As You Have Sent Me . . .

Jesus stood in the midst of a group of his disciples and looked heavenward. He paused, searching for ways to express the prayer of His heart in words to the Father. In that brief moment of thoughtfulness no doubt several things passed through His mind. He knew that His time of suffering was quickly coming, that the cross was bidding Him come and die. Yet He also knew that when death claimed Him it would be a victory, not for death and the Devil, but a triumphant victory for eternal life. He knew that the tomb would be empty on Easter morning.
As His mind raced forward from the cross to the tomb to His resurrection, it continued on into the future events that He knew would come. He saw with absolute clarity the giving of the Holy Spirit; the tongues of fire descending upon the heads of His followers. He rejoiced at how the Spirit would guide them into a fuller understanding of His work and mission, and He knew that they would be released into the world, turning it upside down with the message that death had been conquered, God’s wrath had been appeased, and the door to Heaven was now open for any who might answer His inviting knock.
What else went through His mind in those few moments? I’m fairly certain that He also remembered fondly the uninterrupted bliss that He had enjoyed in unity with the Father and Spirit from eternity. How the three had conspired to bring into being a new world and populate it with rather oddly shaped two legged creatures called “humans,” of all things. I believe that Jesus Christ recalled with joy how He, as the Living, Triune God had breathed the breath of life into this frail collection of dust and ashes. How he had later put the man Adam to sleep and withdrew from him a rib so that He could fashion a suitable life-mate for the lonely, incomplete man. And I could also venture to say that He remembered with infinite sadness the day that the man and woman turned their backs on Him, despising His simple commands and plunging all of His good creation into sin, death, and chaos. He recalled the unifying purpose that He shared with the Father in formulating a plan to save these poor, simple “humans” from their own disobedience and sin.
But more than just a unifying purpose, our Lord Christ also gave thought to how He was truly one with the Father. How they shared much more than mere purpose, but they were actually eternally bound together in a mystery called the Trinity. In the Trinity the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit equally shared complete power, infinite knowledge, undying love, and the eternal glory rightly due to a majestic, holy God.
Do you ever take a quick peek around the table before you pray? I wonder if Jesus did on that day as He prepared His prayer. I wonder if He snuck a peek at the ragtag group of bumbling followers and thought of their desperate need for a unifying purpose. Did He again look down into the future, down through the triumphs and foibles of the church? Down through the schisms and heresies and the Crusades? Down through the martyrs, the Reformation, and potluck dinners to see people—weak, broken people, but redeemed people nonetheless—people unified under the banner of His name. People of every race and nation called by the name of Christ and sharing the responsibility in achieving the work which He sent them forth to do.
As He thought about these things, it wouldn’t surprise me if He considered that His followers might never realize the extent of their unity. In the same fashion that He was united with the Father, so His followers would be united to one another. Sharing more than purpose, they would truly be una sancta ecclesia, “one holy church,” a body of believers that would exist in all times and in all places that had been called by the Holy Spirit, enlightened with His gifts, and kept in the one true faith. His followers would share a unity that mere words could not describe, one that existed even across denominational boundaries. A unity that would bind them together despite what their eyes could see. No doubt His followers would only see a disorganized bunch of denominations and squabbling traditions . . . but Christ would see them as being a single body unified in Him, with Him as its head.
In those few moments before His prayer—brief seconds, really—I believe Christ thought how foreign this world was to Him. With the Father and the Spirit in Heaven He had known no limits, yet since the moment of His conception in Mary’s womb almighty, eternal God had been confined to a body of frail flesh and bone. How strange it was for almighty God to be dependent upon the milk of His mother! How unsettling was the sensation of pain as He fell down when learning to walk or when a misplaced hammer blow struck his young fingers as he worked beside Joseph in the carpentry shop! How frustrating it was for Him—the one Whom He had taught His diciples to pray to the Father, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”—how frustrating it was for His will upon earth to be thwarted so easily by hardened hearts and unhearing ears.
From eternity He had never experienced any difficulties in communicating with the Father or the Spirit, there had never been any misunderstood words between them. Yet here on earth even His closest followers, with whom He had spent nearly three years of patient, careful instruction and example, even His closest followers were only just now beginning to show signs of belief that He was who He said He was: the very Son of God, sent by the Father into a world that was not ready to accept Him, because He was not from it.
