When Human Form meets Divine Purpose
John 17: 1-11
Where Human Form Meets Divine Purpose
This time has taken things from us and it has given things to us. I want to tell you about something this time has given me. In my late teens and early twenties, I was an avid cyclist. I loved cycling, I cycled competitively and spent quite a few hours per day In the saddle. I used to have a racing road bike. Gradually I became bored with it. Then I saw guys mountain biking and I eventually switched to riding a mountain bike. It is said that: Change is as good as a holiday. And yet, when I was on a mountain bike I kind of missed the sleekness and speed of my road bike. And when I was on a road bike again, I missed the ruggedness and freedom a mountain bike gave me. Eventually I stopped cycling. I took up running and swimming.
And then Covid time came. At the beginning, I suddenly had some time free to let my mind wander. I realized my son is now at the same age I was when I first took up cycling and I thought that he might enjoy it. So we bought him a bike. I was nervous about him doing long distances to White Rock all by himself but I couldn’t keep up with my old mountain bike, so I started looking for a bicycle to buy. Again I was in two minds about whether to buy a road bike or a mountain bike. Then one day, in a weird little bike shop in Vancouver, I saw a bicycle that I wanted. It was love at first site and I will tell you why. It was neither a road bike, or a mountain bike. It was a perfect combination between the two. It was a hybrid. When I ride it, it has the swiftness and speed of a road bike and when I go up sidewalks it has the rugged sturdiness of a mountain bike. I notice something interesting when I ride it these days. I smile spontaneously. What I experience is undiluted delight.
What happened between me and this bike? I will tell you…It’s form met my purpose. When form meets purpose the result is delight. You might not be into cycling like me, but maybe you have experienced something similar with things like kitchen appliances. I know of people that specified kitchen appliances in their wills, so precious they were to them. Why? Because they found a form that met the purpose they had for it perfectly. It brought them delight. They cherished it for as long as they lived. Why do you think a guy in a new Porsche in peak traffic can be unhappy even though he owns a new Porsche? Because the Porsche cannot do what it was designed to do in peak traffic. What makes the man frustrated is that his precious from, a Porsche, is unable to meet its purpose, which is speed out on the open road. Why when it comes to your favourite chair, you don’t give a damn that the rest of the family thinks its ugly? Because that chair’s form meets the purpose of bringing rest to your particular limbs perfectly. Form that meets purpose brings joy.
Have you ever thought about this? If your human form meets its purpose the result will also be joy and delight. To you and to your Creator, God. The biblical word for this godly delight and joy is glory. God is glorified when our form meets its purpose. Our purpose is to glorify God.
The interesting things about Jesus prayer in John 17 is this…if you knew nothing of the specific time in Jesus’s life when it was prayed, and I were to ask you to guess what time it was, just by looking at the content, what would you guess? You would probably guess that this prayer was prayed at the absolute best time of his life. It is brimming with excitement, joy and delight. But as you may know, it was not prayed at that time. It was actually prayed at the moment where Jesus had absolutely no doubt that his life was about to end violently and that his friends would soon betray Him and scatter (he told them so just in the previous chapter).
How could Jesus pray a prayer filled with joy and delight in the midst of his darkest hour? He could do this because his human form met its divine purpose in this moment perfectly. We have many fears. As humans its natural for us to be afraid of many things like dying and finances. These things can indeed be scary, but what we should fear most is that our human form misses our divine purpose. And what is our purpose? Our purpose is to glorify God. My greatest and best wish for you all today is that you would glorify God with your lives. Because nothing can bring more satisfaction, joy, or delight! Not even my new Miele bike! I think Jesus gives us important clues in this prayer that can help our human forms find our divine purpose. Jesus shows us very well what glorifies God. So, let us eavesdrop on this prayer and learn form the best…
Jesus shows us that we glorify God when we push through tough times.
I look back over 17 years of numerous pastoral conversations. A phrase I hear ever so often from a distraught person sitting in front of me is this: “I just want to be happy”. I have empathy. We all feel like that sometimes but I am also tempted to tell a person saying that that that statement right there and the way of thinking behind it, is part of the problem. If the only thing you want is to be happy, you are set up for great disappointment in life. It’s like life after the fall wasn’t designed for containing happiness non stop. I don’t know of a single person who was ever only happy. Its not like happiness is a sinful or unworthy desire. I think that it is a good one. It is just that it shouldn’t be our ultimate desire. The pursuit of happiness divorced from the pursuit of Glorifying God leads to misery.
You don’t find Jesus complaining to the Father that he is entering a time that is going to cause him much pain and unhappiness. Jesus actually speaks quite positively about this difficult time. He calls it “the hour”. He says: “Father the hour has come” as though He is speaking of something incredibly special. And He was. How could He do this? His goal and measure for a life well lived wasn’t happiness, but something else. Something greater. Glorification. To bring God glory is to match our human form with its intended divine purpose. That is what gives life meaning… even in suffering.
