Easter 7

Today is Mother’s Day, a day when we honor our moms. We learn many things from our moms.

Someone has made a list of some things a mother would never say:

Yeah, I used to skip school a lot, too.
Just leave all the lights on . . . it makes the house look more cheery.
Let me smell that shirt. Yeah, it’s good for another week.
Go ahead and keep that stray dog, honey. I’ll be glad to feed and walk him every day.
Well, if Timmy’s mom says it’s OK, that’s good enough for me.
The curfew is just a general time to shoot for. It’s not like I’m running a prison here.
I don’t have a tissue with me . . . just use your sleeve.

Thank God our mothers didn’t say such things and tried to keep us on the straight and narrow path. I know that my mom prayed for me each and every day of her life. That’s a powerful thing. Now let me tell you about a young woman who became one of the most important women in the history of the church simply because of her faithfulness as a mom who prayed.

Her name was Monica. Monica was born in 331 A.D. in North Africa in what is now Algeria. As a young girl, Monica converted to Christianity, still a relatively new faith. Her parents, who were not religious and not in sympathy with her new faith, married her off to a Roman pagan named Patricius.

Both Patricius and his mother, who lived with them, were hot-tempered people . . . and difficult to deal with. Nevertheless, Monica did her best to be a good wife and daughter-in-law. While Monica’s prayers and Christian deeds bothered Patricius, he respected her beliefs and not long before his death, both he and his mother converted to Christianity.

Monica and Patricius had three children, two of whom entered religious life as young adults. The third was a son named Augustine. Augustine was more of a challenge. By his own admission he was a wayward youth, giving in to most of the pleasures of his day. One writer describes him as lazy and uncouth. But Monica kept praying for her son. Her watchful, prayerful persistence paid off when Augustine finally became a Christian.

Monica lived to see her son baptized into her faith. She died shortly thereafter. She could not know that Augustine would go on to become one of the towering figures of the church of his time whom we now generally refer to as St. Augustine. From a sinner to a saint – simply and solely because of the prayers and the influence of his mother.

Do mothers play an important role in society? Tell me who else is more important than a mother? St. Augustine was one of millions of people who have come to know Christ through their mother’s never-failing love and prayers. Some of us are here today because we had that kind of mother. And so it is appropriate that we honor our moms this day, whether they are still with us or whether they are now with God.           

My mom taught me the faith. She was in the world, but definitely not of the world.

Which brings us to today’s Gospel. It’s important to remember that this Jesus prayer was uttered in front of his disciples. Jesus prayed aloud to the “Father” while his disciples were listening and in so doing formed an identity for his disciples.

Part of the identity of what it meant to be a Jesus follower was to be found in this triangulation formula that Jesus introduced in his public prayer to the “Father:” Jesus’ followers have an identity that is to be “in” the world, not “of” the world, but not “out of it” either.

In terms of our relationship to culture, Christians are to be totally IN the midst of all that happens in the world while totally OUTSIDE the insidious power and pull of the world’s enticements. But while it may be quaint to be “out of it” – and one thinks here of the Christian Amish, the Jewish Lubavitchers, the Muslim Shiite/Taliban sects – any faith that chooses to ignore the last several centuries sacrifices irrelevance for charm and opts for a museum identity more than a missional identity.

The Jesus Prayer established an identity for Jesus’ followers based not on the question of “What Would Jesus Do?” but, in the reformulation of Eugene Peterson, “How Would Jesus Do It?”

Jesus already answered the “WWJD” question in his prayer that the disciples be “IN” the world. Would Jesus be on Facebook? More than likely. Would Jesus be a tweeter? Probably. Jesus himself mastered the cutting-edge technology of the first century, which was moving from an oral to a written culture.

In a population where at most 5% could read, could Jesus read? Yes. How do we know? He read in the temple.

In a population where less than 3% could write, could Jesus write? Yes. How do we know? He wrote in the sand during the incident involving the woman caught in adultery.

We don’t need to ask the question: Would Jesus want us to work to ease the burdens for the poor? Or would Jesus want us to make new disciples and evangelize? Or would Jesus want us to plant new communities of faith? Of course. We don’t even need to ask those questions. Jesus wants us to be “in” the world.

But Jesus doesn’t want us to be “of” of the world. That’s why the question we should be asking isn’t the “what” question but the “how” question. How would Jesus do those things in 2024?

So if you’re on X, formerly known as Twitter, are you tweeting according to the world’s question of “What are You Doing?” or to another question, such as “For Whom are You Praying?” or “What new insights are you learning that you can share with others?”

Jesus did not seek to ISOLATE us from the world but INSULATE us in the world. Following Christ does not mean we have to become disassociated from the world. It does mean we are no longer absorbed by the world. In his book Reinventing Evangelism, Donald Posterski says this:

“The tragedy of the modern church is that Jesus’ strategy for penetrating the culture with the good news of the gospel has been reversed. Instead of being in the world but not of the world, too many of God’s committed people are of the world but not in the world. They have been both captured and intimidated by the culture. They have been seduced by the world and have adopted the world’s ways as their own—they are ‘of’ the world. They have succumbed to social segregation—-they are not ‘in’ the world.”

I want to end the sermon this morning with a test. It’s a quiz of whether or not the desires of your heart are in harmony with God’s desires, or not. It’s a test of whether or not you are ready to be “in” the world but not “of” the world. It’s a test to see whether you are “isolated” or “insulated.”

Are you ready? Answer these in your soul as honestly as you can.

*Would you like to be remembered as a generous person who was open and friendly to any human being whom you encountered?

*Would you like to be remembered as a compassionate and caring person?

*Would you like to be remembered as a person of transparent integrity and whose words and actions were always in harmony?

*Would you like to be remembered as someone who always gave encouragement, hope and life, wherever you happened to be?

*Would you like to be remembered as a person who never bore grudges and was always ready to forgive, someone who was entirely free from any hint of self-importance or arrogance?

*Would you like to be remembered as a person who always delighted in sharing whatever you had and was never condescending?

If your answer is ‘yes’ to all of these questions or even to most of them, then your inner desires are in harmony with the will of God, and the Jesus Prayer of 2,000 years ago is being answered in your life this morning.

If your answer is “yes” to these questions, you are ready to “GO”—to Go Forth to be “in” the world not “of” the world but not “out of it” either.

Remember, two-thirds of the word “GOD” is “GO.”

So, GO!