The Seventh Sunday of Easter  June 1, 2003

 

The Rev. Dayle Casey 

The Chapel of Our Saviour 

Colorado Springs, Colorado 

June 1, 2003

 

 

7 Easter - B

Exodus 28:1-4, 9-10, 29-30

1 John 5:9-15

John 17:11b-19

 

 
The seventeenth chapter of John’s Gospel is part of a long prayer Jesus prayed for his disciples as he approached his death. It is intercessory prayer. It is Jesus as priest taking his concerns to God on behalf of those he loves. It is Jesus, knowing that he is soon to leave his friends, asking God to remember them and to care for their needs.

Intercession goes back a long way. As the alternate Old Testament reading for today, the reading from Exodus 28, reveals, intercession reaches back at least as far as the time of Aaron, the High Priest of Israel. Intercession, in fact, was the assigned function of a priest . The priest was the go-between, the mediator, the bridge between the people and God. And in Aaron’s day, the priest interceded in a particular way: he went into the sanctuary of God wearing an ephod and a breastplate of judgment.

The ephod and breastplate of judgment were not just pretty vestments. They had important functions. Direct contact with the Holy, the Bible reminds us, is dangerous. A wise person does not presume to approach the Holy God with all his own unholiness showing, so the personal unholiness of the priest was hidden from the holy eyes of God, covered over by holy clothing, by the vestments the intercessor wore.

On the ephod the priest carried two stones, each with the names of six of the twelve tribes of Israel inscribed on it. And it was in this way that the priest interceded with God for the people of Israel. When he went into the presence of God, the Holy One would see the stones with the names of all the tribes and would remember his people. And the breastplate of judgment was what reminded the priest and the people that the God is the final authority over their lives, the Holy One who makes the final decision or judgment.

The point of all this is that intercession is not something to be done or taken lightly, with a slouch or while chewing gum or drinking coffee. One does not presume to enter the presence of the Holy or make requests of the Holy casually, without being reminded that God is the One whose judgment is the final authority in his life. Or, to turn it around, intercession requires that we take God, God’s judgment and holiness as well as his promise, seriously.

Sometimes I wonder if our casual approach to church these days doesn’t encourage us in a casual approach to God. I wonder if it doesn’t lead us to the presumption of approaching the Holy One heedless of God’s judgment over our lives, heedless of God’s authority. I wonder if it doesn’t sometimes lead us into assuming, perhaps, that since God is a God of love, his judgment is always benign. 

I wonder sometimes if we aren’t a bit thoughtless, if not reckless, in our approach to God? Like the man in his sports car approaching an intersection. As he got closer to the intersection, the light changed from green to amber, and the man decided he would accelerate and go on through, even though he knew that by the time he got there the light would be red. 

But as he sped closer, he spotted a motorcycle cop sitting behind a sign, so he slammed on his brakes and screeched to a stop part-way into the intersection. Then, looking sheepishly at the policeman out of the corner of his eye, he saw him standing by his motorcycle with a big smile on his face and his arms outstretched like an umpire, signaling, “Safe!”

Do we sometimes approach God that way? And expect only a similar response?

Or consider the young man who went off to college and who spent very little time studying. Naturally, he failed. As he was preparing to go home at the end of his freshman year, he decided that mom and dad really had to be approached. So he sent an email to his mother, asking her to intercede with dad. “Dear Mom,” he wrote. “Flunked out. Prepare Dad.” His mother emailed back, “Dear Son, Dad prepared. Prepare yourself.”

But perhaps just as often we are not so much overtly reckless as we are thoughtless. Literally thoughtless, in that we do not think about what we are doing, thoughtless as C. S. Lewis said he was thoughtless as a child. Lewis recalls the time when his mother was dying when he was still a small boy. He prayed for his mother to be healed. But she wasn’t healed; she died. As an adult, thinking about that childhood prayer of intercession on behalf of his mother, Lewis wrote: “I had approached God, or my idea of God, without love, without awe, even without fear. God was, in my picture of him, to appear neither as Savior nor as Judge, but merely as magician. And when God had done what was required of him, I suppose he would simply, well, go away. It never crossed my mind,” Lewis said, “that the tremendous contact [with the Holy] which I solicited with my prayer should have any consequences beyond restoring the status quo.” (Surprised by Joy)

What do we expect when we pray for each other and the world? Do we ask, when we pray for the sick, merely that they be restored to physical health? Lord, please fix Aunt Mildred’s knee. That’s good, of course. But is it enough?

When we pray for justice and peace, do we expect that God will merely see that our side wins the latest war? Or do we expect something more than that, that God will reorder the injustices that lead to violence and conflict in our own lives and land?

When we pray for the welfare of the world, do we expect that God will simply restore economic prosperity in El Paso County? Or at least in our part of town? Or do we expect more than that, that God will reorder our priorities so that we might become part of the solution and not part of the problem?

