May 21, 2023, Life in the In-Between, John 17:1-11 – Mtr. Kathryn Boswell

saintphilipsnorwood ♦ May 21, 2023 ♦ Leave a comment

To listen to this sermon click the link below. After the link is an outline of the sermon.

Last Thursday was the Feast of the Ascension. Jesus returned to the Father, in order that he might send the Spirit. He ascended bodily into heaven – flesh, scars, and all, the physical creation, human DNA, now in the presence of God.

But the disciples went back to Jerusalem to wait, as Jesus had told them, walking a “sabbath day’s journey” which is 2000 cubits, or about ¾ of a mile, to stay together there in the upper room – the eleven remaining apostles, as well as Mary, the mother of Jesus, and his brothers, and other women who were part of their community. Luke says there were about 120 people in all. And during that time they were living in a kind of in-between, between saying goodbye to Jesus as he had been physically present among them, the life they had come to know, and the time (that they still barely understood, if that) when the Holy Spirit would be present among them in power.

Next week we’ll celebrate that day, the day the Holy Spirit was poured out on that little community, the day life changed for them forever, really the day the Church itself was born. We’ll talk about that next week.

But this week I want us to identify with that group of waiting disciples in the upper room, because in a very real sense it is still true for us that to be the church is to live in the in-between. We live after the coming of the Holy Spirit, we live in the fulfillment of what Peter and James and Mary and all the rest were waiting for. The Church is an old established institution for us, not a phenomenon about to be birthed.

But we are still the people of God in waiting. And just like those disciples, we are waiting for something that we only dimly understand – the return of Jesus Christ, the final destruction of evil and death, and the healing and restoration of the whole created order. We anticipate those things, but only as “through a glass darkly,” as Paul puts it, only like a scene viewed through a fogged and clouded window. We just spent about 10 months study the book of Revelation, that gives us glimpses in all those heavenly realities, and I’m willing to be that any one of us who have been part of the Bible study group would agree that our understanding of the glory that is to come is still fairly dim.

So, in a very real way, we are like the disciples in the upper room, living in an in-between time. And the readings today seem to me to speak to our situation, or status, as people living in this time we sometimes call the “now and not yet.”

The disciples in that upper room were anxious, I’m sure, and probably a little bit sad to know that they wouldn’t be with Jesus any more in the way they had come to know. But they weren’t just huddled together in useless inaction. We know only one thing they were doing. Luke tells us that they were constantly devoting themselves to prayer. They would have had to prepare meals, of course, and some of them might have had other obligations, but their whole life of fellowship was enveloped in a common life of prayer. Prayer is the foundation of life in the in-between. It’s the connective tissue that joins us as a body composed of very different parts. It’s the framework for everything we do, whether that is worship on Sunday morning or praying the Daily Office on facebook with people from all over the country.

Obviously we aren’t praying every second of every day. But prayer is our constant, like the “x” in a mathematical equation, it’s the unchanging thing that informs and affects everything else. It’s our rootedness, our connection to God. Being constantly devoted to prayer is what the psalmist describes in Psalm 1, it’s being that tree planted by streams of water, continually nourished, continually refreshed, continually renewed.

So Luke gives us such a reassuring and comforting description of life in the in-between, community bathed in, and supported by, a life of prayer. Sounds great. But then Peter steps in and throws us a curve ball, a little hot thunderbolt of reality. “Don’t act like there’s something weird going on when your life falls apart,” he warns them. “Don’t be surprised by your troubles. You haven’t forgotten how much Jesus suffered, surely. And you know that your brothers and sisters all over the world are suffering.” Life in the in-between, Peter reminds them, was never going to be a bed of roses.

And Peter prescribes two courses of action that sound a little bit like contradictions. He tells us to leave all our worries with God, and then he tells us we’d better be ready to fight off predators. “Humble yourselves under God’s mighty hand, and he will lift you up,” Peter writes, “Leave all your worries with him, because he cares for you.” And then, in the very next verse, he goes on to say, “Watch out! Your old enemy the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.”

So which is it? “Relax and don’t worry” or “Don’t let your guard down for a second”? I think the answer has to be: yes.

You shouldn’t be surprised, Peter says, by the fiery ordeal you are facing. And there are so many fiery ordeals, aren’t there? The people reading Peter’s letter might have been facing the threat of imprisonment or torture or death for their faith. We know Peter himself was martyred, crucified for his faith. But the world hasn’t run out of fiery ordeals in the last couple millennia. We are daily surrounded by war and violence, by hunger and homelessness. Closer to home, maybe we just got a diagnosis of cancer; we have lost our beloved child much too young; our marriage is crumbling into ruins; we’ve lost our battle with addiction – again. These fiery ordeals we come up against, they are real, and they are hard, and they are bigger than us. They are definitely much stronger than us. We can worry about all these things, but for the most part we are powerless against them.

Rest yourself, safe under the almighty hand of God, Peter advises. Leave all your cares, all your sleepless night worryings, all your frantic and futile activities trying to fix the unfixable – leave it all in God’s hands, because he is there to care for you. You’re in the best of loving hands, always.

What the devil is really good at, though, is deception. We will suffer from grief or pain, but our enemy would like us to be devoured by despair and hopelessness. We will sometimes be sad and discouraged by our failures, but our enemy would love for us to be devoured by bitterness and self-loathing. We will surely feel afraid of the very real dangers that surround us in this broken world, but our enemy would love for us to be devoured by the terror that we are alone, that there is no one who cares for us.

Don’t be surprised by the fiery ordeal you are facing. Life in the in-between is full of suffering. People in the old days used to call life in this world a “vale of tears” and maybe we think that’s kind of corny and melodramatic, but it sometimes it’s not so far wrong. Jesus himself called us to pick up our cross and follow him. Don’t get fooled by those people who want to sell you a prosperity gospel – that a life of faith ought to be all comfort and wealth and success. That’s a deception of a whole other kind. But be on your guard against all the lies of the enemy, because he is always prowling around, trying to rob you of God’s promises. We are not alone. We are not without hope. We aren’t orphans.

I find it infinitely comforting to read the words of Jesus today, as he prayed for his disciples, as he prays for us, living here in the in-between. The gospel reading in John shows us Jesus, looking forward to the Ascension, the feast we just celebrated, that moment when he would return to the Father in all his glory as well as in all his humanity. And in that moment he remembered, as he prayed, the ones he loves who will still be here, living in the world with all its fiery ordeals. “Now I am no longer in the world,” he prays (even though he still had his Passion and death ahead of him, he knew his work here was coming to a close) “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 the name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”

As we live our human lives in the in-between, waiting for a goodness we can’t begin to imagine just yet, we know that Jesus himself has invoked the protection of the Father over his people, over us. We are under the blessing of God’s mighty hand. And no matter what fiery ordeals we face – and we have, and we do, and we will – we are never outside of that blessing. We are never without that protection. We are always one body and one community, one family in his name, bound together in our common practice of prayer, and living day by day in the glorious hope of his return. +