Table to table
Commentary
Object:
We have a table in our home that goes way back. When my wife's grandmother died, her children and grandchildren divided among themselves the various pieces of furniture and artwork that were in her house. My wife was eager to bring home this one particular table.
For all of their growing up years, she and her cousins had spent Thanksgiving at this grandmother's house. This particular table had stood in her grandmother's kitchen -- part of a little breakfast nook. My wife cherishes so many fond memories of eating cereal, drawing pictures, and playing games with family at that cheerful table.
My wife's grandmother has been dead for more than twenty years now. That table has been part of our homes in four different cities over the course of those decades. How many different friends from assorted places have we hosted around that table? How many meals, conversations, and games have taken place there?
When we first inherited the table, my wife and I had no children of our own yet. Now we have three daughters, who themselves have eaten cereal, drawn pictures, and played games at that same table.
I'm thinking back to when my wife was a little girl, sitting at that table. Could she possibly have imagined or envisioned this future? Could she have guessed the kitchens around the country where that table would be placed? How about the people who would sit at it? Could she have imagined the children who would play at it?
Acts 16:16-34
"One day," Luke recalls in the first person, "as we were going to the place of prayer.…" "The place of prayer" was where Paul's ministry in Philippi had begun. Without a sufficient male Jewish population to form an official synagogue, the town of Philippi had, instead, a designated place of prayer. It was not a formal structure, but a selected spot along the riverbank. That was where Paul had first found a group of devout women, including Lydia, who hosted the missionaries in her home.
We see in so many towns along Paul's itinerary that his custom was to go first to the synagogue and to stay there, teaching and discussing, even arguing, hoping to kindle a response to the gospel first among its most natural audience. Sometimes his synagogue ministry was brief (as in Acts 13:14-51) and sometimes it was much more extended (see Acts 19:8).
In the absence of a formal synagogue in Philippi, perhaps Paul kept returning to "the place of prayer." On this particular day, Paul and his companions encountered a different woman: not one of those devout women, whom they had found meeting together by the river, but rather a demon-possessed slave-girl. She followed Paul and his group as they traveled about town, crying out, "These men are slaves of the most high God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation."
Interestingly, the content of her message was entirely accurate. Perhaps it was her tone that was inappropriate. Or perhaps it was the source of her inspiration that was unwelcome. Or perhaps it was simply the daily and relentless nature of her presence and proclamation that had become a nuisance. Whatever the case was, on one particular day, Paul "turned and said to the spirit, 'I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.' "
Her liberation was surely a cause of rejoicing in heaven. In Philippi, however, it was the cause of a commotion. Like the residents of the Gerasenes (Mark 5:14-17), the disruption to commerce was more compelling than the healing work of God to the girl's owners, the magistrates, and a larger mob of Philippians. Paul and Silas were publicly stripped and beaten, and then thrown in prison -- all on the basis of accusation, without the benefit of a fair trial.
So it was that Paul and Silas, having only done right in God's sight, found themselves naked, bleeding, and chained in the dungeon of a foreign city. There, in the middle of the night, they "were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them."
What a marvelous picture. Any place is a place of prayer for the true man or woman of God. You do not have to be sitting on the pleasant grass of the riverbank; you may make the dingy dungeon a place of prayer, too. Likewise, any setting can be a setting of ministry for the true man or woman of God. It does not need to be in the sun-splashed columns of the Areopagus, sitting with the sophisticated thinkers of the day. It can be in a dreary inner cell, surrounded by society's most uncivilized element.
Then comes the earthquake. Luke does not explicitly report the phenomenon as an act of God, but it certainly recalls earlier divine interventions in prisons in the book of Acts (5:17-19; 12:3-11). Paul and Silas, along with all of their fellow inmates it seems, were suddenly set free. When the jailer responsible for them realized the state of affairs, he sought to do himself in. Paul stopped and reassured him, leading to the jailer's profound question: "What must I do to be saved?"
