John 17:6-19
May 28, 2006
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
We are in a season when some of you either have already or soon will have to sit through some well-meaning person’s speech at graduation ceremonies. I could probably do one for you today because they are all pretty much alike. “The future is yours, give yourself to your community, work hard, have fun, the future of us all is in your hands.” These speeches for the most part are not memorable.
I was thinking about graduation speeches because it occurred to me that this long speech and prayer from Jesus in John’s gospel, commonly called the “Farewell Discourses,” is sort of like a graduation speech to the disciples. Unlike those of you who are leaving your teachers to go into the wider world, Jesus as teacher was about to leave his students. Disciple school was over, and now they needed to put into practice all that Jesus had taught them.
The Lies We Have Learned
Before we go out into the world and start practicing what we have learned, let’s take a moment to see what we have learned. A good education assumes that we have learned all kinds of words. Some of them are true; some unfortunately, are just outright lies.
From the very beginning, we learn words. Words have tremendous power. Parents and teachers know this. Their words have the capacity to shape the habits, behaviors, and the personalities of children. They can create respect and consideration for others. They can build obedience and discipline. They can encourage children to discover their talents and gifts. They can shape a young person’s self-knowledge and esteem.
Teachers’ words ring with the authority of truth. That’s why they can both build up (“You are a good student; you will go a long way.”) and they can tear apart (“You are no good; you’ll never amount to anything.”). But such negative words are not true. They are lies. They do not reveal the truth about the young person or the truth about what they might become. They reveal nothing more than the limited view of the one telling the lie.
I may have told you this story before but it’s a good one to tell again. When I was in public elementary school in Boston during the days when the pupil’s desks and chairs were bolted down on the floor in straight rows, the teacher would pass out these little white cards for us to fill in our names. The little white cards were for his seating chart so that he may know our names. On the top of the card, we wrote our last names in capital letters followed by our first name’s initial—“NG D.” When the teacher came to my name card, he said, “No good desk!” The other kids laughed but I was horrified.
The snide remark may have been quite innocent by my teacher but the words have remained with me throughout my life. They reveal nothing more than the limited view of the one telling the lie. Children, and perhaps all people, need to be protected from lies that put limits on their lives.
The gospel lesson in John 17:15 speaks of the need for God to protect us from evil—the lies that the world has told about us. But the lesson also speaks of truth—replacing those lies with God’s truth. These things go together.
There are many things from which people need protection. Some people need to be protected from war, others from a threatening disease, and with the hurricane season now upon us, some people are threatened again by wind-swept storms that cause natural disasters. But there’s another kind of threat we face; one that is quite near at hand and from which we also need God’s protection. It is the threat of believing lies about who we are. These lies can be when our parents and teachers put us down and discourage us from succeeding in believing in ourselves.
Unfortunately, there are also other threats in the world that we need God’s protection. Advertisers bank on believing that we cannot be too thin, cannot have too many possessions, cannot be fulfilled without their products. Television and movies tell us that we need plenty of excitement, sex, and violence to be fully alive. They do not give an accurate picture of who we are and what God made us to be. Such messages and many like them, contain seeds of deceit. They are lies. They are as much a lie as “Don Ng is no good!”
The attractiveness of these false messages lies in the fact that as humans, we are very susceptible to corruption. Part of the truth about us, as John says in the first epistle, is when “we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” (1 John 1:8). Because we do have sin within us, we can easily be misled, believing the lies the world foists upon us, lies about who we are, lies about what we should do, lies about what we can do for others, and lies about what will make us feel complete. God’s people need protection from these falsehoods. We need to know the truth as God sees it and order our lives according to that truth.
God’s Truth
Fortunately, there is something greater than the lies the world tells us. There is something greater, even, than the truth that we are sinful and unclean. It is the fundamental fact: that God loves us and that God has given the Son to die for us so that we might believe in God and have eternal life.
With this truth, we know that we belong to God. Our calling in the world is to love and care for creation, to be charitable to all people, and to spread God’s word. Our greatest fulfillment comes not through what we achieve, but through what God enables us to do. Our greatest joys come not in how much we acquire in life but come from good and godly pursuits. Our greatest freedom comes not from doing as we please, but serving as God pleases.
And in the face of that powerful lie that we may have heard as a child, or along the way from a teacher or professor or boss or coworkers—the one that says you are no good, you’ll never amount to anything, you are worthless—the great truth of God will protect you. You are a child of God, a person of priceless worth. God gave the Son to die for you.
There was a grandmother who shared about her childhood, how she had endured a difficult relationship with an emotionally distant and demanding father. She never measured up, in his estimation. Whatever she did, it was not good enough. Though she constantly tried to please him, she was always put down. She carried a desperate wish that she could somehow please her father, somehow gained his favor or approval, somehow known his love. It was a pain she lived with all her life. She said, “It doesn’t matter how old we get. The wounded parts inside us are always very young.”
The great truth of God is that he will protect us. We are children of God, people of priceless worth. God gave his Son, Jesus Christ to die for us. Do not measure yourself by the deceptive standards of the world. Measure your worth by the standard of the one who made you. God says to each of us: “I want you to live with me forever.” If you want to know what your human value is, measure your worth against that.