I am not saying that if you get bad news about your health, or enter tough financial times that you shouldn’t ask God to take it away. Even Jesus prayed for his cup to pass in the garden of Gethsemane. But He then also prayed that God’s name would be glorified. I think that second part is particularly important. God please take away my cancer and heal me like only you can. But Lord, whether my cancer is healed or not, be glorified by my life. Be glorified by my gratitude in healing… and be glorified by my patient endurance and trust in you… even if I am not healed. What if we reframed our most awful hour as a special hour in the sense that God might be glorified through our life in a way He hasn’t been before.
Jesus shows us that we glorify God by working hard
Remember how I told you how each gospel in the early church was assigned a symbol? The gospel of Mark’s symbol was an ox, an animal associated with the ability to work hard. Why? Because it was said that in all gospels but especially in the gospel of Mark, Jesus is portrayed as the one that works ceaselessly for our salvation. Also in this passage, in verse 4, Jesus states that He has glorified God by finishing the work He was given to do. Indeed, on the cross, He cried out: “It is finished”.
Christians, especially reformed Christians have quite a reputation for being hard workers. And indeed, our day jobs are also a sphere where God’s Kingdom purposes can sometimes be pursued simply by working hard. But we should be careful to think of our work just in terms of a day job. God has work for you in and outside of your day job. God wants you to work hard at the various roles he has given you. God wants you to work hard at your relationships with the people he put in your life. It’s interesting how we tend to hail those who earn lots of money as the only people who work hard and overlook people who do important work that gets overlooked and sometimes not even compensated for financially. What God driven effort do you put into your role as a parent or a grandparent? What effort do you put into your relationships? Is there a balance between that effort and the effort you put into your day job?
Jesus glorified God by finishing his work. When the hour came, he embraced the challenges set before him. Today, we glorify God by continuing Jesus’s work within us and through us. This is in fact what constitutes the missional calling of the church. Our work is to be sent as agents of God’s unfolding Kingdom. But unlike Jesus we cannot finish this work. We don’t have to because He did… and he WILL!. We can only work from this place of rest where we know Jesus finished what is most important. In this way, it is not all up to us. Jesus will also finish what we cannot complete or do perfectly. Either through those who come after us or at His second coming. Some of the most motivated and productive workers in the kingdom are precisely those that work from the rest that Jesus’s finished work gives us. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you glorify God by neglecting basic self care and burning yourself out all the time. That is a sign of somebody that does what is important to himself, not God. We simply seek to listen and respond to the invitation from God to participate in the Work that God is already doing. This glorifies God!
Jesus shows us that God is glorified when the universal is loved through the particular
It is so easy to say you love the world whilst hating your neighbour. Jesus makes a strange statement in verse 9. He says he prays not for the world but for those God has given Him in the world. Yet, in the same gospel that ever popular verse says: “For God so loved…the world?”. So, Jesus must have loved the world. But Jesus wasn’t a globe trotter or an inspirational speaker that travelled from place to place and only dealt with crowds. He spent His whole life in a very small geographical area and the bulk of his time and teachings was to 12 people. Jesus loved the universal through attending to the particular.
Its fascinating and its true: That the more particular we get, the more universal meaning our lives carry. Mother Teresa focused on the poor in Calcutta, yet inspired people all over the world. If you want to love the whole world, love the people God has put in your life. The people in your household. Your neighbour, the people of Surrey, Vancouver, B.C…you get the idea. If we want to be a church that reaches the far corners of the globe, we need to be a church that ministers to our local neighbourhood and community.
Close
I want to close with a question. In what way has the Church’s hour come to Glorify God? It’s clear that things in our neighbourhood and in are time are evolving and changing. God is on the move! Our neighbourhood is begging for belonging and there is a desire for community over charity. God is showing up in the stories of the people right in our proximity. And so I want you to think about the invitation before us. Because, your human form was made for a divine purpose. You can live no greater, more joyful life than a life where your form meets the divine purpose of glorifying God as God reveals himself in our local neighbourhood. In good times and in bad. In work and at play. By knowing Him and by trusting him. In the particular through to the universal. I think exploring this question of how the Hour has come for us as a church will cast us into a great adventure filled with meaning and purpose
Let’s remember, that the One who said “It is finished”, was in turn glorified by God in the resurrection. He ascended to heaven, that is what we celebrated this week. And right now, here today, God’s Spirit makes us alive. He now lives in and through you and me, giving us the energy to participate in giving God the glory.
The hour has come. The glory of God is mankind fully alive. From glory unto glory!
Amen