Over the next few hours, Paul and Silas became guests in the home of that jailer. He and his household heard the good news about Jesus, were baptized, and rejoiced together in the warmth of Christian fellowship.
It is a day in the life of Paul, and it illustrates supremely for us these three truths. First, God's work will always meet with mixed reactions. Second, God's work can be done anywhere. Consequently, faithfulness to God in all times and places will always meet with opposition and will also always yield fruit to his glory.
Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21
From beginning to end, this text is about coming.
"See, I am coming soon," declares the Lord in the very first verse. Later, the Spirit, the bride, and everyone who hears all cry out, "Come." Then a broad invitation to "everyone who is thirsty" is extended to come. Near the end, the Lord reiterates his promise that he is coming soon. Then the author concludes with his earnest prayer: "Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!"
The text reverberates with invitation. Interestingly, however, it is not a one-way invitation. While the prevailing theme is the anticipated coming of the Lord, the additional invitation to "everyone who is thirsty" reminds us that the movement is mutual. We are not merely passive spectators waiting for him to come: we have some coming of our own to do.
Furthermore, in a generation that is largely indifferent to the prospect -- or even the likelihood -- of Christ's return, we are well rebuked by the spirit of this passage. Are our congregations marked by such eagerness, a holy impatience, for Christ's return? Do our hearts and our prayers reflect an attitude of "Come, Lord Jesus!"?
Perhaps we would feel a greater anticipation if we had a greater sense of the "reward" that Jesus says he will bring with him. This is a theme which, in my experience, is largely ignored in mainline American Christianity. Perhaps our life is plush enough that we don't feel such a longing for heavenly reward. Perhaps we prefer a more egalitarian view of heaven that doesn't include any distinction in treatment (such as varying rewards). Or perhaps our proper emphasis on God's grace and our sense of our own unworthiness precludes us from thinking much in terms of deserving any reward, at all. Whatever the case, we may neglect the truth of heavenly reward.
The prospect of reward, however, is certainly a prominent issue in the seven letters with which Revelation begins (2:17, 28-29; 3:11-12). It is also a theme in some of Jesus' teachings (Mark 9:41), especially in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:12; 6:1-6, 16-18).
Interestingly, while the rewards suggest receiving what one has earned, the entrance into the city itself does not seem to be a matter of merit. Rather, "blessed are those who wash their robes," we read, for they will have the right to "enter the city by the gates." The washing of robes, of course, suggests a certain uncleanness, which needs to be washed away. We presume, based on the earlier reference to washed robes (7:14) that this reflects salvation by the atoning blood of Christ.
Meanwhile, we discover in the previous chapter that not everyone will be able to enter the city. "Nothing unclean will enter it," we are told, "nor anyone who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life" (21:27; see also 22:15). Putting the passages together, therefore, we conclude that evil deeds can disqualify one from the city, and good deeds can qualify one for a reward. Entrance into the city, however, requires a cleansing.
Finally, our passage also includes several revelatory references to Jesus. He is the central focus of the book, and here he is identified by several important phrases: "the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end," "the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star."
The first three phrases are synonymous, perhaps reflecting the backdrop culture of Hebrew poetry, which often gives multiple expressions to a single truth (Job 4:3-4; Psalm 1:1 cf.).
In his drawing of the Vitruvian Man, Leonardo da Vinci famously illustrated that the length of a man's arms from fingertip to fingertip is equal to his height from head to toe. At six-foot-two-inches, therefore, I am able to touch any of my young children's head and toes at the same time. This is the image, then, that I have of Jesus as Alpha and Omega. He is able to touch simultaneously the start and the finish, the beginning of history and its end. His size dwarfs our scope. His reach exceeds our limits and his span covers our extremities.
The "root and descendant of David" is a fascinating mixed metaphor. That Jesus is the promised descendant of David -- "son of David" (see Matthew 1:1; 9:27; 21:15) -- is part of his identity as the Messiah. That he is also the "root of David," however, speaks to his preexistence (see Matthew 22:41-45). Jesus does not just come from David; David comes from him.
