"Holy Father, protect them in your name..."

Over the last couple of Sundays we have been hearing the gospel of John and the ways Jesus begins to prepare the disciples for his departure. He promises them the gift of the Holy Spirit and promises not to leave them orphaned. He promises that the Holy Spirit will teach them everything and guide them. In his call for them to abide in him is a promise of ongoing connectedness and a promise that whatever they ask of the Father through him will be granted to them. He promises them joy and peace.

Jesus then prays what scholars call his "High Priestly Prayer," of which our Gospel lesson is part. Prayers of Jesus in John's Gospel are sermonic and therefore we eavesdrop on his prayer as a group overhearing a pastoral prayer and that pastoral prayer is for us. This prayer is quite unlike Jesus' anguished Gethsemane prayer as reported in the other three gospels. There he is distressed and prays that the cup of suffering might pass from him. In this prayer, Jesus expresses no concern for himself, but only for the disciples, who will be sorely tested by his death and departure. They will be out on their own without him by their side to guide them, to answer their questions when they are confused, to comfort them when they are in trouble. In a way, even though it is Jesus who is leaving, it is as if the disciples are graduating and getting ready to have their tight small group broken up. They are about to face the world alone and on their own. Just like you!

I could not possibly have chosen a more apt gospel for this occasion. For just as Jesus was preparing his disciples for his departure, I am faced with the task, in this one last brief sermon, of trying to prepare you for your own departure, for your own facing of the world without this community of faith and the friends you have made here at your side. I have mentioned to a few of you that this feels a bit like my comprehensive exam - my last shot at summarizing for you what I think is important for you to take away from this place where we have worshipped God together in the beauty of holiness.

Where to begin? Perhaps with some general themes. Perhaps a bold assertion that it is urgently important to submit ourselves to basic truths as we find them in scripture and in the traditions of the church. We live in a consumer culture in which we are constantly tempted to rationalize or explain away truths that get in the way of our freedom. Our society makes it easy to change our minds and walk away from commitments - even those we have sworn to before God. It makes it easy for us to take the path of least resistance and then celebrate our choices and turn them into a moral principle. This is a bankrupt and morally empty way of living and it will take a great ongoing act of will to overcome it. I do not mean to suggest that we must at all times accept every doctrine of the Christian faith. If we're honest, hardy anyone can do that. I just mean to say that we must live a life of integrity as seekers of truth.

In this connection I would like to suggest that those who have gone before us in the life of the church have much to teach us, and their voices should and must be heard as we deliberate about individual and collective moral choices. It will be tempting to make choices based on the exigencies of the moment. An essential element of what makes us Anglican is our catholic tradition and a respect for the wisdom of the ages. Here again, we do this with the use of reason and good sense, but we take the past seriously.

I also pray that you will not be captivated and hypnotized by the culture. We live in a world in which we are bombarded with thousands of commercial messages each day that encourage us in a feel-good way of life that is incredibly self-centered and selfish. Yet in this same world thousands of children die each day - dozens during this very sermon - of hunger and diseases that could be prevented. In our own country it is possible to be beaten to death for being gay, for being black, for being a woman, for being a Muslim, for being homeless. Our culture has us so distracted with our own appetites that we scarcely think of this suffering in the world around us. There is something fundamentally wrong with that picture and Christ calls us to resist it. As an illustration I ask you to consider how much thought you gave to the numbers of people who died in the Algerian earthquake last week. Twenty-two hundred people died in a country with a population roughly a tenth of the population of the United States. It is as if 22,000 people died in this country in a single catastrophe. But I'm betting that at least half of you are hearing this news now for the first time.

Let me turn now to a few more specific themes. My hope is that by worshipping here in this community you have come to appreciate deep within you that the God we worship is a God of love - indeed, God is love. God loves each of you and considers each of you as irreplaceably valuable, not as you could be or might be, but just as you are right now. And this love from God is a call to you to love others. Nothing in scripture is more clear than this and this message of love trumps all other messages in scripture. Let me say that differently. If you find something in scripture that runs counter to God's unconditional love for us, then set it aside and move on.