When we pray for the Church, do we expect that God will maintain his Church as it is? Or do we expect that God will help us see ourselves as we are, a broken part of a broken body in need of continuous reformation?

When we approach God in intercessory prayer, do we look for God the magician to work his tricks on our behalf, but then, like the childhood Lewis, expect God to disappear from our lives until we call him again? And do we do this with the sores of our own sins wide open and gaping, with our own eyes full of planks, presuming to approach the Holy One unrepentant ourselves, presuming to enter the presence of God vested with sin rather than with the ephod and breastplate of judgment?

To approach the Holy One in such a way, with our sins wide open and flapping, is both dangerous and childish. 

It is dangerous because it does not take seriously the judgment of God. God does not accept us or our prayers as they are, sins and all. That’s Bible 101. Throughout the Bible we hear that God is holy, and only those who are clothed with holiness dare approach him at all. And common sense ought to teach us the same.

“We can approach God with confidence,” as John says in his letter, “if we make requests which accord with his will.” God hears the prayers of sinners, but of sinners redeemed and made holy. That’s why all our prayer is offered through the Name of Christ, that our prayers may be like his. 

Christ, in other words, is our ephod and breastplate of judgment. It is through Christ that we are reminded both of God’s mercy and of God’s authority in our lives. Christ is the vestment we wear as we dare to approach the Holy God. We are priests who can “approach God with confidence” and offer intercession only because Christ is the High Priest of God who intercedes for us . It is dangerous to approach God without the protection of repentance and redemption.

And to approach the Holy One to ask merely for the restoration of good times and the status quo of life is childish, because it does not take seriously the promise of God. God does not promise to keep us as we are, or to restore us to what we were, like old, valuable antiques. Again, this is Bible 101. Nowhere in Scripture is such a promise to be found. 

Instead, God promises to “make all things new,” even you and me and the world. And that’s why our prayers should not be just for restoration of physical health, but also for new life. Not just for the absence of conflict in the world, but for the active presence and peace of God. Not just for the continuation of Christ’s Church as it has been, but for Christ’s Church to be at unity with God, and within itself. Not just for those who have died, that they might be spared the terrors of hell, but that they might continue to be led from life to life.

That’s why Jesus, our great High Priest, prays as he does, and why, here on the last night before his death, he teaches us once again how to pray: “Holy Father, keep them in your Name so that they may be one, united in heart and mind and strength, even as you and I, Father, are one. I do not ask that you remove them from the world. I don’t ask that they might find escape from the life you have given them. I don’t ask that they might even find escape from its difficulties and pain. I do ask that you protect them from the evil one, that you give them the victory you give me, that you consecrate them in your word and truth, and that you set them apart to live your truth in the world as I have lived it.”

The God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of the prophets and Jesus, is not the god of Sunday morning TV. He is not the god of vague, warm thoughts while taking a walk in the woods. He is not the god of manipulated euphoria. Jesus does not pray for us to have some fuzzy inner feeling. Jesus comes to us on this Seventh Sunday of Easter as the same Jesus we knew before his Resurrection, as Intercessor, as the One who prays that we will be equipped to live resurrection life, equipped to do justice and mercy in the world, equipped to live the truth of God in the world God has given us, protected from the evil one who would seduce us to settle for something less.

Unity of mind and heart with God and with each other in the world, and the strength to live the Easter life of justice and mercy in the world -- this is the promise of God that Jesus takes seriously and that he prays for us. That’s why he calls us to pray in the same way as we go about the business of our lives and about the ministry of his Church.

As Christians, it is incumbent upon us to pray as Christ prayed. When we act as priests, offering intercession to God for the world and for one another, we are enabled to do so only because God’s own Son is our Priest and Intercessor. With the Holy One it is never, as some seem to think these days, “Just you and me, Buddy.” Aaron did not presume to enter the presence of the Holy unvested, without the ephod and breastplate of judgment; we dare not presume to enter the presence of the Holy unvested, without Christ. 

So, once again, on this Seventh Sunday of Easter, we encounter a thoroughly Easter Gospel -- Jesus’s intercession for us who live on this side of the Resurrection, his prayer that we may become one with him and with each other and be strengthened to get on with resurrection life.

So let us pray this morning with Christ as the vestment we wear before God, seeking in our lives, not God the magician, but God the Father and God the Spirit...

...seeking not God the magician, but God the Judge, who loves us enough to take us seriously, even in our sinfulness, and to hold us responsible for it...

...seeking not God the magician, but God the Redeemer, who loves us enough to give his own life on our behalf, that we might be consecrated as he was consecrated, consecrated for the life of God’s love and justice and mercy in the world...

...and seeking God the Holy Spirit who loves us enough to stick with us, not just to restore the status quo of our lives, but to protect us from the evil one and to draw us forward into newer and greater life indeed.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.