Today is the 7th Sunday of Easter, the last Sunday in the Easter cycle. Our readings, therefore, were selected with this date and time in mind. It might be helpful to pause and consider where we started out in our church year journey, how far we have come, and where we are just now in the course of that year. We began our journey in Advent anticipating the coming of Israel’s Messiah. Then we celebrated his birth at Bethlehem and followed the course of his life and teaching that led him to the cross. On Easter Sunday we celebrated his glorious resurrection from the dead, and during the course of this Easter season we have been hearing both about his post-resurrection appearances and accounts of the earliest proclamation of the good news of the new life the risen Christ gives to all who have faith in him.

So having come thus far, poised as it were on the eve of the Ascension and the founding of the church at Pentecost, what do we hear? Our readings emphasize that the risen Christ, through the Holy Spirit, forms the church as the body of Christ in the world. The first thing we heard is how important it was, after Judas’ betrayal and death, to regain the full number of disciples. There had to be 12 of them. That the number 12 had to be reached was not an invention of the early church, it was the will of God. That the disciples had to regain their full complement is demonstrated by the fact that after the remaining 11 prayed for guidance, lots were cast to decide which one of the two candidates would be selected. This method of selection emphasized that the choice was not the disciples’, but that it was God’s.

Then in our gospel reading we listened in on Jesus’ prayer for his disciples: “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.”

With these two acts, with the re-achieving of the full complement of 12 disciples and with Jesus’ prayer that his followers would be united in faith and witness under the guardianship and protection of God due to the world’s hatred, we have the church. There must once again be 12 disciples because in Christ the church is a fellow heir with Israel of the promises God made to Abraham and his descendents. The church does not replace historic Israel, but through Christ it is the heir and fulfillment of it. What God began with the calling of Abraham and the establishment of his people Israel by uniting the 12 tribes is replicated and extended in the church of Jews and Gentiles. In Christ the history and hope of Israel is embodied and revealed in Christ. But the church will require the benefit of God’s protection from the world’s hatred, because their Lord is the Lord of lords and the King of kings. Their faith and their ultimate loyalty put them at odds with the world. Thus while they do exist in the world, they will not be of the world. Their ultimate loyalties are with the risen One who rules over all, and their faith is in him. “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.”

It is important that we pause and consider what the word “hatred” means in this context. This hatred is not a personal emotion or personal aversion or animosity against individual Christians. They are not hated for their personal qualities, personalities or actions. The Christian attracts the world’s hatred because he/she is the bearer of a specific claim and cause. As one theologian [Barth] has put it, Christians are hated “because they represent to all [humanity] and to the world the alien and intolerable cause of the kingdom, the coup d’état of God.” God’s kingdom that Christ both represents in his own person and ushers into being is a coup d’état because it overthrows all other kingdoms; it is the eternal and heavenly kingdom that all legitimate earthly, temporal kingdoms must strive to emulate and anticipate, because otherwise they become tyrannical. The church is hated because it is the community that claims to represent and which strives to live into authentic communion, community in its truest and ultimate form. The church, therefore, is a standing challenge and an offense to all other versions and forms of kingdoms, powers, authorities, communities, and purported communions. At best, earthly kingdoms are pale and fallible imitations; at worst they are demonic, totalitarian, and barbarous. The church is a standing challenge to both.

Jesus prays that his followers, who suffer the world’s hatred, will be shielded, guarded, and protected in their life and mission. Along the way they will also need protection from themselves. It is not easy to stand up to the world’s hatred, and the temptation to slack off, become timid, tired, apologetic or to compromise one’s beliefs, standards and practice is great. There is a constant temptation to make the Christian life and message attractive, sympathetic and palatable to the world, and for the church to adopt and adapt itself to the world’s standards, values, loyalties, faiths, and commitments. That is why the church must be sanctified in the truth. The world hates Christians because they claim to have, know, represent and offer truth. “I am not asking you, “Jesus prays to his Father, “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.”

But what is truth? Truth is a slippery concept. No one claims anymore to possess truth. I’ve got my truth and you’ve got yours, but there is no truth that stands above and includes us both. There may be subjective truth, but can there be objective truth that is true for all time and place? No way, people insist today. Yet here Jesus says that God’s word is truth, and that his followers who proclaim that word will thereby possess and profess the truth. That is why the church earns the world’s hatred, and why the church is pilloried by the media that reflects conventional standards and attitudes.

So, the church claims for a fact that the gospel is true. The gospel is true because the proof will be in the pudding. Truth is whatever will survive in the end—at history’s conclusion. Before then, through the gospel, one sees hints and glimmers and images of the truth that will survive, which lay the foundation of our hope and faith. Thus does the word of God also leave a lot of room for argument and for questions, for speculation and for growth in knowledge and understanding. The church knows the truth but does not possess it, because the truth is a person. The church knows the truth because the church knows the risen Christ. But Christ, who is present among us in word and sacrament, also beacons to us from the future, God’s final future over which Christ reigns. We see him now, but as Paul says, we see through a mirror dimly. Then we shall see, he adds, face to face. Thus what we have in the church, as the tradition has maintained, though true and definite in word and sacrament, is also shadow; it is a word and a vision that announces the future, prefigures it, or is a foretaste of it, and so we continue to wait, hope and pray, inviting the world to do the same.

Furthermore, the church claims that because God’s word is truth, evil, sin and death will not being among the things that will survive, because at the end, having been defeated by Christ, they will prove themselves all to be non-beings, and thus lies. In the end death will not exist. It will not be at all. The church is preserved in the truth, because it knows in Christ what will survive and what won’t. Only what is true will survive in the end. Only what survives in the end is true. Now to be sure, death comes to all of us, and in that strict and limited sense may be called true; but since the risen Christ has conquered, overcome, defeated, and put an end to them, evil, sin and death will not survive in the end, and that means that ultimately they are all false and thus will not exist.

Amen.