Finally, "the bright morning star" does not have any specific precursor in scripture. William Barclay observes, however, that Jesus had previously identified himself as the light of the world (John 8:12), and so "when the Risen Christ said that he was the morning star, he claimed again to be the light of the world and the vanquisher of all the world's darkness."
John 17:20-26
John's gospel gives us the longest look at the Last Supper. He devotes five entire chapters to the events and dialogue that occur on that evening. In a gospel that is just 21 chapters long, it is an astonishing allocation of space to just one evening from Jesus' life. Our selected lection comes from that large Last Supper resource. Specifically, John 17 records Jesus' prayer before he goes to the garden, where he would be arrested. Our passage is the last portion of that prayer.
The passage begins with a sentence that brings us in. "I ask not only on behalf of these," Jesus prays in reference to his disciples gathered around him, "but also on behalf of those who will believe in men through their word." That's us. This is where we come in. We have this grand privilege of overhearing Jesus praying for you and me and our congregations, for we are "those" -- the ones who were not there on that occasion, but who would come to believe through the witness of the apostles.
And see what he prays -- for them and for us -- "That they may all be one." It's a prominent theme in this section, as Jesus points to the oneness experienced between him and his Father, and then adds the emphatic prayer that "they may become completely one." Or, as the Amplified Bible renders it: "that they may become one and perfectly united."
It is instructive to us that this is so central to Jesus' prayer for his followers. I wonder how prominent this theme is among our prayers for one another. Amid all of our prayers for physical and material needs, how passionately do we pray for oneness?
The model and source for this desired unity is in the Trinity. The Father and Son are two, yet one, and so Jesus prays that "they may be one, as we are one." We are reminded of Charles Wesley's poetic observation about human beings: "ordained to be transcripts of the Trinity."
The oneness Jesus of which speaks seems to be born out of two realities.
First, there is the tantalizingly important preposition "in." "I in them and you in me," Jesus says, as he prays "that they may become completely one." The language recalls Jesus' earlier statements about those who eat his flesh and drink his blood (6:56), his own relation to the Father (10:38; 14:10-11, 20), and especially the connection between the vine and branches (15:1-10). This oneness is not portrayed as mere collegiality, going forward together arm-in-arm. Rather, there is a more mysterious union, where the one is in the other, and the other is in the one.
Second, the theme of unity seems to be all bound up with the theme of love. The disciples' oneness, according to Jesus, will bear witness to the world that the Father has loved them even as he has loved the Son (v. 23). Indeed, R.V.G. Tasker concludes that it is actually supernatural love that produces the desired unity.
That love takes over as the prevailing theme of the rest of the passage. Jesus affirms that the Father has loved the disciples, even as he has loved the Son (v. 23), he affirms that the Father has loved him "before the foundation of the world" (v. 24), and he prays "that the love with which you have loved me may be in them" (v. 26).
The love that has been shared eternally between the Father and the Son, therefore, has come into the world. The followers of Jesus have come to know and experience that love, are called upon to share and reflect that love, and their life together is to be shaped by that love, until they are formed into a holy oneness with God himself.
Application
Our gospel lection begins at a table -- the famous and cherished table of Jesus' Last Supper. Perhaps no table in history has been so often remembered, portrayed, and reenacted as that one.
As they were gathered around that table, Jesus prayed for his disciples. Along the way, he prayed also "on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word." The prayer anticipated a certain future, but a future the disciples could not possibly have imagined.
Our selected passage from the book of Acts, meanwhile, gives us a peek into that future. At the end of that passage, we see another table. Like the first one, it is populated by believers; yet none of the original cast of characters is there.
This table is only a few decades removed from the first one, but it is many miles away -- all the way from Jerusalem in Palestine to Philippi in Macedonia. See the people seated there: Paul, Silas, a Greek jailer, and all the members of his household.
In all likelihood, none of these people had even heard of Jesus on the night when he ate that Passover meal with his original disciples. And none of those original disciples had likely ever been to Philippi. Yet, a few years later, those folks around that Philippian table have all devoted their lives to Jesus!
