The Last Lessons – Part 5: The Body

 Sermon for Milledgeville & Whitestown UMC...

The Last Lessons – Part 5: The Body

 

What did the food critic say after tasting the Body of Christ?

Very savioury.

 

Jesus prayed for the Church, the Body of Christ to be united.

We are the body of Christ. By the Spirit of Christ, we are empowered to continue the ministry of Jesus. Jesus promised that after He returned to God in heaven, He would send the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, to the Church. It is through the Spirit, that we can experience Jesus. Read the Book of Acts and see examples of the Church continuing the ministry of Jesus, through the power of the Spirit.

 

Just as Jesus taught hope in the good news about the kingdom of God, the apostles taught hope in the kingdom of Christ. Just as Jesus healed the sick, the Church restored health through prayer, compassion, and the power of God. And just as Jesus freed people of demonic possession and fed the hungry, so also the Church liberates lives with ministries that help people to pursue freedom from addiction or mental health challenges. The Church advocates for the poor and powerless, working for justice for the marginalized. 

 

On His last night with His disciples, Jesus prayed for His fledgling Church. His chosen would carry on His ministry and establish churches all around the world. His Church would need help, so Jesus prayed for the body of Christ. John 17 is what the Church has called Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer.

 

The first thing Jesus prays for is glory. That seems strange. Is Jesus a glory hound? Hardly, but many prayers can be selfish.

 

There’s a song in the animated Disney film The Hunchback of Notre Dame called God Help the Outcasts. As a social outcast, the gypsy, Esmeralda, prays to God. She doesn’t pray for herself as much as she prays out of compassion for those who are struggling and marginalized.

 

As she prays, she overhears the prayers of others in the cathedral.

 

I ask for wealth, I ask for fame
I ask for glory to shine on my name
I ask for love I can possess
I ask for God and his angels to bless me

 

Jesus prays for glory, but not for His own sake. Jesus prayed to be restored to His former glory in heaven at God’s right hand, so that God may be glorified. God was glorified by conquering death and exalting Jesus. Jesus is vindicated by God’s action to raise Him from death and to place all things in heaven and on earth under Christ’s authority. This was God’s plan of salvation all along. Jesus completed the work that God gave Him to do. He made God known to all who would listen. He proclaimed good news about the nearness of God and the coming reign of God’s love. He liberated lives with hope and heavenly power. And now Jesus was ready to complete the plan, to die upon the cross.

 

Jesus prayed for glory, so that God may be glorified. And what is glory? Glory is the heaviness of God’s majesty, the brilliant excellence of the Supreme Ruler of the Universe. Glory is the honor and praise due God’s inestimable worth, splendor and righteous reputation. Because Jesus and the Father are one, Jesus shares in God’s glory. But he sacrificed the glory of heaven to walk among us in human flesh. Returning to heaven would enable Jesus to share heaven’s glory with the Church through the Holy Spirit.

 

He prayed that we too might share in God’s glory.

 

“I am not praying only on their behalf, but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their testimony, that they will all be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. I pray that they will be in us, so that the world will believe that you sent me. The glory you gave to me I have given to them, that they may be one just as we are one… (John 17:20-22)

 

This heavenly glory that Jesus shares with the Church is what we call grace. It is God’s power enabling us to do as Jesus did, to love as He loved, to give as he gave, to serve others, to teach hope, restore health, and liberate lives.

 

Grace is sometimes called resurrection power. The same power God used to raise Jesus from the grave is now at work in you. Paul prayed in His letter to the Ephesians that our eyes might be opened to see and understand… “the incomparable greatness of his power toward us who believe, as displayed in the exercise of his immense strength. This power he exercised in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms…” (Eph 1:19-20)

 

Just as God glorified Jesus with heaven’s life-giving, death-conquering power, God glorifies the Church with that same power. In fact, we are, mystically speaking, seated with Christ in glory. Paul wrote in Ephesians 2:6-7,

 

“God raised us up together with Jesus and seated us together with him in the heavenly realms…, to demonstrate in the coming ages the surpassing wealth of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

 

We are glorified with the powers of heaven. And not for our own sakes, but that we might shine with the goodness of God and advance the kingdom of Christ on earth through ministry. Let your glorious light shine so that others will praise God when they see your good deeds. (Matthew 5:16)

 

Jesus prayed for glory, for God’s sake and for the Church the body of Christ. And Jesus prayed for our protection here on earth.

