John 17:20-26

Jesus prayed for his disciples, and then he said, “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one.”

Prince Singh, who many of you know as a long-standing friend of this parish, former rector of St. Alban’s, Franklin Lakes and Oakland, and now bishop of Rochester, my home diocese, was born in India and raised in the Church of South India.  He is a member of one of the lower castes of Hindu society, as are most of the members of the Christian Church in India, and he has spent much of his life working with the Dalits, the Untouchables.  When he tells his story, he says that, in India, the Church is the only place where the Dalits can get an education, where they have some measure of human and social capital, where their status and worth is not judged according to their caste.  To be told that you are of infinite value to God, that God loves you unconditionally, is of incalculable significance in a society which says you are of no value, that you are fit only for cleaning toilets and carrying garbage.

Scholars tell us that it is this aspect of Christianity, the infinite value of every person that caused the church to grow so explosively in the early decades.  Christianity flourished not because it fashioned attractive doctrinal alternatives to the worship of Greek gods or because  its theology appealed to the movers and shakers of the ancient world, but because it made such a profound difference in the lives of the people who believed it.  In a strictly ordered and hierarchical world where power, wealth and righteousness were considered synonyms, Christians lived and worshiped in communities where rich and poor, male and female, slave and free, Jew and Gentile were respected as equal members of the body of Christ.  Whoever you were, you were somebody in the eyes of God.  And they took care of one another; they created a social safety net.  Their widows and orphans were not left to die of starvation or to suffer the indignities of prostitution or begging.  The community organized to care for their needs.

In a time when everything was considered divinely ordained, when death was just the punishment for sin, the Jesus way was something new under the sun, and many, many people found it so inviting, so compelling, that they were willing to risk their lives to be part of it.

I suggest to you that the capacity to transform the human person is still the foundation of Christianity to this day.  For all our splendid worship, for all the music, the art, the literature, the preaching, the grand buildings and grounds, the fundamental purpose of Christianity is changing lives.  Our lives – we – are supposed to be different because we follow Jesus.  And we have been changed to touch others with that good news.

“The heartbeat of the church,” said our magnificent Presiding Bishop last summer at General Convention, “is mission.”  And then she repeated that word at the end of her sermon and made it sound like a heartbeart.  “Mission.  Mission.  Mission. Mission.”  I sat in that same room at the convention center in Annaheim with her and thousands of other Episcopalians when she said it.  The mission is God’s, the mission dei.  God’s mission is to reconcile all people with God and with one another in Christ.  And the mission has a church – and that’s us – and all our ministries are directed toward furthering God’s mission, bringing the people around us into closer relationship with God and one another.

The Mission of God has always seemed a bit like an impossible dream.  And perhaps it seems especially so today.  As I listen to the nightly news,  as I listen to you, as I listen to people out there, I hear the constant theme of frustration with the changes we are experiencing in our communities.  The devastating and prolonged recession is part of it, to be sure.  But of even greater concern are the long term changes of the last several decades that have caused industries to decline and jobs to go elsewhere.  While there is genuine population growth in some places, most places are experiencing a loss of population.  More and more of our kids have to go elsewhere to find work.  Our finances, both as families and as a congregation, have grown more difficult.

And church seems to have fallen off the cultural radar screen.  An increasing number of people are people who’ve never had any experience of church, who don’t know what it means to go to church, and who are suspicious of religion.  It seems more and more difficult to attract people to church.  The ways we have become accustomed to doing business, the practices and habits we have nurtured since the middle of the 20^th century no longer seem to be working.  Sometimes we wonder if we haven’t botched the whole thing, if we fragile folk haven’t simply let the whole thing fall apart.

I think that it’s not the first time Christians have wondered about the future before them.  The disciples in the upper room, the fledgling community under persecution, they too must have wondered if anything lasting would come from the Jesus movement.

This must have been John’s reason for putting these words on Jesus’ lips in the seventeenth chapter of his gospel, “Jesus prayed for his disciples, and then he said, ‘I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one … Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me.  I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” 

If the mission of the church was all about us then all indeed might fall apart.  But the mission is not ours.  It belongs to God, and God will not let it fall apart.  As our Easter readings continue to make the transition in the church year from Easter to Pentecost and culminating with Trinity Sunday, what these texts testify to is that the world continues to be the venue where the gift of life is given.  Yes, we Easter people still do live in a Good Friday world and yes, we have much to much evidence of this as fear gets acted out time and time again as anxiety, greed, selfishness, and violence.  But God will have none of it since these same scriptures testify to a God who makes no distinctions, who authorizes hospitality, who opens prisons (which we hear about in today’s first reading), a God who breathes the world new, who assures good order in the world.  In sum, these texts defy the belittling of God’s world and invites us to live in the world boldly, freely, in peace, at home, practicing increased hospitality.  We may even become home-makers as last week’s readings suggested, following the God who makes a permanent home among us.

You see, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, it’s important for us to claim the truth that ultimately it’s not about us.  It’s not about our success as a church.  It’s about the completion of God’s mission which in a word is about reconciliation, reconciling our resources so that all God’s children have enough and showing the world out there that the the world out there is still the place where God continues to offer abundant life for all.  It’s not about our success as a church.  It’s about the completion of God’s mission and our participation in that mission.  And God’s promise to us is that we are not alone.  If we make the world a home for others as God has made a home with us then we cannot fail.  So in these hard days, as in every day, our focus needs to be outward, outside our doors, out where God’s people are.  It’s not a matter of inviting people into our churches, but of taking the Good News of Jesus out to them.  It’s a matter of being Jesus people wherever we are so that people know the power of abundant new life belongs to God.

Whenever we gather, whether that be as worshippers, worship team, pastoral care team, or as a Vestry, or as a member here of a commission or a committee or even as we look around out there which we must do, there is no more important work than to consider what it means to be the church, what it means to be Christ’s body here and now.

It is our vocation to do those things which will grow God’ kingdom of love and justice – to worship, to pray, to study, to give, to work for the sake of God’s mission.  It’s our vocation to help one another keep the focus of our life on joining God’s mission.  If we do so, God’s kingdom of love and justice will flourish, and so will we.  Amen.