Frederick Hosmer sang, "Wider grows the kingdom, reign of love and light; for it we must labor, till our faith is sight." Wider, indeed! The witness and work of those original disciples had sent unimaginable ripples to strangers so far away. It is with that same confidence that "we must labor," unable to envision how far and with whom the Lord will prosper our work.
Alternative Application(s)
Acts 16:16-34. "We've A Song to be Sung to the Nations." In the dark days of the Babylonian exile, the captive Jews wrote this poignant lament about their circumstance: "By the rivers of Babylon -- there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, 'Sing us one of the songs of Zion!' How could we sing the LORD's song in a foreign land?" (Psalm 137:1-4).
The misery of their situation and the cruelty of their captors are undeniable. Yet their conclusion may be disputed.
I cannot pretend to know what it is like to be dragged away from my homeland in chains with the churches and government buildings smoldering in the background, and be carried off as captive to some foreign land. It is nearly unimaginable for me. Then, in the midst of that foreign setting, for my oppressive captors, drunk and taunting, to ask me to sing a few bars of "America, The Beautiful" or "The Star-Spangled Banner."
This was the bitter circumstance of the Jews in Babylon. And so they moaned, "How can we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?"
Enter Paul and Silas. They, too, are in a foreign land. While their arrival there had been voluntary, they had been unjustly arrested, publicly humiliated, and harshly imprisoned. The comforts of home and the goodness of God must have seemed very far away. Yet, there in that brutal setting, they were "praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them."
Paul and Silas did not hang up their harps. They sang the Lord's song, even as captives in a foreign land.
Henry Ernest Nichol, a nineteenth-century British churchman and musician, believed that the world needs to hear what we have to sing. "We've a song to be sung to the nations," he wrote, "that shall lift their hearts to the Lord, a song that shall conquer evil and shatter the spear and sword, and shatter the spear and sword."
Our conditions may not be overtly as harsh as the Jews in Babylon or the apostles in Philippi, but our world is just as inhospitable to the gospel. And it is just as in need of hearing it.
Preaching the Psalm
by Schuyler Rhodes
Psalm 97
Foundations are important. Some time ago a young pastor noticed that the church he was serving had a certain lean to its structure. At first he didn't pay much attention to it because it was an old building and no one else seemed too concerned about it. With the passing months the leaning became more pronounced. Growing concerned, the pastor put on his old clothes one Sunday afternoon and crawled under the church. In the cobwebs and dust, with a flashlight he crept under the sanctuary and looked around. Once his eyes got adjusted he noticed with alarm that the church had no foundation.
The whole church had been built upon beams that had simply been laid in the dirt. There were no granite foundation stones. There was no concrete perimeter. There was nothing except those beams that were soft with rot from lying directly on the moist earth under the church building.
This is a true story. Ultimately, a new foundation was put in place and the building was saved. But the point seems clear enough. On uncertain foundations the whole building is at risk. On uncertain foundations, our whole enterprise of faith is at risk.
This psalm helps us to get clear in this regard.
"Righteousness and justice are the foundations of His throne!" God's kingdom, it turns out, isn't built on church membership or on liturgical correctness. It's not built on narrow interpretations of doctrine or the appropriation of social issues. No. God's throne, or to put it another way, God's reality is built on the foundations of justice and righteousness. Imagine how the mighty institutional churches, and those not so institutional might look if their foundations actually were justice and righteousness.
In this simple, clear utterance we can see a way forward for lost and wayward church communities. In these solid foundational principles, the people of God can move forward, whatever their culture or social leaning.
Let the church build its ministries and its community on justice. In the neighborhoods where the church is located, let the community focus on justice. Whether it is hungry people or immigration concerns, let the church move. Whether it's developing schools or providing opportunities for young people who are left alone, let the church live out its witness to the call of God to build the kingdom on the foundation of justice.