Sent Out into the World
As Jesus’ disciples who have been given training by the teacher, we are to stay in the world. Although the world will hate the disciples just as it did of Jesus, the disciples are to be in the world to continue the mission of Jesus. Just as Jesus did not belong to this world, we as his disciples don’t really belong in the world either.
What this means is that the world and its values don’t own you. We are not enslaved by its values and structures, the principalities and powers of this world. When you think about the world’s values and lies, are you free to go against them if you think they are going against God? If you are able, then the world does not own you but God does.
When we refute the world’s lies about us as no good and worthless and claim the truth that in the power of God’s name, God has given us a new name—“Christians,” does anybody hate you because you are a Christian? Most of the time, they don’t because many Christians have come to belong so much to the world that nothing about our beliefs, lifestyles, economic choices, or anything else is in any way going against the prevailing values of society.
Jesus says that even if we truly do not belong to the world, we are not to be removed from it. Jesus sends us into the world to which we do not belong in order to transform it. Jesus does not call us to retire to monasteries in the desert to forget the world around us. Jesus calls us to live and speak and witness to our beliefs in the middle of the world. Our life of faith is not to be lived separately from the rest of our lives.
Many of us live out our faith only in church on Sunday, and that it should be kept out of the rest of our lives. We are taught in order to get along with people: never talk about religion or politics.
But Jesus said, “I have sent them into the world.” Jesus is telling his disciples to go teach “the world” to obey everything I have commanded you. Our common understanding is to keep church at church. But Jesus sends us into the world to walk the walk and to talk the talk of faith. That doesn’t mean it is the state’s responsibility to make laws in our favor, it means Christians are called to make choices in their lives reflecting their faith even when it may be in conflict with the state or any other organization. The hope expressed by Jesus in Chapter 17 is that the world might come to know God’s love through the work of the disciples and so be transformed into the world God planned from the beginning.
This is the reason why the Social Action Network wants you to become familiar with clean campaign funding reform. The issue is not supporting any one political party or candidate, but rather for democracy to happen, candidates who agree with only accepting public financing are more able to hear the concerns and needs of the people instead of only satisfying the interests of the lobbyists. This means that the extraordinary amounts of campaigning costs can be spent not on electing politicians but by supporting worthy causes. Public financing means that more people who have a commitment to the community would be able to run for public office instead of only those with means.
This is the reason why we encourage you to vote in the June 6th primary and to register your position on the California propositions so that from our understanding of God’s plan for the world, our vote will begin to transform the world to know God’s love.
As disciples, we are sent into the world to bring about the truth of God. Jesus prayed for his disciples—that they might not be lost, they might remain faithful, they might be sanctified in truth. By God’s grace and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, the disciples rose above their limitations to be not just followers of Jesus the Christ, but to become the incarnate body of Christ in the world. Through Christ’s teaching, healing, and modeling, the disciples became a movement that literally changed the world. That power is still available to us today.
Beyond our self-doubt of wondering who we are and listening to the many lies that the world has told us about ourselves, we are led by a God who can do all things and will do all things. Beyond our questioning and reluctance of believing the truth of God that he loves us so much that he gave his Son to die for us, we are sent by Jesus to go into the world and to tell of this truth.
There’s Good in NG
If you are like me, you probably have some of those wounded parts in your life that stays “forever young” as in the story I told of the grandmother. Since we are human having sin within us, we can be easily misled to believe in the lies the world foists upon us. We ask God for protection against these falsehoods.
But sometimes I’m afraid to say that there are times when we may be living with lies that we are responsible for, not anything that our parents or teachers might have caused in us. We may have done some things that need to come forth in order to receive the forgiveness of a loving and forgiving God. In our confession of the falsehoods that we have, we can then receive the fundamental truth that God loves us and that God has given the Son to die for us that we might believe in God and have eternal life.
In closing, there’s a story of a preacher who by telling the truth redeems his ungodly life. In his early days, a famous evangelist, Brownlow North, had lived a life that was anything but Christian. Once, just before he was to enter the pulpit in a church in Aberdeen, he received a letter that recalled a shameful series of events he had been engaged in. And North’s stomach turned. It concluded by saying, “If you have the gall to preach tonight, I’ll stand and expose you.” North took the letter and went to his knees. A few minutes later he was in the pulpit. He began his message by reading the letter from start to finish. And he said, “I want to make it clear that this letter is perfectly true. I am ashamed of what I have read and what I have done. And I come tonight, not as one who is perfect, but as one who is forgiven.” God used that letter and the balance of his ministry almost as a magnet to bring people to Jesus Christ.
In 1 John 1:8, we read, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
If I were to give a graduation speech, here it is. There is no truth in NG being no good. There is no truth in you being no good. God forgives us even when we have lied against him and against ourselves when we come to him on our knees in search for repentance and grace. And if you are still carrying along with you that powerful lie that you are no good, worthless and will never amount to anything, God’s great truth will protect you. You are a child of God, a person of priceless worth. God gave the Son to die for you. Do not measure yourself by the deceptive standards of this world. Measure your worth by the standard of the one who made you.
Let us pray.
Gracious Lord God, help us to see how much you love us and believe in us to be your people, capable and created in your image to participate in transforming your world according to your plan. Remove from us the lies that have no place in your creation and thank you for your constant protection from all evil. May we go forth into the world to become your witnesses of your love in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen.