Seventh Easter

              May 20, 2007

     A clergyman was walking downtown to the bank one summer afternoon and came upon a group of about a dozen boys, all between the ages of 10-12.  The boys had surrounded a small, Heinz-variety dog.  Concerned that the boys were intending to hurt the dog, the clergyman went over and said, “What are you doing with that dog?”

     One of the boys replied, “This dog is just a neighborhood stray.  We all want him, but only one of us can take him home.  So we’ve decided that whichever one of us can tell the biggest lie will get to keep the dog.”

     Of course, the clergyman realized this was a perfect teaching moment.  “You boys shouldn’t be having a contest telling lies!” he said.  He then launched into a ten-minute sermon against lying.  He concluded his impromptu sermon by saying, “Don’t you boys know it’s a sin to lie.  Why, when I was your age, I never told a lie.”

     There was dead silence for about a minute.  Just as the clergyman was beginning to think he’d gotten through to them and was about to pat himself on his own back, the smallest boy gave a deep sigh and said, “All right, give him the dog.”

      It is a source of deep comfort to me when I remember that Jesus the Christ is praying for me.  That little tidbit of knowledge comes from remembering a little about the Greek language.  The passage from John’s Gospel appointed for this Seventh Sunday of Easter is from the section called the High Priestly Prayer of Jesus.  It begins by saying, “Jesus prayed for his disciples.”  In English we understand this to mean something that happened in the past.  In the aorist tense used here the meaning is one of continuing action.  Jesus prayed for his disciples and continues to do so today.  Sometime, when you don’t feel like praying or you are so hurt you can’t pray, remember that Jesus the Christ is praying for you and in your behalf.

     It is here in this section of John’s Gospel that Jesus gives an accounting of his stewardship to the Father.  Like us, Jesus exercised stewardship over three important areas of life.  First, he gave an accounting of his work.  He said, “The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one.”  He was the appointed, anointed, and commissioned one to do the work of the Father.  He calling was to be the Messiah.  His self-understanding of that calling grew with the years.  How best to fulfill that calling to be the Messiah was a question for him from the first day of his public ministry until the last.   

     He was constantly being pressured by his own disciples and others to proclaim an earthly kingdom.  His vocation, his work was to lead people back to God and thus secure for them eternal life with the Father.  His work was to show that God is pure love.  Never has any person had such a heavy stewardship entrusted to them.  Never has any person so completely fulfilled their calling.  He is the only person who can say, “I never told a lie.”

     Jesus also gives an accounting with respect to the people entrusted to him.  He said, “I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am…so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”  The disciples, both then and now, with all their faults, were God-given.  The Father gave Jesus a work to do and the people necessary to get things done.  Many things are needed to get things done in the world.  Money, machinery, technology, power, food, water, experience, knowledge, and teamwork may all be needed from time to time.  But, the most important is people.  We live in a culture which has pretty much forgotten or ignored that fact.  Today it seems that people are expendable, just a means to an end to reach greater and greater profits.  Our stewardship of relationships needs to move to the top of the priority list quickly.

     Leadership must be expressed through well-trained, creative, and dedicated followers.  Jesus taught his disciples, then and now, that leadership that is cut off from personal interaction is doomed to failure.  That applies to churches, cities, governments, and nations.  In order that the disciples might be with him, where he was and where he is now, he would spend time with them at the deepest possible personal level.

     Finally, he gave an accounting of his stewardship over the message he was asked to deliver.  He said, “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.” 

     Jesus was a man of prayer and sought to find and do the will of God.  All the great crises of his life found him on his knees in prayer.  He could, therefore, speak with authority of his relationship with the Father.  His purpose was always to lead people to God and this required that he convince people that he was sent from God.  That purpose spills over in the reasons the Gospel writers give for putting down as much of what Jesus did and said as possible.  John said at the end of his telling of the Good News that he did it “so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing, you may have life in his name.”  John knew the power of the message.  He described Jesus as the word made flesh. 

      Jesus had faithfully received the message from God and had faithfully handed on that message to all who would choose to hear.

     That vital message comes to us this day and every day.  We are reminded that we, too, exercise stewardship in our work, in our relationships with people, and in the message God has given the world.  In order to help us remember how much we are loved and to let us know that he continues to pray for us, he comes again this day to each of us in the bread and wine of the Holy Eucharist.  It is fitting that we do this on the Sunday when we conduct the spring UTO ingathering and when we recognize our graduating seniors.  Jesus continues to pray that we will exercise good stewardship over all the blessings of life.  Amen.