As you leave this place my hope is that you will make it your life's ambition to place God at the center of your life. This can only be done by making prayer a part of your daily life - God's heart speaking to your heart and your heart speaking to God. Praying is not so much about presenting God with your daily wish list - although it is that too - as it is simply paying attention - paying attention to the voice of God. This view of prayer is quite simple: If you listen for God, you will hear God; if you do not, you won't.

I want also to suggest to you that the fullness of Christ's life among us is in community. You have heard many people say "I'm spiritual but not religious" and by this they mean that their spirituality is a completely private, individual affair. I submit to you that those who hold this opinion cannot be Christians because Christ calls us to a life in community with one another. The process of knowing God in Christ cannot be achieved in a single moment of time and it cannot be achieved alone. It is a lifelong journey that must be made in the company of others who will encourage you and support you and uphold you when you stumble. It is a complicated and troublesome journey through a dense forest and if you go alone you will become lost in that forest. And the food and drink for that journey is at the Lord's table which we will share again in a few minutes.

I want to say a word about the relationship between Christianity and politics. There are some who say politics has no place in the church because the gospels are not political. Remember in the 4th chapter of Luke where Jesus enters the synagogue and where it says:

This was Jesus' first public statement at the beginning of his ministry. It was his inaugural address. He could have made anything his focus, but he chose purposely to focus on the poor, the oppressed, the disenfranchised, the hated. He made it clear that this was going to be the focus of his ministry. Jesus was indeed political and he calls his followers to be political also in behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves. He calls us to be outraged at poverty and oppression and degradation and injustice. Elsewhere in the gospel of Luke we hear these words in reference to Jesus: "He casts the mighty from their thrones and raises the lowly." If that's not political, I don't know what is.

While we're talking about Christianity and politics and I want to say a word about tolerance. We often say we are a tolerant church in order to set ourselves apart from those churches that are manifestly intolerant. I frankly have to tell you I am not comfortable with being tolerant. Tolerance suggests putting up with something or someone. It connotes the old saying "live and let live." But as Christians I think we are called to something that transcends tolerance - that goes way beyond simply being tolerant. As Christians we are called not merely to tolerate those who differ from us; we are called to embrace them as brothers and sisters. While we can surely say that it is wrong to be intolerant, we can equally say that it is just not enough simply to be tolerant.

I want to say a word now about suffering. Unless you are one of the fortunate few, the world will break your heart. Some of you will have your hearts broken more than once and some of you will be brought so low so often you will not know whether you can bear the pain. I wish this were not so, but we must face the hard truth that it is. However this may happen to you I want you to remember that it will not be because God wills this for you. God is not the cause of evil. God is not at the beginning of evil, but at the other end of it. As Dorothy Sayers once said: "God did not abolish the fact of evil. He transformed it. He did not stop the crucifixion. He rose from the dead." So, when the world breaks your heart, cry out to God in whatever way you need to - in anger, in desperation, in despair. But try to remember that God is weeping with you and blessing your suffering so it will be transformed into something that gives life and hope.

Finally, my dear friends, I want to leave you with a word about trusting in God. I was with our new bishop-elect last week when he was telling a story about the Dutch priest Henri Nouwen who once worked for a summer with a circus in Germany. Henri got to know the family that did the trapeze act really well and got them to tell him how it worked. In spending time with this family he learned that the main thing in the trapeze act is that there is a flyer and a catcher and everyone thinks the flyer is the star. But the real star is the catcher. When the flyer lets go of the trapeze he started on, all he can do is to fly to the catcher and let the catcher catch him. Here's the really interesting part: the flyer can't do anything to help himself. If he tries to grab the catcher he will break the catcher's wrists and then they're both in big trouble. So, he just has to fly and trust the catcher to catch him. He just has to trust the catcher.

Remember that in life you're not the catcher. You're the flyer and the catcher is God. You can't do a thing except to fly into God's hands and trust God to catch you. And God surely will catch you.

My heart is very full. And there is so much more that I wish I could tell you, so much that I wish I could give you to help you on your journey. I'm worried I'm leaving something out that is important. But I'll just have to leave it here. As this sermon ends we will prepare to celebrate the Eucharist and my prayer for you is Jesus' prayer for his friends: "Holy Father, protect them in your name..."

Amen.