And His followers? They had been with Him all this time, and despite the fact that His teachings didn’t appear to have much effect, He knew that they were becoming more and more like Him all the time. As they walked from town to town, into one another’s homes and the grocery stores and the convenience stores, He saw how His other-worldliness had rubbed off on them. His followers—the ones called Christians—they were no longer truly of this world, either. Something had changed in them, His words had worked through them, the Father had set them apart from the world in which they lived and worked and breathed.
For people who had spent their lives hearing of how they needed to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, it was strange for His followers to be dependent upon the saving grace of their God. Somehow, though neither their emotional nor physical pain ever diminished, it seemed to take upon a temporary, transitory quality. The knowledge that this life was not their complete existence, the knowledge that they lived out a dual citizenship, being both Heavenly citizens as well as residents of the planet earth; that seemed to have given pain a purpose. It had changed them somehow.
Where the people of the world would rail against the heavens against the injustice of life, His followers would suffer patiently through trials and temptations with a quiet, unwavering faith. Where the people of the world would amass wealth for themselves—cars, big-screen TV’s, and fully stocked pantries—and still crave more and more, His followers would set aside a regular portion of their income and time and offer them as a small token of gratitude for all that God had given them. Like Jesus Himself, His followers were not truly of this world, either.
As Jesus prepared to draw a breath and begin His prayer—it’s interesting the way time can cease when your mind is racing through matters of extreme importance—He thought of how His unity with the Father and his status of “alien” in this world had combined to send Him to Earth. There could be no doubt that He was a man on a mission, a huge, all-encompassing mission to redeem all of fallen humanity by being the very living grace of God in their lives.
Yes, He had been sent to teach people to be kind to one another. Yes, He had been sent to show people what it meant to demonstrate true, unconditional love even to those prickly kind of people who are most unlovable. He had been sent to show people a better path to live, one that would improve the conditions of life in this world.
But far beyond that, He realized His mission was to accomplish something greater than just being a good example to follow. He had been sent to go where His beloved humans could not go. His mission was to return to the perfect state of Eden and lived a life of full obedience to God. No deceit had been found on His lips; His hands had done no violence and neither was there any to be found in His heart. He had accomplished His mission of living the life that His children had turned away from so, so long ago. He had lived a perfect life for them.
But beyond that mission of a return to Eden, He also was to go further. His mission was to go into death itself. He had lived the life of Eden where His children could not, now He must suffer the death that their sins had warranted. Was it an easy mission? No . . . but a necessary one. Because even as He knew that He had lived life in their place, so He must die in their place, as well. But His death would bear a purpose, the purpose of bringing the very grace of God to a people who had forgotten that they even needed it. He was sent into a world that was not His own in order to save those who had once been His.
With less than an instant before He began His prayer, the thought that He came to save His beloved children made Him consider what their mission would be. Even as the Father had sent Him into this strange world on a mission of salvation, so He too would send His followers back into a world that was no longer their own.
How He wondered over that! In His mind’s eye He could see His followers entering the world from which He had saved them. He did not seek to remove them from the world, but in fact send them back into it as His envoys. He considered that His time in this world was drawing to a close, and so they must be His ambassadors that would continue to speak His words and in their mission bear witness to His mission.
Yes, He would send them. Each of them. He would send them back into the fishing boats and factories, the synagogues and office complexes, back to their families and their bar buddies. They would go forth, each of them being sent back into the world that was not their own, to a land where they were aliens and strangers, but a land where they were on a mission. They would not be taken from that world, but be kept in it, be guarded by the Father as they lived in it, and influence that world in His name. They would be His witnesses in Jerusalem, in Brooklyn and Adrian, and to the very ends of the earth.
Jesus stood in the midst of a group of his disciples and looked heavenward. And as He now opened His mouth to speak, He knew that all would work according to His Father’s plan, the plan He and the Father had arranged from eternity. The plan where His followers would be one in unity, where they would lives as aliens, other-worldly, and where each of them would be sent as His missionary. As they would be more like Him they too, would be holy, even as He is holy.
And so He began to pray . . .
John 17:11-19 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. 12 While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled. 13 "I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. 14 I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. 15 My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. 17 Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. 19 For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.