Scripture/Sermon of the Day. May 29, 2022

John 17:20-26

20 “I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their word, 21 that 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. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, 23 I 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. 24 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.

25 “Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you, and these know that you have sent me. 26 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.”

Reflection/Sermon:

I.This is our Memorial Day weekend edition of Sunday Worship. It’s also the Seventh Sunday of Easter. Memorial Day usually falls during one of the Sundays of Easter. We have two kind of opposite themes happening simultaneously — resurrection — which is about life — and war, which is about death. Newscasters say this weekend we honor people who made “the ultimate sacrifice.”

II. Last Tuesday nineteen children and two adults also made the ultimate sacrifice in Uvalde, Texas. And ten days before that, at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, ten people made the ultimate sacrifice. Both veterans and civilian adults and children have sacrificed their lives for the right to call themselves American.

III. The shooters of both these mass killings were just boys, 18 years old. The one in Texas just turned 18 so he could legally buy the two assault rifles he wanted made by Daniel Defense, in Georgia. At the National Rifle Association Convention this weekend in Houston, Texas, Daniel Defense decided not to set up their booth because they said it would not be appropriate to sell more guns when two of theirs just killed 19 children and two of their teachers. So their space at the convention was given to vendors selling popcorn and baked potatoes.

IV. Right now our country is about as divided as it has ever been. It might be time for congress to change our name — maybe to just "States of America".
Our country was named on September 9, 1776, when the Continental Congress formally declared us to be the United States of America, replacing the name “United Colonies” which was in use before that.
The dictionary says UNITED means: MADE ONE — combined into a single entity. “Made one” — isn’t that what Jesus prayed for in our reading this morning?

V. Jesus prayed to God for us all to be ONE. The reason he asked God to make us one is because he knew we can’t do that by ourselves. It’s not in our nature to do that! Our country’s documents say we are created equal — but not united. Only God can do that — so Jesus asked God, not king Herod or Pontius Pilate or the High Priest Ciaphas. Only God can unite us because love comes from God and it takes love to connect people.
We need a vision like the one the Trappist monk Thomas Merton had on a street corner in Louisville, Kentucky. He was there shopping for the monastery on March 18, 1958, and while waiting on a busy downtown street for the traffic light to change, he experienced what he called AN EPIPHANY WHERE HE SAW EACH PERSON AS HE IMAGINED GOD SAW THEM. ALL OF THEM IN SEARCH OF MEANING AND JOY. ALL IN NEED OF LOVE. He wrote in his diary “I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. IT WAS LIKE WAKING FROM A DREAM OF SEPARATENESS.” That feeling of being connected by love to every human being on this earth stayed with Merton until he died ten years later.
This morning we pray THAT JESUS’ PRAYER WILL BE ANSWERED IN OUR LIVES — SO WE MAY BE ONE AND IN LOVE WITH ALL PEOPLE — awakened by God from our dream of separateness.