Easter VII

Easter VII (John 17:6-19) “Sanctify them….”

Just before his arrest, Jesus prayed his high priestly prayer. He prayed for the safety of his disciples, he prayed for their salvation and he prayed for them (and us) to be sanctified.

Sanctification is probably not high on the list of things most people pray for. In our modern secular society it is not even a word most of us hear or use.

Certainly, one of the basic reasons people abandoned Jesus, rejected him and finally tortured and killed him was because Jesus failed to give people what they wanted most.

What they wanted most was power and wealth. Jesus only brought healing and compassion. There was no place in the world for a person who refused to work within the power structures of the world. The fact that Jesus did not challenge power from the place of power frightened people who held power or aspired to power. By refusing to use the methods and means of power the very presence of Jesus threatened the basic assumptions and institutions that all people lived by.

Jesus was not a revolutionary in political or economic terms. He was, nevertheless, a more serious threat to the religious, political and economic institutions of his day. He still is. That is why some governments actively repress the Christian Faith. That is why some political and economic institutions attempt to subvert the Christian Faith.

In His High Priestly Prayer Jesus stands in the gulf between humanity and God. Jesus accepts the call to be the Great Bridge that spans that gulf. Jesus announces his plan and purpose for the Church as he asks the Eternal Father to Sanctify us.

Sanctification is transformation.

It wasn’t enough and isn’t enough to state the law. It wasn’t enough and isn’t enough to form an institution. The problem Jesus came to save us from is deeply embedded in our souls. The law and the institutions have their place to support the Plan of Salvation. The law and the institutions are not the place of salvation.

The Plan of Salvation is three fold. To use the traditional theological language that threefold plan is justification, sanctification and glorification.

Justification is reunification. Moses and the prophets observed that people are lost in separation from God. The minute Moses gives the Law there are some people who reject the law out of hand. There are others who immediately attempt to redefine the law in terms they prefer. They look for the loop holes. And, there are those who say “yes” to the Law then ignore it when it is inconvenient to follow the Law.

That is why our Heavenly Father designed a Plan of Salvation that is organic. We first need to reunify with God before we can begin the long process of healing the pain of original separation from God. In his incarnation Jesus reunifies humanity with divinity in his own person. The Plan of Salvation is not only organic it is also personal.

Through his suffering and death on the cross Jesus stands in the place of separation and absorbs all of the original pain of separation, the distortions of sin and the final result of separation which is death. In his resurrection Jesus just doesn’t destroy sin and death, he transforms it back into virtue and life.

Sanctification is the process of transforming sin back into virtue and death back into life. The active and personal agent of this process is the Holy Spirit. Jesus made the process possible. The Holy Spirit helps us to participate in the process. The process is grounded in truth.

That is why Jesus not only prays “sanctify them” he adds Sanctify them by your truth. And, lest we miss it he adds: Your word is truth.

As the co-eternal Word of the Father, Jesus is the pattern of truth. Jesus just doesn’t teach about truth. Jesus is truth. When the Holy Spirit applies sanctifying grace to our minds, hearts and wills He does so in the context of Jesus. He does so in the context of what Jesus said, what he did and who he is.

The Holy Spirit will never contradict the principles He already revealed in scripture through Moses and the Prophets. The Holy Spirit will always lead us to Jesus to experience the very source of truth and the pattern of truth.

There are two challenges to the process of sanctification. The first challenge is pride. Pride rejects truth. Pride asserts that “I” am the basis for “my” truth. Pride will see the healing miracles of Jesus and redefine them as having their source in Satan.  Pride will assert that Jesus is too restrictive and exclusive so we should drop any references to him and just speak about the Spirit.

Once we remove Jesus as the solid rock foundation of truth we place ourselves in the seat of Pontus Pilate who asked: “what is truth?”

Truth is personal because Jesus is personal. But, truth is not individual.

The second challenge to sanctification is self-will, the will to power. This is that voice within us that issues a demand. Sometimes the demand is harsh and unyielding. It says: I want what I want and I want it now. Sometimes the demand is soft and seductive. That aspect of the voice says: “how can it be so bad when it feels so good.”

Jesus warns us. Be wary of people who invoke the Holy Spirit apart from His role in our Heavenly Father’s Plan of Salvation. The beloved apostle John in his last letters to the universal church very clearly teaches: any spirit which does not acknowledge Jesus is the Son of God is not from God,

Jesus prays as our High Priest that the Father will send the Holy Spirit to change the way we think, feel and make choices. The basis for that change and the pattern for that change is Jesus himself. The purpose for that change is life.

There is no life apart from Jesus. There may be a desiccated form of existence, but there is no life.

Jesus came to restore to us the reality of eternal life present to us in the here and now.

The process of sanctification helps us to transform the deceits of our culture, the distortions of our desires and the seductions of Satan by the real presence of God in the person of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit uses the tools of sanctification. Those tools are the Bible, the sacraments, and the Church. Absent from that list is sentimentality. Good feelings may result from the process. Feelings alone are not evidence we are following the process. The evidence is the objective universal pattern of truth who is Jesus.

The result of sanctification for the individual is what the apostles called the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness and self-control.

The fruit of the Spirit for the Church is the salvation of souls.

It is important we don’t confuse the results of personal individual transformation with the results of corporate parish and diocesan transformation. The individual grows in love and joy. That level of transformation facilitates the growth of the church through the salvation of souls. St. Luke observed that the Holy Spirt added daily to the number of people who were being saved and coming into the Church.

Jesus was, is and always will be the key. Jesus is the great high priest who reunifies us to the Father in a single moment of time and then continually transforms us throughout all time and eternity.