What Pastor Jon Preached on Sunday, May 16th, 2010

Seventh Sunday of Easter
Acts 16:16-34 • Psalm 97 • Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21 • John 17:20-26

One day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. ¹⁷While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.” ¹⁸She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And it came out that very hour. ¹⁹But when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities. ²⁰When they had brought them before the magistrates, they said, “These men are disturbing our city; they are Jews ²¹and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe.” ²²The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates had them stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods. ²³After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely. ²⁴Following these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet in the stocks. About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. ²⁶Suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were unfastened. ²⁷When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped. ²⁸But Paul shouted in a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” ²⁹The jailer called for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. ³⁰Then he brought them outside and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” ³¹They answered, “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” ³²They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. ³³At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire family were baptized without delay. ³⁴He brought them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.


Jesus prayed: "I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, ²¹that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. ²²The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, ²³I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. ²⁶I 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.”

We arrive at a day in the church year today that can quite frankly be lonely. We have shared in Easter resurrection for six weeks, and the feastival of the Ascention of Our Lord happened this past Thursday. Jesus now sits in heaven. We with the disciples are left in Jerusalem still down here. Pentecost is just around the corner, but not here yet. Jesus has gone to be with God, and God has not come down as the Holy Spirit that we celebrate on the 50^th day of Easter, which is Pentecost.

After six weeks of Easter, we may have given up on new life. We may be at our wit’s end. We have been looking at the lessons of Acts in this season of Easter, and seeing the resurrection new life all over the mission of the early church. But yet we look around the world and may not see Jesus having an impact. Suffering, loss and pain have not left the world. We do practically need seven weeks of Easter in order to get it into our bones that Jesus has set the world right and made us whole, but even by this last week of it…we can still be left wondering, doubting and gasping for a sign of God’s presence. We can begin to seek to find shelter amidst what seems like a world gone mad, a world lost in violence, greed and corruption.

But even when we have given up on new life…even when we are at our wit’s end…Jesus intercedes for us. Jesus puts the disciples and us at peace because he lets us know he is in charge. He came to set things right on the third day and that has not changed. Even when we can no longer pray for new life…Jesus prays for us. As he is with his disciples the night before he concludes his journey to the cross, he prays to God for we who do not want him to leave. He prays: “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one….so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (Jn 17:20, 23) Jesus prays even for we who cannot yet believe he has set new life beyond the cross as the new reality that surrounds us.

Today as part of the Building Faith and Future Capital Campaign we are being invited to a week of prayerful reflection on our hopes and dreams for the future of United Lutheran. As we consider our commitments to be made next Sunday, we ask ourselves the question: how will we carry out our mission to worship God, serve others and nurture our faith into the future? We are now invited to prayer this week to talk and listen with God about this campaign we have been hearing about since Easter Day. We pray this week confident that Jesus does not just pray with us—he prays for us when cannot pray, or do not know what to pray for. Jesus has hopes and dreams for this church and its future. Jesus makes us one this week in his prayers that bring us together under the place that is safe, where we can trust the shelter of his raised, open, praying arms.

I invite you this week to use this prayer devotional booklet that is in your “Invitation to Prayer” packets as your daily devotional prayers this week. You are invited to add one of these testimonies and Scriptures that have been carefully put together by Darlene Hug and Steve Vejcik for our spiritual food for the week. We will be receiving these same devotions as e-mail devotions each day as well—so we can all stay connected as one in prayer and reflection this week. This week we are a church keeping vigil with the God whose Christ always keeps vigil over us. God is at work in us, and holds us all together, even when we cannot believe or trust… even when we may not know what our future holds.

This Easter season we have been hearing stories from the early mission of the church in the Book of Acts. In this time of crossroads in our community of faith, we have been telling these wonderful stories that remind us of who we are and why we are here, and what are the characteristics of an Easter church. Today Acts reminds us that the hold that Jesus has on us is not a hold of fear or captivity. Jesus’ hold on us is a spacious, healing harmony that he has already brought about at the resurrection dawn. The story begins when Paul and Silas are jailed for Paul’s casting a demon out of a possessed girl who was being extorted for financial gain. But prison walls cannot separate Jesus who remains at one with Paul and Silas. God busts their jail loose with an earthquake, as if all of Creation cannot wait to be set free from all the forces of decay that defy new life to join with Jesus.

“Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” (16:28) Paul speaks these words to a jailer who after the earthquake is full of guilt for his role in maintaining a punishing confinement of criminals. He is about to die by suicide. It is hard this week not to picture this jailer without picturing of the death by suicide of Chicago Metra rail executive Phil Pagano last weekend. Mr. Pagano faced charges of embezzling company funds—but even at the moment when he very likely felt most alone, Paul’s words contain the promise that was being spoken to Mr. Pagano, just as he speaks them to us who stand today between the loneliness of Ascension and Pentecost: “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” As we confess in the Apostles Creed, we believe we are baptized into a “communion of saints”, who stand with us and intercede for us, with Christ. “[They] are all here”…at all times, at all places…even when we cannot pray for ourselves. Along with Jesus, they intercede for us.

In recent weeks I discovered the ELCA has an online prayer network—a place where people can go and type in a prayer request, and know it will be prayed for by a congregation assigned to pray these prayer petitions. With just a few keystrokes, we can remember too that even in a week as this where we focus on praying for our own church, we as a congregation are a part of a wider praying church, where Jesus is holding us together in the harmony of his “hidden wholeness.”

In this week of prayer I now ask you to pray with me now. I invite you to join hands with those near you. The Lord be with you. Let us pray.

Almighty God, you have given us grace at this time to make our common prayer to you, and you have promised through your Son that where two or three are gathered in his name, you will be in the midst of them. (Evangelical Lutheran Worship, p. 86) Throughout this coming week, O Lord, form us together as your prayerful people. Even when death and pain surround us, pray for us; make us one under the arms of your gospel of new life in Jesus. Work out in us that which is pleasing in your sight for the good of United Lutheran. May your prayers for this church empower us with dreams and visions, faith and generosity to give glory to your holy name. For Jesus’ sake, Amen.