"Jesus' Last Will and Testament"
What we inherit and what we must pass on.
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, September 29, 2002
Texts: John 17:1-5; 11-21
I walked into the lawyer's office with a degree of fear and trepidation. I had committed no crime, so therefore there was no impending incarceration, but I was there to do something I wasn't looking forward to: namely, my mother having just passed away, I had to read her will as both the executor and, as the only child, the primary beneficiary. Knowing that my mother had written a new will just a few months before, I did not know its contents and so I was to some degree afraid. What was it that my mother would want me as the executor to do, and what was my mother's will and last testament?
I had, as you can imagine, a great degree of mixed feelings about all this because, when you read someone's will, it is as if they are speaking from the grave. The things that they hold dear, the things that they believe, the things that are important to them become clear once again and it was as if, as we read this (although in legal language) that she was speaking to me all over again.
I thought back to that very difficult and emotional moment when, a few weeks ago, Marial and I decided to draw up a new will after 15 years. To my great dismay and surprise, I realized that many things had changed in 15 years. Indeed, the beneficiaries had changed because many had died and there were new ones that had been born in that time. There were organizations that I supported 15 years ago that I would no longer support today and new ones that I had never heard of 15 years ago that are now important to me.
When Marial and I sat down and thought about what would be in this will, it was in many ways a tremendous experience, for it really determines your values. You can place on paper what you see as important, not only in this life but also once you are gone. But I must admit there is a degree of fear and trepidation in doing this, because it brings you face to face with your own mortality, with your own eventual death, and it makes you wonder about the nature of your life and what you leave behind.
Voltaire, in writing a letter to his friend in 1769 had these cynical words about writing a will and leaving money to charity: "The man who leaves money to charity in his will is only giving away what no longer belongs to him."
Well, I suppose he is right in a logical sense; it no longer belongs to you when you are gone. But where he is wrong is that what you do with what you have and the legacy that you leave behind says a great deal about who you are and what you value most.
But if you are like me, the writing of a will is something which you really want to put off for as long as humanly possible, for precisely the reasons I just mentioned. And I think Christians are like a young boy who went to church Sunday by Sunday and listened to the minister use a lot of long words. The minister talked about justification, and sanctification, and salvation until one day the young boy was in an English class on a Monday morning and the teacher asked him the meaning of the word procrastination.
The young boy put up his hand and said: "Well, I don't know what it means but I know that my church believes in it."
Well, my friends, we procrastinate in many things but putting off a will, putting off a testament is not something that we should do lightly.
This morning I want to concentrate, however, not so much on our will but on the will and testament of Jesus of Nazareth. Now agreed, Jesus of Nazareth didn't sit down with a lawyer and write a will; but it can be argued that at many times when he sat down with his disciples and talked to them about the things that he believed and the things that he wanted them to do, he was giving them his last will and testament. Whether it was the great commissioning at the end of Matthew, his speech to them after his ascension in the beginning of the Book of Acts, or the passage we read this morning from the Gospel of John, all of these in a sense are part of Jesus' last will and testament. In the passage read for us today, Jesus really lays out who the beneficiaries are to be.
First of all he talks about himself. He prays [paraphrase]: "Father, you know I want to continue what you have done. I want you to bless what I have done; but I also want you to do something else. I want you to bless the disciples." And he lifted them up with a word of prayer. It's a glorious passage this "high priestly" prayer, and it relates to you and me in a very profound way.
It does so because he asks that the disciples be comforted. He asks for them to know that he is the source of authority, and that they trust in him and in what he is about to do. Then there is a line that speaks to every one of us here. He says: "But I also pray for those who believe because of their word."
In other words, Jesus knew that he not only prayed for the disciples but also for every single generation of Christian that was to come along after. In this he prays that two things may happen to us.
The first is that we might share in the love that he has for the Father. Jesus prays that the bond of love that he has for his father might be a bond of love that every individual and every church following might know and appreciate. As Jesus said: "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love."
Jesus wanted his disciples to experience the very love and the bond that he had through the power of the Spirit, and that every successive generation might know it. But he also wanted those who follow to love one another, to have the bond of unity. Jesus prayed: "I pray, Oh Lord, that they will be one just as you and I are one."
In other words, Jesus is talking about two points on a circumference. Those two points leave the circumference and as they approach the centre they move closer to each other. The centre is Jesus himself. And so his last will and testament is that all those who would follow in every generation, you and I alike, might know and experience the love of the Father and the unifying bond of love one for another through him.
But it was not just a last will and testament that Jesus gave. He also made it a very communal thing. If you look at what he said, he talked about the need for us to love one another and for the community of the faith to continue.
