Sermon 5th June 2011
Easter7 Peter 5:5b-11
And all of you must clothe yourselves with humility in your dealings with one another, for
‘God opposes the proud,
but gives grace to the humble.’
Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you. Discipline yourselves; keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in your faith, for you know that your brothers and sisters throughout the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering. And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, support, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.
John 17:1-11
After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, ‘Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.
‘I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.
John’s gospel tells us eternal life is knowing God. The Letter of First Peter tells us that to know God requires a humility, a quality of spirit that does not hinder or impede the glory of Christ coming into our lives.
Let me try and unpack these two insights.
The prayer of John 17 is set in the timetable of Jesus meeting with his disciples before Jesus is deserted, arrested and sentenced to death. It is often called the prayer of consecration. It is a prayer to bring glory to the work of Christ, the one who had made known the name of the Father. In John’s gospel we have a quite different approach than through the other three gospels. Here in John’s gospel Jesus is portrayed as exalted and glorified.
The John 17 prayer goes on to underline the intimate communion between the son and the father. Jesus naturally is concerned for the well being of his disciples, and it is his prayer that they will be protected. While Jesus realises that he is about to depart this world, it is his prayer that God will be with the disciples. He also realises he is about to be deserted.
In John’s gospel there is a strong connection between knowing God through Christ. Knowledge in this sense is personal, it is knowledge by acquaintance, knowledge that comes through encounter or relationship.
Verse 3 is an interesting side comment. In today’s page layout it would be put in a footnote. It reads:
And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
What is interesting here is that eternal life is simply defined as knowing God. It is not defined as life after death or life everlasting, instead simply as knowing God.
In today’s language we might talk about this as the spiritual dimension to life. The way of the spirit, and I am not talking here of ghosts, the way of the spirit is a dimension of life that is often ignored or scoffed at. However many sports coaches are recognising that the team spirit is vital to the effectiveness of a team.
In order to discover the spiritual dimension to life, you do need a set of beliefs of some kind, and you do need a set of practices. It is not unlike learning music. You do need a good teacher who will give you knowledge of the music, and you need also to develop the practice of the instrument. There are different schools of thought about how to teach music, and a good teacher will have clarified in their mind the merits of different approaches.
I am suggesting by this analogy, that the spiritual way, the way to know God in Christ, also relies on a set of beliefs, and a set of practices. To put it in the terminology of John’s gospel, we can know God through Christ and gain eternal life through believing in him and in practicing the Christian way.
In the letter of Peter, there is an interesting and important insight about this spiritual practice. God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Pride and arrogance make us blind. I am not talking here about celebrating achievements. It is good to celebrate achievements. That is different from pride or arrogance. The arrogant are into put downs in order to protect their own limitations. If we worship our own ego, ignore listening to those around us, then our emotional and spiritual antennae become stunted. By contrast, the way of the humble fosters people who are open, and when we are open, we can receive the grace of God.
There was a story in the news this week about a Muslim woman in Srebrenica in the old Yugoslavia. With the arrest of General Mladic, and his transfer to the Hague to stand trial for war crimes, there has been a defiant backlash from Serb nationalists. There is no humility here. It is a good example of how pride in a false god makes people blind to inhumanity and atrocity.
Let me read to you a story in the newspaper during the week. It is a sad and disturbing story.
For the surviving Muslims of Srebrenica, at the site of the worst genocide in Europe since World War II, the insults continue. At lunchtime three cars of fanatical Serbs raced past the memorial cemetery where many of the more than 8000 victims are buried. Honking their horns, the Serbs leaned out of the windows waving nationalist flags and screaming insults at the dead. A police car is stationed outside the graveyard permanently, but the police inside did nothing. They too are Serb nationalists and they know that the local …administration condones such outbursts.
The insults compound Fadila Efendic’s pain. She runs a small souvenir shop selling Srebrenica postcards and Bosnia T-shirts opposite the cemetery, which is on the site of the former United Nations peacekeeping base that was meant to protect the Muslim enclave.
She and her daughter Nirha escaped by fleeing into the UN base and being deported by the besieging Bosnian Serb army, under the command of the war crimes suspect Ratko Miadic. But she never saw her son Fejzo and her husband, Hamed, again. They were killed when General Miadic’s force killed the entire male population of Srebrenica in July 1995. Pieces of her husband’s body were found in two “secondary” mass graves, where bodies were moved to hide evidence of the great crime.
A decade or so later, she held a second funeral to bury her husband’s newly discovered head. The only remains of her son are two leg bones. She is waiting for the rest of his body to be identified before she buries him. “I never believed I would come back. There is not a step you can make here at does not have Muslim blood on it.
But the years have gone by and water has washed it away {the blood].” Ms Efendic said. The sporadic Serb protests at the cemetery used to bother her more, but she has grown inured to them. “I used to be traumatised by it. Now I do not really care any more,” she said. “I just cope with it the best way I can.” Dominion Post Wednesday 1 June 2011
This is a story of a traumatised woman and the continuing cruelty of young hooligans poisoned and blinded of their history.
Now I need to say that when Croatian Generals were convicted of war crimes, there was a similar response of denial and defiance. The sad thing here is that there is no humility, no realization of the need to repent, no apology of any kind. It leaves a country impoverished and stunted. History tells us this is not an extreme case – it is happening today in two cases that are hitting our headlines - Syria and Libya.
Let me conclude with this thought. This week the Chief Science Advisor presented a report to the Prime minister that among other things presented this sobering fact: that NZ has the highest rate of teenage suicide in the OECD counties.
It is time for some humility and a reality check. There is time for some rethinking about what our priorities are. Perhaps it is time to think again of the values of the spiritual way.
The invitation is to let the grace of God come afresh into our communities, our institutions and our lives and let the glory of Christ fill us with his light.
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