart of identity.
- John tells us in no uncertain terms that we do belong. That we belong to Jesus. That we belong in Jesus.
- The Maori concept of whakapapa is a powerful way of understanding the deep truth of belonging. Where you belong, who you come from is even more important to your identity than your own name.
- Think about that for a second. Let it sink in.
- I believe that each and every one of us yearn to know where we truly belong in life. Jesus answers that question for us. “It’s easy,” he says, “you belong to me.”
- We are adopted into the family of Christ. Ka whanau o Ihu Karaiti taku iwi. The family of Jesus Christ are my people. This is where I belong. It is in Jesus that my true self is revealed.
- And strangely enough, it is in us that Jesus himself is revealed.
- The word “glory” or “glorify” is repeated six times in today’s passage.
- First Jesus asks God to glorify him, so that he can glorify God. (v.1)
- Then he says that he has already brought God glory, and asks again that he be glorified with the glory that he had before the world began (v.4-5)
- Finally Jesus tells the Father that glory has come to him through us.
- There’s a lot of glory and glorifying going on! What does it all mean? What does this have to do with the identity and belonging that we find in Christ?
- What does glorify mean, anyway? We do it all the time, don’t we? When we worship God, aren’t we glorifying him? Well, what does it mean, then?
- To Glorify means to make known and proclaim the true splendour and worth of a person.
- So, when Jesus asks the Father to glorify him, he is asking God to make him truly known for who he really is. The wonderful, splendiferous truth.
- So, if God shows people who Jesus really is, then Jesus can show people who God really is.
- Is it starting to make a bit more sense?
- No? It’s getting complicated again, isn’t it?
- It all boils down to belonging. God shows us who Jesus is. Jesus belongs in and to God. Jesus shows us who God is. God belongs in and with Jesus. He even shows us who we truly are, and, in turn, we show Jesus to the world around.
- It’s that same story of belonging told over again. The Father, the Son, and through the Holy Spirit, the Church. A community of life. A community of knowing and being known. A community of belonging.
- This is what Jesus himself prays for. That all of this, the wellspring of belonging, will be understood and known. That people won’t have to chase after every fad, and craze and popular opinion in the hopes of finding somewhere to belong. That in him, we will find the source of belonging itself.
- And Jesus prays for us. He doesn’t pray for the world in general, but for us in particular. It’s possible get this all wrong. It’s possible to say that “I’m in, Jesus is praying for me, and that means that you’re out.” But if we do that, then we just slip back into that old worldly way of striving to belong. Jesus is not praying exclusively, but intentionally. He is focused on bringing the fullness of life to those who belong to him.
- This is John’s vision for the church – a community of belonging, a place to call home. A community that glorifies and makes known the nature of Jesus, the nature of God. The God we see in Jesus. The God who fulfils our human desire to belong. A God who makes himself known in Jesus, and in our life together in the church. This is where we belong, this is where everyone can belong. This is Jesus. This is His church.
- Amen
