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Tainted by the world?
“More like a marathon than a 100 yard dash” said the wiser, older brother,
“that is what the life of faith is like.” To which the younger replied,
“That’s no good, I have never done well in the endurance races.”
Isn’t that our experience. Being faithful in fits and starts is easy. But
remaining faithful over the long haul is more difficult. Especially with
all of the pressures against us. This world wants to change us. This world
wants to transform us. It wants to claim us, to mold us and shape us.
And the stinging question for today is “What has happened to us? How has
the world (and when I say “the world” I mean those forces that neglect God’s
ways or are in opposition to God) how have they influenced us? What effect
have they had on our lives of faith? And perhaps the follow up question
should be, “Has the world shaped us or have we shaped the world?” Because
God calls us to be world shapers.
Graduation and Our
Senior Dinner
Friday and yesterday were days when many high schools celebrated
graduation. And I am guessing that thousands of Georgia high school
graduates heard commencement speeches that talked about the positive
influence their generation can have on this world. And it’s true. Each
generation has that potential. But I would argue,
for you and for me, that it’s difficult to change the world, if you haven’t
allowed God to change you first.
For many of our high school graduates, they are about to enter a whole new
world. They will leave the shelter of the family home and head off into
the world where they will be on their own… with new freedoms, new challenges
and new opportunities. And the question lingering in everyone’s mind is
this “Are they prepared?”
To avoid the end of the school year rush, we held our senior dinner several
weeks ago. It was a progressive dinner, the seniors were picked up in nice
cars driven by members of the church. The chauffer drove them from house to
house and from stop to stop until finally they ended up here at the church
to be greeted by their families, for dessert and a slideshow.
It’s one of my favorite times of year. Because at each of the houses, other
younger high school students, their peers, are there to serve them as
waiters and waitresses. And at the stops in between the houses, middle
school students wait to show their respect and support and present the
seniors with various gift bags. It’s an evening of honor and of service.
It’s an evening of sending. And that’s why this year, we invited many of
the adults in our church who have worked with our youth either in Sunday
School or at youth group, to come and join them at one of the stops. With
the seniors seated in a semi-circle, I invited these adults to share any
words of wisdom, any insights into life, before these graduates headed off
on their own into the world.
What do you say to a graduate? What kind of prayers would you offer on
their behalf?
Jesus’ Senior
Dinner
Well, today we get a little bit of an answer from the Gospel of John. In
our
passage, Jesus is hosting his own “senior dinner” of sorts. The
disciples have completed their education. They are getting ready to
graduate. And Jesus has this one last opportunity to pass on a final bit of
wisdom and to pray for his disciples.
Our
passage comes at the conclusion of the Last Supper and just prior to the
arrest of Jesus. Jesus has served his disciples, he has washed their feet. They have shared a meal together. And after an extended period of teaching,
Jesus prays for his disciples. And this is where we come in. We are able
to listen in on this conversation between Jesus and God.
And notice the content of what Jesus says.
His Message/His
Prayer
First, he celebrates the gift that he has been given. Jesus acknowledges
that the disciples are a gift from God; that they belong to God. God has
given them to Jesus and Jesus has been faithfully preparing them for the
work that is to come. And now the time has come for them to be placed under
God’s care once more. The disciples (his graduates) belong to God and they
are gift from God. That’s a pretty good message. Jesus is off to a good
start.
Next Jesus talks about their preparation. He tells God that the disciples
are ready. Jesus has passed on the message, the teachings, the commandments
that God had given to him. And the disciples have received them and kept
them. They understand that Jesus has come from God the Father; that his
words have come from God himself. They are prepared.
Next, Jesus asks God to keep them, to hold them, to protect them so that
they can remain united… so that they can be one. Jesus knows he will be
arrested and crucified… and that his disciples will be left in a world to be
his torch bearers, to carry out his mission and they’ll be doing it in a
hostile environment. They be doing it in a world, that for the most part,
opposes God and God’s kingdom, a world to which the disciples no longer
belong. And so Jesus asks God to protect them. He doesn’t ask God to take
them out of the world, but rather to protect them in the world from the evil
one.
Jesus knows that since these disciples no longer belong to the world, since
these disciples now belong to God and represent God’s kingdom, the world’s
kingdom will hate them and tempt them and try to transform or destroy them. And so Jesus asks God to protect them and keep them safe.
And finally, Jesus asks God to make the disciples holy, to set them apart,
to sanctify them in the truth, in God’s word, to consecrate them. As Jesus
showed us that he was different from the world, so too Jesus wants God to
aid the disciples in a different kind of life. And so Jesus asks God to
keep them safe and keep them grounded in the truth.
This is a good message for our graduates to hear; a good prayer for our
graduates as well.
My Message to Our
Graduates
And so what do we say to our graduates? What do we pray for our graduates? How do we pray for ourselves?
As we were sitting together for the last time, I told our graduates that
they have a great opportunity ahead of them. They will be leaving this
place and they will be going out into the world and they will enter a new
community; a community that doesn’t know their past, that doesn’t know their
reputation, that doesn’t have any pre-conceived notion of who they or who
they want to be. And so I told them that as they head off into the world,
they should take advantage of the opportunity to re-evaluate who they are. They can have a fresh start.
