Set Apart to Live

Seventh Sunday of Easter

May 20, 2012

John 17:6-19

[Jesus said:] "I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them.

"And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.

"Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth."

            In just a few short weeks summer will well and truly be upon us.  Already in the last few weeks, as the temperature has been going up and the days have been getting longer many of us are beginning to get itchy for the months to come.  We are getting our summer toys out of the garage, we are making sure our bikes are in good shape, that the boat motor is running smoothly.  We might be looking at our summer calendars, trying to see if there is a time that will work best to get away for a day or two, perhaps a week or so.  Summer is a great time for many of us to relax, for many of us to “get away from it all.”

            In recent years many people that study the way we function as human beings have been looking at the way technology is affecting our lives.  They have noticed that the easy access of technology, the way many of us are plugged in all the time has caused problems.  I know that several of us (myself included) have access to the entire internet right here, on our phones.  I can read my emails, I can send email, I can watch youtube videos, I can watch full-length movies, I can update my facebook status.

The sociologists point out that many of us now rarely actually truly get away from our work and responsibilities.  It used to be that you could go home from work, or go on vacation and truly get away from it.  But now, we are just a text message or a phone call away.  When I watch news shows on television, it’s normal now to see the host and guest with a laptop next to them, or a cell phone just a foot away.  I’ve even seen guests texting on their phones in the middle of the show when they are not being spoken to directly.  We’ve all seen people so engrossed with their phones they aren’t aware of what’s going on around them.  Many marriage counselors recommend that the bedroom be a technology free space – no phones, no computer, no television, no radio.

Getting away from it all isn’t so easy.  In fact, hotels and resorts are now offering technology free vacations.  In the Dubuque area, where the river bluffs cause terrible cell phone coverage, hotels are using their lack of cell phone connections as a selling point.  “Come stay with us, you won’t be able to get a signal even if you want.”  There are some bed and breakfasts that ask you to check your technology at the front desk when you check in, you’ll get it back when you leave.

            Getting away from the chaos of our lives, getting ‘unplugged’ is something that we all hunger for.  We like to have those moments when we can sit on the front porch and just watch the world go by as we sip on our lemonade.  Many of us long for those mornings when we can just lie in bed while someone else takes care of the kids, or the dog, or the laundry.  Moms (and dads) can all relate to the phrase, “Calgon, take me away!”  For some people getting away from it all can truly be as simple as locking the bathroom door and slipping into a bubble bath.  For others, there needs to be greater space.

There are whole industries that are there to do nothing more than help us get away.  They spend millions of dollars to lure us on luxury cruises where all our needs, our every whim are met, to buy into a time share of a house on a beach someplace warm, to buy a second home in the mountains, to live in a gated community so we can lock the world away.  Although the ways in which the media and advertisers are selling these retreats may be new, the desire to get away from it all is as old as the Bible itself.

Religious faith may actually intensify the desire for escape from the world.  We have been given a glimpse, a foretaste of the life to come, and that foretaste may cause us to hunger not for a luxury resort, or a tropical isle, but for a community and a way of being that avoids all the chaos and conflict of the world.  If we look back through Christian history, we see numerous expressions of that desire: monasteries, convents, reform movements, communal living, retreat centers, small groups and communities centered in prayer and piety, many different separatist groups.  While each of these developed their own unique ways of being, all of them have been efforts to create a space, separate from the world, a place where it was perhaps more possible to pursue a holy way of living.

As Christians, though, we are not called to life away from the world.  We are called to be in the world, just not of it.  As Christians we are to be about the work of God in the world.  It might not be easy, but you can engage the world without being a part of it.  An astronaut can go into space, live in space, but not be a part of space.  It’s about what you surround yourself with.  An astronaut puts on a spacesuit, and can work in space, do the things that need to be done.  The spacesuit gives the astronaut the ability to be in space, but not of space.

As Christians, we are called to put on Christ; that is our spacesuit.  Because of Jesus we are protected from the atmosphere of the world around us, we can safely breath in the Spirit.  But just because we have a spacesuit, just because we have been found by Jesus, does not mean we can just safely hang out in our little space station and watch the world go by.   No, we have been given our spacesuit, our Armor of Christ that we might go out into the world.  Putting on Christ is not just about allowing ourselves to live, but equipping us to live out; to live out our faith, to live out our calling.

We are to live in the world, under God’s protective care.  We are to live in the midst of the chaos and complexities, the temptations and pitfalls of the world without getting ourselves entangled in all of it.  In fact, Jesus desires us to be in the world, he prays, “As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”  In one simple verse Jesus reminds us that the pattern of his own life was not escape from the world, but engagement with it, with all its distorted powers and pressures.

The world in and of itself is not evil.  God doesn’t love evil, and we all know God loved the world so much that he sent Jesus to die for the sake of the world.  Jesus came into the world, and filled it with his love.  He didn’t seek to escape pain when he saw it, he did everything in his power to remove the pain.  He brought healing and wholeness.  He didn’t seek to escape intolerance and injustice when he encountered it, he did everything in his power to re-create community, tolerance and justice.  He didn’t seek to escape from religious bigotry and judgementalism, he did everything in his power to bring awareness of the fullness of God’s love and grace.  He didn’t seek to escape from the ways we as humans divide ourselves into us and them, he did everything in his power to unite us under the shadow of the cross and in the blinding light of the resurrection.

Jesus’ prayer to God the Father is that we be ‘sanctified in the truth.’  Sanctified doesn’t mean being made holy, it doesn’t mean being saved, it means being set apart.  We have been set apart, we have been chosen for a reason, for a mission, for a calling.  We have been sanctified in the truth that God is love, that God’s love for us is beyond our understanding.  We have been sanctified, set apart so that we might bring the good news of that love to the world.  We have been sanctified, set apart, so that we might in our own awkward stumbling ways seek to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, seeking to live our lives in a reflection of how he lived.  We have been sanctified, set apart from the ways of the world so we can fight against the ways of the world; so we can fight against the many ‘isms’ that we encounter in our daily lives.  We have been sanctified so that we may have life, and live that life to its fullest.