This is not only the right thing to do -- it's the evangelical thing to do. Meet the needs of the people in the name of the Lord, and they will come. For the foundations of the throne are righteousness and justice.
For all of their growing up years, she and her cousins had spent Thanksgiving at this grandmother's house. This particular table had stood in her grandmother's kitchen -- part of a little breakfast nook. My wife cherishes so many fond memories of eating cereal, drawing pictures, and playing games with family at that cheerful table.
My wife's grandmother has been dead for more than twenty years now. That table has been part of our homes in four different cities over the course of those decades. How many different friends from assorted places have we hosted around that table? How many meals, conversations, and games have taken place there?
When we first inherited the table, my wife and I had no children of our own yet. Now we have three daughters, who themselves have eaten cereal, drawn pictures, and played games at that same table.
I'm thinking back to when my wife was a little girl, sitting at that table. Could she possibly have imagined or envisioned this future? Could she have guessed the kitchens around the country where that table would be placed? How about the people who would sit at it? Could she have imagined the children who would play at it?
Acts 16:16-34
"One day," Luke recalls in the first person, "as we were going to the place of prayer.…" "The place of prayer" was where Paul's ministry in Philippi had begun. Without a sufficient male Jewish population to form an official synagogue, the town of Philippi had, instead, a designated place of prayer. It was not a formal structure, but a selected spot along the riverbank. That was where Paul had first found a group of devout women, including Lydia, who hosted the missionaries in her home.
We see in so many towns along Paul's itinerary that his custom was to go first to the synagogue and to stay there, teaching and discussing, even arguing, hoping to kindle a response to the gospel first among its most natural audience. Sometimes his synagogue ministry was brief (as in Acts 13:14-51) and sometimes it was much more extended (see Acts 19:8).
In the absence of a formal synagogue in Philippi, perhaps Paul kept returning to "the place of prayer." On this particular day, Paul and his companions encountered a different woman: not one of those devout women, whom they had found meeting together by the river, but rather a demon-possessed slave-girl. She followed Paul and his group as they traveled about town, crying out, "These men are slaves of the most high God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation."
Interestingly, the content of her message was entirely accurate. Perhaps it was her tone that was inappropriate. Or perhaps it was the source of her inspiration that was unwelcome. Or perhaps it was simply the daily and relentless nature of her presence and proclamation that had become a nuisance. Whatever the case was, on one particular day, Paul "turned and said to the spirit, 'I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.' "
Her liberation was surely a cause of rejoicing in heaven. In Philippi, however, it was the cause of a commotion. Like the residents of the Gerasenes (Mark 5:14-17), the disruption to commerce was more compelling than the healing work of God to the girl's owners, the magistrates, and a larger mob of Philippians. Paul and Silas were publicly stripped and beaten, and then thrown in prison -- all on the basis of accusation, without the benefit of a fair trial.
So it was that Paul and Silas, having only done right in God's sight, found themselves naked, bleeding, and chained in the dungeon of a foreign city. There, in the middle of the night, they "were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them."
What a marvelous picture. Any place is a place of prayer for the true man or woman of God. You do not have to be sitting on the pleasant grass of the riverbank; you may make the dingy dungeon a place of prayer, too. Likewise, any setting can be a setting of ministry for the true man or woman of God. It does not need to be in the sun-splashed columns of the Areopagus, sitting with the sophisticated thinkers of the day. It can be in a dreary inner cell, surrounded by society's most uncivilized element.
Then comes the earthquake. Luke does not explicitly report the phenomenon as an act of God, but it certainly recalls earlier divine interventions in prisons in the book of Acts (5:17-19; 12:3-11). Paul and Silas, along with all of their fellow inmates it seems, were suddenly set free. When the jailer responsible for them realized the state of affairs, he sought to do himself in. Paul stopped and reassured him, leading to the jailer's profound question: "What must I do to be saved?"
Over the next few hours, Paul and Silas became guests in the home of that jailer. He and his household heard the good news about Jesus, were baptized, and rejoiced together in the warmth of Christian fellowship.