They have the opportunity to start off with a
clean slate. And so the questions before them are
“How are they going to
shape their life? And who are they going to become?”
If they give into binge drinking, recreational drugs, casual sex or
pornography; if they seek to dominate, manipulate, or control other people;
if they learn to use people; if they attempt to make themselves look better
by tearing other people apart; if they learn to get-by through cheating or
by cutting corners, then I would say they are heading in the wrong
direction.
But if our graduates are nice, friendly, and loving people who look out not
just for themselves, but look after the interests of others, people who are
genuinely interested in others; people who seek justice and love mercy; If
they are people others can respect, people others can trust, people of
integrity, then I would say that they are heading in the
right direction.
But that’s not enough. Because this way of living can last for a while, but
it will be difficult to maintain in the long run because the world will
challenge them at every corner. They will need God and their relationship
with God to sustain them. Like Jesus’ prayer, they need to know that
they
belong to God. We need to know this. We need to know that God has called
us, that God has claimed us, and that God wants us to change the world.
Kick Start Your
Faith with a Life of Prayer
And so when we ask ourselves the question, “How has the world changed us?”,
deep down we might feel the need a fresh start in our spiritual life. We
might sense that we need to help kick start our Christian life.
And since this is the case for many of us and a unique opportunity for our
graduates, I would suggest one thing that can do this; one thing that can
help you begin to live the life you’ve always known you should live;
one
thing that can help you live like someone who is “in” the world but not “of”
the world, and that is
“a life of prayer.”
A Life of
Prayer—What it isn’t
Now I don’t want you to misunderstand me, so please let me clarify this a
little bit. I am not talking about the kind of prayer life where someone
grudgingly or dutifully prays before every meal because they feel that it is
expected or that they have to set a good example for their children. And
I’m not talking about the kind of prayer life where someone prays every
night before they go to sleep; where they ask God to bless all the members
of their family and then their dog, their cat, and their gerbil. I’m not
talking about the great Santa-in-the-sky kind of prayer life where someone
continually and regularly asks God for presents;
"Please give me a dream job
or a dream boyfriend or a dream car or a dream house." And I’m not talking
about the ambulance kind of prayer life where a person cries out to God when
they are in trouble and need some help; “Lord help me pass this test and
I’ll… Lord save me from this danger and I’ll…" I’m not even talking about
the kind of prayer life that I recommended in our last newsletter, in which
I suggest that parents and their children should prayer regularly for one
another and that families should use our weekly cares and concerns list to
pray for our church.
A Life of
Prayer—What it is
What I am talking about when I use the phrase
“a life of prayer” is a kind
of prayer life described by the apostle Paul who encouraged us to “pray
without ceasing”. This “life of prayer” may include all those other types of
prayer. But what separates this “life of prayer” from all those other forms
of prayer is the frequency and duration. In “a life of prayer”,you have a
constant awareness and a constant acknowledgement that God is with you; that
God is attentive to you, that you and God are hanging out together, like you
would hang out with a good friend.
We so often think of prayer as speaking, that we often lose sight of the
fact that much of prayer is listening, of simply being with God where your
intention and your attention are focused on God and experiencing God at work
in your life.
We often forget that God is with us, present in our life whether we are
aware of it or not. A “life of prayer” keeps this thought at the
forefront. All of life is lived before a Holy God.
John
Killinger has written an excellent book called Beginning Prayer. In it he
says that “Prayer is communion with God. It is a matter of making
connections with the One who stands at the center of all life and joy, and
of learning to live with those connections all the time. That’s all it is. Nothing more, nothing less.”
We don’t need to talk to be in prayer. We don’t need to know what to say or
find the best words to say it. All we need is the awareness that God is
present and a desire to be with God in every moment.
He says “Prayer is coming into the presence of the One who loves us all the
time and waiting in that presence, merely being there in that presence. That’s all.
Coming and waiting and being there.” He says “You don’t pray
in order to achieve something. You pray in order to be with God.”
Some
Last Minute Advice and a Last Minute Prayer
So perhaps my advice to our graduates and to you is this: find ways in
which you can remind yourself throughout the day that you are standing in
the presence of God. Find ways to continually acknowledge that God is with
you. And rejoice in God’s presence.
Jesus, when he prayed for his graduates, was concerned about them heading
off into the world alone, a world that would hate them and challenge them
and try to claim them. And so he prayed.
My prayer for you is that you will remain connected to God, that you will
develop a life of prayer, that you will open yourself up to God in such a
way that the effects of our world on your life will be diminished, and that
God can help you to live for God’s glory and to change the world.
And let me add one more thing that I would recommend. When you go off on
your own, I would encourage you to join a community of faith.
And I don’t
mean just show up once in a while on Sundays, although that’s a start. I
would encourage you to really JOIN a community of faith! Let that community
teach you! Let that community encourage you! Let that community shape who
you are and who you are becoming! And in all faithfulness to God and God’s
word, be the kind of person who tries to help shape that community more and
more into a holy, set-apart people, a people seeking and living and
following after God.
May God be ever present in your life. May you recognize God’s presence and
acknowledge it continually. May God protect you and sustain you and
show you the way… and help you discover the joy and beauty of a life worth
living…
a life of prayer! Amen. |
