Eastertide #6: We Still Have Each Other | @kaleophx
May 21, 2023
On this sixth Sunday of Eastertide, Pastor Erin guides us through John 17:1-11. Jesus is departing his disciples giving them the task of continuing his work of liberation and continuing his politics of a non-violent way of resistance to oppression and corrupt government. Below is a transcript of the sermon.
LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Good evening, Kaleo! My name is Erin my pronouns are she / her.
I’d like to begin with a land acknowledgment to honor the Native people that existed here before us. I honor the First Peoples of current-day downtown Phoenix, the Tohono O’odham (Thaw-naw-Awe-Thumb) Nation.
In the words of Lisa Sharon Harper: “They were and are here. We see you. We honor you. And we thank you for laying foundations of harmony, balance, truth, and honor. Thank you for stewarding the land where Creator settled your people. We bless you. We bless your elders: past, present, and emerging.”
INTRODUCTION
I want to play a little game…I’m going to list a series of facts and then I want you to decide…
IS IT THE NBA OR THE NFL?
36 have been accused of spousal abuse.
7 have been arrested for fraud.
19 have been accused of writing bad checks.
117 have directly or indirectly bankrupted 2 businesses
3 have done time for assault
71 cannot get a credit card due to their bad credit
14 have been arrested on drug-related charges.
8 have been arrested for shoplifting.
21 currently are defendants in lawsuits.
84 have been arrested for drunk driving in the last year.
How many of you think NBA? How many of you think NFL?
Well, the answer is neither. It’s the 435 members of the United States Congress.
Trying to survive under the rule of corrupt officials is not new. People have had to navigate that for years…including Jesus.
ROMAN GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION
"The (Roman) government under which Jesus lived was corrupt and oppressive; on every hand were crying abuses,—extortion, intolerance, and…cruelty."
Remember that, even before Jesus was born, Herod the Great had been made client king of Judea…in the aftermath of a complex civil war.
Jewish independence was still (a sacred) memory for those living under the Roman government, and Herod become extremely paranoid and utterly ruthless in the pursuit of “law and order.”
He employed secret police and regularly cracked down on the local population to “keep the peace.” He even had three of his own sons executed.
THAT is the type of political corruption that set the cultural stage for the birth of Jesus.
After Jesus was born, Judea was divided into smaller regions, and Herod’s son, Herod Antipas, ruled over Jesus’ home of Galilee until after Jesus’ death.
They had regular riots at festivals, small protests, and occasional open revolts.
Jesus’ decision to walk into the temple of Jerusalem and throw the tables over and declare the Temple corrupt was an extremely potent act of rebellion.
For the Temple, the seat of the high priest was not just the central religious authority, it was the political center of the Jewish world. Like John the Baptist before him, Jesus’ behavior was too radical for most.
Jesus’ actions of non-violent resistance to oppression in Jerusalem looked like political sedition from every angle.
To the High Priest Caiaphas, Jesus Christ would have been yet another dangerous troublemaker, who may have political designs, and who was challenging the stability of the realm. Pontius Pilate would ultimately agree to crucify Jesus after the Jews insisted he was dangerous.
To his contemporaries, Jesus did not seem like the peace(keeper most Americans see him as today). Ultimately his behavior in the Temple caused outrage and led to his subsequent arrest and crucifixion. To the people of first-century Judea, Jesus Christ was a rebel. to the corruption of the Roman government.
As Jesus' followers, what are we known as… in the face of corruption in American government?
Sources for further reading:
OVERVIEW OF PASSAGE
On this sixth Sunday of Eastertide, we find ourselves in John 17:1-11. Jesus is departing his disciples giving them the task of continuing his work of liberation. Continuing his politics of a non-violent way of resistance to oppression and corrupt government.
What Jesus chooses to say in his farewell remarks to his disciples is something I’d like for us to pay attention to.
Robert D. Cornwall, an author, theologian, and interfaith leader guides us through this passage:
(Jesus) looked up to heaven and said: “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you” (Jn. 17:1). With these words, Jesus began what is often called his “High Priestly Prayer.” In a few moments, he will leave for the Garden where he will be arrested, but first Jesus prays for himself, for his disciples, and for everyone who will believe in him through the witness of his disciples.
We continue on in verse 2:
JOHN 17:1-11 (NIV)
2 For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. 3 Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. 4 I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. 5 And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.
Jesus Prays for His Disciples
6 “I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. 7 Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. 8 For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me. 9 I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours. 10 All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them. 11 I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one.
Sources for more reading:
CONTINUED PASSAGE OVERVIEW
Two words stand out in this prayer—the words in and one, which in Greek are en and hen. The word in reminds us that our oneness is rooted in a relationship that begins with Jesus and the Father, and then extends outward to include everyone who will believe.
The prayer begins in verse one…Jesus has prayed for himself, that God would glorify him. He has prayed for the disciples, asking that they would be one as he and the Father are one. Now, Jesus focuses on those who will believe that the Father has sent him through the witness of his disciples. Jesus isn’t praying that others will come to believe. He’s praying for those who will believe and participate in the oneness that Jesus shares with the disciples and with the Father.