Now, this is important. It is important because since the Enlightenment, we have lived in a day and age where the individual has reigned supreme; where what an individual wants or what an individual desires is the greatest good, no matter what the effects may be on others around. This leads to a form of isolationism and, in the end, a form of cynicism.
This week on the TV program Frasier there was a very telling moment during the wedding of Niles and Daphne, for which we have waited for 10 seasons. Finally they get married and the mother of the bride, Mrs. Moon, realizes that there wasn't a minister there and that really is bad news. She sounds like she's on our side.
But wait. Frasier pipes up: "Oh, just let people decide for themselves whether or not they go to church. Don't you force it on them."
Then Mrs. Moon says something that would terrify any minister. She says: "If everyone could make up their own minds for themselves, no-one would go to church."
Isn't that just dreadful. So folks, you can't make up your own minds, that's the problem; someone has forced you here this morning!
But that's the problem with a sort of hyper-individualism, an individualism that does not take into account the fact that the church of Jesus Christ is bigger than ourselves. I really believe this morning, as we receive these new children into this church and as we baptize them into Christ's name, that it is important for us to think again of the legacy of Jesus of Nazareth; because the legacy of Jesus is that he was passing his will and his testimony on to all of us, not just on to an individual.
After all, when you think about it, when you get up in the morning you might be an individual making your own decisions but if you go out on Highway 401 and someone decides to drive drunk and hit you, that person's decision affects your life. If you send a child to school to be educated and a teacher decides he is not going to show up because that is his decision, then your child does not get educated. If individuals decide not to pay their taxes and you become ill and need medical care, then it is not just your decision. We are not just individuals living in isolation, we are people who live in community.
And so it is with the Christian church. That's why Jesus wanted the bond of the spirit to be born in the community of faith in order that the community of faith might from generation to generation serve his glorious name.
This brings me lastly to the fact that we are the beneficiaries, the inheritors of what Jesus promised and what Jesus prayed for. The faith that we believe in is a faith that is inherited and passed on. It is an old faith. It goes back to Abraham and Sarah and even back in time before then. It goes from every successive generation through the people of Israel. It goes from Jesus passing it on to the apostles who then passed it on to their followers and each successive church. The church of Jesus Christ, then, is not a church that is isolated or frozen in time. It is not isolated in a moment 2,000 years ago. The ministry of Jesus Christ is an ongoing and continuing ministry.
That is why I encourage people, when they write their wills, to remember the church, precisely because each generation needs to pass on to the next the gift of the ministry of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
When I look at the world these children who we have baptized this morning are coming into, I see a world with so many challenges. This week, as a society, we have been talking about the environment and how important it is; and balancing that with the costs of preserving it. But what we hand on to the next generation is vitally important. What we hand on to the next generation in terms of the relationships between people in the world is important. What we hand on also in the legacy of the faith is important.
In an article in the magazine Atlantic Monthly this month, there is an interview with Philip Jenkins. He says that the centre of the church of Jesus Christ has shifted. It has moved from Europe and the North and the West to the South. The fastest growth of our church is in Africa and in South America. This growth is exponential and it is remarkable.
These changes taking place within Christianity and within Christendom are exciting. And we must also be a part of it. As a society and as Christians, we need to wake up to the challenges that lie before us. Carrying on the ministry of Jesus Christ is not something that we can just sit back and allow to happen. It is something we must be intentional about. It is something that has been handed to us by Jesus Christ. It is his last will and testament that we might know the love that he has for the Father, that we might love one another in the same way and that that love may manifest itself in the world. Why? Because the faith that we have influences all the other things that are important - environment, life, society, peace, etc.
But some people say, and I hear them: "But I'm only one part of something that is much greater."
I'll leave you with a story of a young boy who would go down to a beach early in the morning, when the tide was out and he would see all these starfish stranded along the beach. So he would throw them back into the sea.
An old man came along one day and said to the young man: "What are you doing?"
The young man said: "Well, if I leave these starfish on the beach, when the sun comes up, they will dry out and shrivel and they will die."
The old man looked at him cynically and said: "But this is a huge beach. There are hundreds of starfish. You'll never be able to get them all back in. What difference does it make?"
The young boy picked up one starfish and threw it into the ocean. He said: "For this starfish, it makes all the difference in the world."
My friends, I look at the children that we have baptized this morning as starfish on a beach. I look at them as in need of our protection and our love and our care. Every generation that comes along needs to be placed into the waters of baptism, to become part of the will and the legacy of Jesus of Nazareth.
And so the challenge I leave with you today is a challenge that I think all of us face, whether we write our wills today or tomorrow or not. It is to ensure that the will and testament of Jesus Christ is handed on from one generation to the next for the love of the world and for the love of God. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.