 

Just this past week a mass grave of Christians and Druze were found in Syria. Jihadists, running unchecked by the new Syrian leadership, had murdered them.

The world is not always a safe place to be a follower of Jesus. Jesus warned of persecution. And in his high priestly prayer he prayed for God to protect the body of Christ.

 

Holy Father, keep them safe in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are one. (John 17:11b)

 

It seems that a result of God’s protection is the unity of the Church. The same intimate union between God the Father and Jesus, the Son, is ours to experience through glorious grace at work among us through the Holy Spirit. We can experience unity with God-Christ and Spirit, even as we work always toward unity in the Church.

 

Right now, the United Methodists are anything but united. We have failed to achieve unity. Instead, we have allowed social and political agendas pressure the Church into choosing sides and dividing over the hot button issues of the day. Jesus prayed that we would be one, so that the world may believe that God sent Jesus. Our failure to be united in spirit and purpose has defamed the name of Jesus. Society is critical of the Church for its divisiveness and United Methodists have just added fuel to the anti-Christian fire burning around us.

 

Jesus prayed for the Body of Christ to be protected from the darkness and evil of the world, so that we may be one and, by our unity with God and one another, the world may believe in Jesus. How are you living a life that reveals our oneness with Christ and one another?

 

The early church leader Tertullian wrote in his Apologeticus of the pagan astonishment at the unity of the Church.  ‘Look,’ they say, ‘how they [Christians] love one another’ (for they themselves hate one another); ‘and how they are ready to die for each other’ (for they themselves are readier to kill each other). Tertullian reveals how Christians distinguish themselves from pagan society. There is love in the body of Christ, where among pagans there is hatred.

 

Christians of Tertullian’s day were persecuted. They were tortured, beheaded, and thrown before wild beasts to be slaughtered. The pagans were astounded at how willing Christians were to die for their faith and for one another. Tertullian wrote, “As often as we are mown down by you, the more we grow in numbers; the blood of Christians is the seed.”

 

Yes, Jesus prayed for the body of Christ to be kept safe in the unity of the Spirit, so that the world might believe. See how they love one another!

 

Jesus prayed with the expectation that His body, the Church, would experience the fullness of His joy through their unity with Him and one another.

 

…I am saying these things in the world, so they may experience my joy completed in themselves. (John 17:13)

 

And he prayed that His body be sanctified, made holy as God is holy,

 

set apart as God’s own,

set apart to shine with God’s glory and grace,

set apart to love one another in the unity of the Spirit,

set apart to bear the fruit of good deeds for God’s glory

set apart in truth

 

And what is truth? Jesus said that God’s word is truth. Jesus is the Word of God made flesh! Jesus is the truth. And Jesus fills His Church, the Body of Christ, with Himself through the Spirit of Truth. We are filled with Truth and sent into the world to share God’s truth with others.

 

Just as you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world. (John 17:18)

 

As Jesus finished his high priestly prayer for the Body of Christ, he asked that His Church might be where He is, at the Father’s side in glory, and that His love might be in us.

 

“Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, so that they can see my glory that you gave me because you loved me before the creation of the world. I made known your name to them, and I will continue to make it known, so that the love you have loved me with may be in them, and I may be in them.”

 

Jesus prayed for you that last night, during his last lessons, that you, the Body of Christ, might be filled with His love. And since God is love, you are filled with God, through the Spirit dwelling in your heart. Learn to live by His love and grace at work in you, so that you may experience the fullness of the joy of Christ, and bring glory to His name, as you work to build His kingdom right here in Boone County.

 

These last lessons of Jesus are for you, the Body of Christ, so that you will go and bear the fruit of good deeds, that you will proclaim the truth of Jesus Christ to your neighbors, friends and relations, so that the world will know, through your love for one another, that Jesus truly is the Son of God an Savior of the world.

 

Body of Christ, how will you respond to these last lessons? What will you do as a Spirit-filled, glory-bound, follower of Jesus?

 

May the Lord guide you into the fullness of His joy!