1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11 (but what about 4:16?) If any of you suffers as a Christian, do not consider it a disgrace, but glorify God because you bear this name.

O God our protector, may we have the wisdom, the strength, and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth – come when it may and cost what it will.

Today, in our church calendar, we mark the time between the Feast of the Ascension and the Feast of Pentecost – an official acknowledgement of a sort of liturgical limbo. In our New Testament narrative Jesus has triumphed over death; Jesus has gone to his heavenly reward; but comfort and the inspiration, the clarifying flame of the Holy Spirit that he promised to send has not yet arrived. The wonder is that this in-between season lasts for only nine days – because in my experience, the time between great distress and loss and comfort and clarity is usually much longer than nine days! Then I remember that our calendar days really don’t have much to do with God’s time.

Many of you know that I almost always have a bone to pick with the lessons as they are given to us in the lectionary, and today is no exception. The passage from 1 Peter skips right over some really important verses, in my humble opinion. The passage from the Gospel of John gives us half a prayer – stopping right in the middle of an idea. In 1 Peter, this line is left out: “If any of you suffers as a Christian, do not consider it a disgrace, but glorify God because you bear this name.” That seems pretty important to me – and it can be a key to understanding the reading from John that it is paired with on this seventh Sunday of Easter. I’ll read the skipped verse again. “If any of you suffers as a Christian, do not consider it a disgrace, but glorify God because you bear this name,” that is, the name “Christian.” The name Christian was a derogatory label when it was first applied. It was a bad word. Both the writer of 1 Peter and John the Evangelist know from experience that if you’re doing your job following Jesus, you are going to suffer, because suffering is a consequence of compassion and the struggle for justice. It’s a consequence of living in community and staying in relationship!

The context for the passage from John in the Gospel narrative is that this is the last thing Jesus says before he is betrayed and arrested. It’s interesting to place this reading in Eastertide, to recall what Jesus told his dearest friends before he was captured and crucified, when it seems as if the risen Lord has disappeared for good. Perhaps, like the Galileans, we’re left staring into space wondering when, and how, on earth, God’s realm will ever be restored. And we’re given the beginning of Jesus’ prayer for himself, for his followers, and for the church universal. I won’t read the part of Jesus’ prayer in John that got cut off, but it includes Jesus prayer that they are made holy in truth, and that his love, and the love of God, be in them.

When you read the whole prayer, you may wonder about Jesus praying for the church universal before he was even handed over to be executed – and you should. This was written in and for the early church, at least three generations after Jesus’ death, and the author was imagining what Jesus would have been praying had he known, imagining that Jesus did, in fact know that his followers would be harassed and scattered. This is Jesus, assuming the posture of prayer, praying to God, saying, “I honored you by finishing the work you gave me to do. Now honor me with your own presence, with the honor I had in your presence before the world began.” This is Jesus, praying for the protection for his followers: that they may have eternal life. “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, God our Maker…and know Jesus Christ.” This is eternal life. Knowing God and knowing Jesus as Christ. Can eternal life get any simpler (or any more difficult) than that?

This is Jesus, praying that God will protect them so that they may be one [which means, by the way, that they are not one…there are already divisions among them in the earliest Christian church. It’s always worth noting that if something is being asked for or commanded in scripture, it’s because it’s not happening]. This is Jesus, praying that they may have his joy made complete in themselves [which means, they’re not feeling particularly complete in their joy]. This is Jesus, praying that they may be saved from the power of evil to destroy. Does this ring any bells in you? Do you notice the divisions in the church? Do you experience the incomplete joy in our selves as Christians? Do you feel the power of evil in our lives – that keeps us afraid and apart rather than together in love? This prayer, which John has placed in the mouth of Jesus, is as necessary today as it was around the turn of the first century of the Common Era.

So the part of Jesus’ prayer for God’s protection is interesting to me – because the Greek word that here gets translated “protect,” is usually translated “keep” – both as in keeping or guarding commandments, but also as in guarding, keeping in close custody as to prevent running away! “Dear God,” Jesus is saying, “watch them closely so they don’t run away! I’ve brought them this far, but they’re going to want to run away from the utter shame, the scandal of the cross. They’re going to want to run away from the suffering they will endure if they challenge the power of fear and hatred with my message of redeeming love and God’s preferential option for those who are oppressed. Please God, don’t let them run away.” The prayer of Jesus, here, is not theoretical or hypothetical. The lives and loves of Jesus’ followers are at stake.

Perhaps you know the story about a man with a hunched back who, because he was a great rabbinic scholar in a Hasidic family, was to be married to a beautiful woman. But when she took one look at him she was so shocked by his deformity that she refused to marry him. She wanted to run away. When he heard the news, he told the families, ‘I’ll be happy to cancel the marriage even though we’ve arranged it, but I just want five minutes to talk with her.’ So they gave the couple five minutes alone. When the two of them came out of the room, the families were astonished: suddenly the woman was happy to marry him, delighted even. So a student said to him, ‘Rebbe, what did you say in five minutes that turned her around?’

He said, ‘Very simple. I made her see that the moment at which, forty days before we were both conceived, there was a heavenly announcement that said, ‘This man is to marry that woman.’ And at the same time there was an equally powerful announcement that said, but one of them is to have a hunched back. And she saw my soul say ‘Oh, my God, if one of us is to have a hunched back, I can’t let it be her. Let it be me.’ So I was born with the hunched back. And when she saw the way it happened, she said she would marry me.’

Rabbi Blanchard, who writes about this folk tale, asks, “how many scars do you have from protecting and caring for other people?…There are scars and they hurt. Loving another human being…[or] committing yourself to [working for justice and peace] is the same way: it leaves real scars.” Blanchard says, “But the scars take on a very different view if the story tells you they’re an expression of love, if the story is that forty days before you were created you were matched with this person or with this cause or matched with this child [or with this movement], and you said if there’s to be a scar here, let it be me. That is a completely different story.” [1]

Our Gospel story is that Jesus said, if there’s to be a scar here, let it be me. It’s clear in John’s Gospel, that victory over death does not include magically erasing the scars. Our story is that the resurrected Jesus appeared to the disciples with open wounds in his hands and feet and in his side. Our New Testament story is that Jesus’ followers said, “if there’s to be a scar, let it be me.” Our story tells us that this was an expression of love, and that the moment when we say “let it be me” is our baptism. In our baptisms, that’s when we are declared to be whole-heartedly “in” – in for the struggle in the community of the Church, because the essential message of the gospels is not principally about growth in personal piety or individual salvation. “The vision of the [realm] of God is grounded in a social program,” as Michael Johnston says in his volume of the New Church Teaching Series called Engaging the Word.

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