It is a day in the life of Paul, and it illustrates supremely for us these three truths. First, God's work will always meet with mixed reactions. Second, God's work can be done anywhere. Consequently, faithfulness to God in all times and places will always meet with opposition and will also always yield fruit to his glory.
Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21
From beginning to end, this text is about coming.
"See, I am coming soon," declares the Lord in the very first verse. Later, the Spirit, the bride, and everyone who hears all cry out, "Come." Then a broad invitation to "everyone who is thirsty" is extended to come. Near the end, the Lord reiterates his promise that he is coming soon. Then the author concludes with his earnest prayer: "Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!"
The text reverberates with invitation. Interestingly, however, it is not a one-way invitation. While the prevailing theme is the anticipated coming of the Lord, the additional invitation to "everyone who is thirsty" reminds us that the movement is mutual. We are not merely passive spectators waiting for him to come: we have some coming of our own to do.
Furthermore, in a generation that is largely indifferent to the prospect -- or even the likelihood -- of Christ's return, we are well rebuked by the spirit of this passage. Are our congregations marked by such eagerness, a holy impatience, for Christ's return? Do our hearts and our prayers reflect an attitude of "Come, Lord Jesus!"?
Perhaps we would feel a greater anticipation if we had a greater sense of the "reward" that Jesus says he will bring with him. This is a theme which, in my experience, is largely ignored in mainline American Christianity. Perhaps our life is plush enough that we don't feel such a longing for heavenly reward. Perhaps we prefer a more egalitarian view of heaven that doesn't include any distinction in treatment (such as varying rewards). Or perhaps our proper emphasis on God's grace and our sense of our own unworthiness precludes us from thinking much in terms of deserving any reward, at all. Whatever the case, we may neglect the truth of heavenly reward.
The prospect of reward, however, is certainly a prominent issue in the seven letters with which Revelation begins (2:17, 28-29; 3:11-12). It is also a theme in some of Jesus' teachings (Mark 9:41), especially in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:12; 6:1-6, 16-18).
Interestingly, while the rewards suggest receiving what one has earned, the entrance into the city itself does not seem to be a matter of merit. Rather, "blessed are those who wash their robes," we read, for they will have the right to "enter the city by the gates." The washing of robes, of course, suggests a certain uncleanness, which needs to be washed away. We presume, based on the earlier reference to washed robes (7:14) that this reflects salvation by the atoning blood of Christ.
Meanwhile, we discover in the previous chapter that not everyone will be able to enter the city. "Nothing unclean will enter it," we are told, "nor anyone who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life" (21:27; see also 22:15). Putting the passages together, therefore, we conclude that evil deeds can disqualify one from the city, and good deeds can qualify one for a reward. Entrance into the city, however, requires a cleansing.
Finally, our passage also includes several revelatory references to Jesus. He is the central focus of the book, and here he is identified by several important phrases: "the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end," "the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star."
The first three phrases are synonymous, perhaps reflecting the backdrop culture of Hebrew poetry, which often gives multiple expressions to a single truth (Job 4:3-4; Psalm 1:1 cf.).
In his drawing of the Vitruvian Man, Leonardo da Vinci famously illustrated that the length of a man's arms from fingertip to fingertip is equal to his height from head to toe. At six-foot-two-inches, therefore, I am able to touch any of my young children's head and toes at the same time. This is the image, then, that I have of Jesus as Alpha and Omega. He is able to touch simultaneously the start and the finish, the beginning of history and its end. His size dwarfs our scope. His reach exceeds our limits and his span covers our extremities.
The "root and descendant of David" is a fascinating mixed metaphor. That Jesus is the promised descendant of David -- "son of David" (see Matthew 1:1; 9:27; 21:15) -- is part of his identity as the Messiah. That he is also the "root of David," however, speaks to his preexistence (see Matthew 22:41-45). Jesus does not just come from David; David comes from him.
Finally, "the bright morning star" does not have any specific precursor in scripture. William Barclay observes, however, that Jesus had previously identified himself as the light of the world (John 8:12), and so "when the Risen Christ said that he was the morning star, he claimed again to be the light of the world and the vanquisher of all the world's darkness."
John 17:20-26
John's gospel gives us the longest look at the Last Supper. He devotes five entire chapters to the events and dialogue that occur on that evening. In a gospel that is just 21 chapters long, it is an astonishing allocation of space to just one evening from Jesus' life. Our selected lection comes from that large Last Supper resource. Specifically, John 17 records Jesus' prayer before he goes to the garden, where he would be arrested. Our passage is the last portion of that prayer.
The passage begins with a sentence that brings us in. "I ask not only on behalf of these," Jesus prays in reference to his disciples gathered around him, "but also on behalf of those who will believe in men through their word." That's us. This is where we come in. We have this grand privilege of overhearing Jesus praying for you and me and our congregations, for we are "those" -- the ones who were not there on that occasion, but who would come to believe through the witness of the apostles.
And see what he prays -- for them and for us -- "That they may all be one." It's a prominent theme in this section, as Jesus points to the oneness experienced between him and his Father, and then adds the emphatic prayer that "they may become completely one." Or, as the Amplified Bible renders it: "that they may become one and perfectly united."
It is instructive to us that this is so central to Jesus' prayer for his followers. I wonder how prominent this theme is among our prayers for one another. Amid all of our prayers for physical and material needs, how passionately do we pray for oneness?
The model and source for this desired unity is in the Trinity. The Father and Son are two, yet one, and so Jesus prays that "they may be one, as we are one." We are reminded of Charles Wesley's poetic observation about human beings: "ordained to be transcripts of the Trinity."
The oneness Jesus of which speaks seems to be born out of two realities.
First, there is the tantalizingly important preposition "in." "I in them and you in me," Jesus says, as he prays "that they may become completely one." The language recalls Jesus' earlier statements about those who eat his flesh and drink his blood (6:56), his own relation to the Father (10:38; 14:10-11, 20), and especially the connection between the vine and branches (15:1-10). This oneness is not portrayed as mere collegiality, going forward together arm-in-arm. Rather, there is a more mysterious union, where the one is in the other, and the other is in the one.
Second, the theme of unity seems to be all bound up with the theme of love. The disciples' oneness, according to Jesus, will bear witness to the world that the Father has loved them even as he has loved the Son (v. 23). Indeed, R.V.G. Tasker concludes that it is actually supernatural love that produces the desired unity.
That love takes over as the prevailing theme of the rest of the passage. Jesus affirms that the Father has loved the disciples, even as he has loved the Son (v. 23), he affirms that the Father has loved him "before the foundation of the world" (v. 24), and he prays "that the love with which you have loved me may be in them" (v. 26).
The love that has been shared eternally between the Father and the Son, therefore, has come into the world. The followers of Jesus have come to know and experience that love, are called upon to share and reflect that love, and their life together is to be shaped by that love, until they are formed into a holy oneness with God himself.
Application
Our gospel lection begins at a table -- the famous and cherished table of Jesus' Last Supper. Perhaps no table in history has been so often remembered, portrayed, and reenacted as that one.
As they were gathered around that table, Jesus prayed for his disciples. Along the way, he prayed also "on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word." The prayer anticipated a certain future, but a future the disciples could not possibly have imagined.
Our selected passage from the book of Acts, meanwhile, gives us a peek into that future. At the end of that passage, we see another table. Like the first one, it is populated by believers; yet none of the original cast of characters is there.
This table is only a few decades removed from the first one, but it is many miles away -- all the way from Jerusalem in Palestine to Philippi in Macedonia. See the people seated there: Paul, Silas, a Greek jailer, and all the members of his household.
In all likelihood, none of these people had even heard of Jesus on the night when he ate that Passover meal with his original disciples. And none of those original disciples had likely ever been to Philippi. Yet, a few years later, those folks around that Philippian table have all devoted their lives to Jesus!
Frederick Hosmer sang, "Wider grows the kingdom, reign of love and light; for it we must labor, till our faith is sight." Wider, indeed! The witness and work of those original disciples had sent unimaginable ripples to strangers so far away. It is with that same confidence that "we must labor," unable to envision how far and with whom the Lord will prosper our work.
Alternative Application(s)
Acts 16:16-34. "We've A Song to be Sung to the Nations." In the dark days of the Babylonian exile, the captive Jews wrote this poignant lament about their circumstance: "By the rivers of Babylon -- there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, 'Sing us one of the songs of Zion!' How could we sing the LORD's song in a foreign land?" (Psalm 137:1-4).
The misery of their situation and the cruelty of their captors are undeniable. Yet their conclusion may be disputed.
I cannot pretend to know what it is like to be dragged away from my homeland in chains with the churches and government buildings smoldering in the background, and be carried off as captive to some foreign land. It is nearly unimaginable for me. Then, in the midst of that foreign setting, for my oppressive captors, drunk and taunting, to ask me to sing a few bars of "America, The Beautiful" or "The Star-Spangled Banner."
This was the bitter circumstance of the Jews in Babylon. And so they moaned, "How can we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?"
Enter Paul and Silas. They, too, are in a foreign land. While their arrival there had been voluntary, they had been unjustly arrested, publicly humiliated, and harshly imprisoned. The comforts of home and the goodness of God must have seemed very far away. Yet, there in that brutal setting, they were "praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them."
Paul and Silas did not hang up their harps. They sang the Lord's song, even as captives in a foreign land.
Henry Ernest Nichol, a nineteenth-century British churchman and musician, believed that the world needs to hear what we have to sing. "We've a song to be sung to the nations," he wrote, "that shall lift their hearts to the Lord, a song that shall conquer evil and shatter the spear and sword, and shatter the spear and sword."
Our conditions may not be overtly as harsh as the Jews in Babylon or the apostles in Philippi, but our world is just as inhospitable to the gospel. And it is just as in need of hearing it.
Preaching the Psalm
by Schuyler Rhodes
Psalm 97
Foundations are important. Some time ago a young pastor noticed that the church he was serving had a certain lean to its structure. At first he didn't pay much attention to it because it was an old building and no one else seemed too concerned about it. With the passing months the leaning became more pronounced. Growing concerned, the pastor put on his old clothes one Sunday afternoon and crawled under the church. In the cobwebs and dust, with a flashlight he crept under the sanctuary and looked around. Once his eyes got adjusted he noticed with alarm that the church had no foundation.
The whole church had been built upon beams that had simply been laid in the dirt. There were no granite foundation stones. There was no concrete perimeter. There was nothing except those beams that were soft with rot from lying directly on the moist earth under the church building.
This is a true story. Ultimately, a new foundation was put in place and the building was saved. But the point seems clear enough. On uncertain foundations the whole building is at risk. On uncertain foundations, our whole enterprise of faith is at risk.
This psalm helps us to get clear in this regard.
"Righteousness and justice are the foundations of His throne!" God's kingdom, it turns out, isn't built on church membership or on liturgical correctness. It's not built on narrow interpretations of doctrine or the appropriation of social issues. No. God's throne, or to put it another way, God's reality is built on the foundations of justice and righteousness. Imagine how the mighty institutional churches, and those not so institutional might look if their foundations actually were justice and righteousness.
In this simple, clear utterance we can see a way forward for lost and wayward church communities. In these solid foundational principles, the people of God can move forward, whatever their culture or social leaning.
Let the church build its ministries and its community on justice. In the neighborhoods where the church is located, let the community focus on justice. Whether it is hungry people or immigration concerns, let the church move. Whether it's developing schools or providing opportunities for young people who are left alone, let the church live out its witness to the call of God to build the kingdom on the foundation of justice.
This is not only the right thing to do -- it's the evangelical thing to do. Meet the needs of the people in the name of the Lord, and they will come. For the foundations of the throne are righteousness and justice.