In this prayer, Jesus reveals that the witness of the disciples will be enhanced by their oneness as a community.
Let me say that again…
In this prayer, Jesus reveals that the witness of the disciples will be enhanced by their oneness as a community.
Despite many efforts down through the centuries, we’ve not done a good job as Christians to stay together. Mainly because we believe that staying together means uniformity of practice or even doctrine…but that is not the goal.
The goal is that we might love one another.
That was the desire in the heart of Jesus as he neared the conclusion of his earthly life. There, as they sat together at the Table following their final meal, as he prepared for what was to come, he prayed for his followers, asking that they stay together so that they might glorify God.
ED SHEERAN’S DOCUMENTARY
Last week we flew in Sunday morning from being in Iowa and St Louis to celebrate Kendall's graduation with the Masters and missional theology. We’re very proud of him for completing a rigorous four year journey.
One of Kendall's favorite things to do is to watch a show or a movie with family and share a moment of Storytelling and reflection and opinion and discussion together. it's on the last night of our trip we started the new Ed Sheeran documentary on Disney+.
This documentary is interesting because it's not “A Documentary on a Musician; It’s a Documentary on Grief”
The film showcases how Ed Sheeran mourns the death of his best friend, supports his wife as she battles cancer while being pregnant, and somehow still records his new album.
I'm not a huge Ed Sheeran fan. I think he has several great songs, but I definitely don't get hyped over him. Because that’s how I feel about him, watching his story made me even more interested. I enjoyed seeing him be human. I enjoyed seeing him enjoy life, love his wife, care for his kids, love his friends, and be…human.
Whether we realize it or not, all of our Life's goal is to be human. To live, to exist, to be seen and to see, to be known and to know, to be loved and to love.
**SPOILER ALERT**
What stood out to me and Kendall as we watched this story…was his wife’s response to finding out she had cancer while pregnant.
The moment she received the diagnosis she said she was faced with the reality of how MORTAL she was. And the only thing she thought about was living and being with the people she loved. It no longer mattered how many awards her husband had, how much money they made, how big their house was, or what kind of car they drove, nothing else mattered except to live.
And even in my own life I often reflect on how America teaches us that the only Pathway to Being Human is through generational wealth, being debt-free, having a house, having a family, being married, having a degree, and whatever else they Market to us so that we might sign up as life-long workers to help pay for this country’s endless amount of debt. I feel sometimes that the only way to live as a human is to do these things first.
But I wonder what it would feel like to just be now. What if my goal now was simply to exist, to wake up and just breathe, to know and be known, to love and be loved? What if I chose an alternative pathway to being human instead of the one America wants me to choose?
What if when I wake up tomorrow morning, take a deep breath and say that my goal is to live, to love, to exist, to be human, and to affirm those things in the person next to me that they would be loved, they would live, and that they would have the opportunity be fully human?
When we are faced with our mortality we remember the value of Our Lives and we remember the gift of having one another in community.
And in the same way, I think that that is what Jesus is praying that his disciples will remember when he leaves. That when the government is still corrupt, and you have near-death experiences, and you have to choose between gas and groceries, and mass shootings break out, and the country is on the verge of another civil war, and fascism is on the rise, and you struggle to impart faith into your children or those who look up to you, in a world that gives you so many reasons to give up your faith, and everything feels like it’s crumbling around you; remember that you still have your life, and you still have each other, and together, you still have the ability to non-violently resist oppression.
COMMUNITY
Pray for one another. Take 10 minutes and pray for one another.
CONCLUSION
Band you can come up.
As we conclude, I want to read to you an excerpt from the “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” by Brazilian educator Paulo (Frair-ree) Freire. He said, “It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors. The latter, as an oppressive class, can free neither others nor themselves. It is therefore essential that the oppressed wage the struggle to resolve the contradiction in which they are caught; and the contradiction will be resolved by the appearance of the new man: neither oppressor nor oppressed, but man in the process of liberation.”
I wrote my own simplified version. It says this:
Only those who suffocate under the chokehold of White supremacy can free themselves from it and tell those doing the choking, they don’t have to choke no more.
In America's origin story, White supremacy is the father of our oppression. It is the belief that white people constitute a superior race and should therefore dominate society, typically to the exclusion or detriment of other racial and ethnic groups.
Those who uphold white supremacy and assimilate to it, cannot free themselves or others. Therefore it is essential that we who once suffocated under its chokehold engage in the struggle for liberation.
Which can only be resolved by the appearance of a new community. People who no longer identify as oppressed or oppressor – but liberated, and free.
May we always remember that we still have our lives. We still have each other and therefore, we still have the opportunity to non-violently resist white supremacy in all spaces, and all places, in every encounter at every turn, in every conversation.
We will no longer suffocate under its chokehold and we will no longer allow it to choke and suffocate others. Which means, we will follow Jesus and we will follow his example of non-violent resistance to oppressive government and rule.
Which means, we non-violently resist anything that is not love. For that is the birthplace of liberation…LOVE.
A wide, welcoming embrace of God’s acceptance and identity of belonging.
As Jesus prayed for his disciples so he still yet prays for us that we would love one another and stick together because…. we still have each other.
Let’s have a moment of silence and reflection.