Proper 11 | Ordinary Time 16

An important connecting link among most of these texts is the emphasis on the qualities or attributes of God as these are perceived by the People of God through their experiences. These texts, therefore, are among the most theological of all texts in our biblical canon. God is perceived, however, always in relation to people, to the People of God who are in covenant relationships with God.

Genesis 28:10-19a
In this Bethel Jacob’s Ladder dream account God is revealed to Jacob as the Lord, the God of Jacob’s grandfather Abraham and of his father Isaac. The Lord is perceived as relating to Jacob by means of angels ascending and descending to Jacob on the ladder and as renewing the promise first made to Abraham of the land of Canaan, numerous descendants to fill and possess the land, the blessing and presence of the Lord among the descendants of Jacob, and the responsibility of the descendants to be a blessing to other people. The account also provides a consecration of the altar at Bethel and an etiology of the name Bethel that Jacob designates for the stone pillar set up by Jacob to mark the holy place where the Lord had appeared to Jacob.

Psalm 139:1-12, 23-24
The psalmist acknowledges that the Lord knows everything, including every detail about the psalmist and the psalmist’s life. The Lord is perceived as knowing the thoughts and the words of the psalmist even before the psalmist knows them. There is no place the psalmist can go that the Lord is not present, whether it be in the skies, the farthest sea, or the silence of the psalmist’s grave; even in the deepest darkness the Lord is there and sees everything about the psalmist. The psalmist is pleased to be so completely understood and encompassed by the Lord.

Wisdom of Solomon 12:13, 16-19
The universal perception of God is reiterated here in Wisdom of Solomon 12:13. God is said to be concerned about the welfare of all persons and is acknowledged as the fair and just judge of each person. Because God is sovereign over all, God can act gently and mercifully with every individual, using God’s power sparingly, and only when needed. Therefore, the righteous person must be kind and gentle just as God is kind and gentle, using one’s power over others only when absolutely essential and for the good of the other.

This wisdom perception of power and of the right use of power is similar in many respects to the wisdom teachings of Confucianist China regarding the Chinese concept of Te, the correct and appropriate use of power. Certainly this is a concept that is needed today, both on the national and world scene and on our interpersonal levels.

Isaiah 44:6-8
The description of God within this prophetic oracle that was probably expressed initially during the exilic experiences of a few Israelites in Babylon provides much information about an important period and step in the theological development of the Israelites and Jews and in our own Christian theological development as well. Here we catch a glimpse of the transition of Israelites who remained faithful to the Lord during their exile in Babylon from their earlier henotheism in which they perceived God as the personal, supreme God of the nation Israel within the geographical boundaries of the nation in which there should be no other Lord to their later perception that the Lord is the one and only God of all time and space. We see here the very important transition many Israelites made from a civil religion perception of God to a universal perception of God.

Psalm 86:11-17
Our Christian tradition attributes to Jesus perceived as the Risen Christ within the Four Gospels many of the same qualities that Psalm 86 attributes to the Lord God of Israel. Our studies of what we can know about the Jesus of history indicates that the Jesus of history exhibited in his life many of the same attributes the writer of Psalm 86 attributed to the Lord God of Israel. This was most likely an important factor in the success of the Jesus of history in pointing his fellow Jews so effectively toward the Lord God. This in turn caused attention to be focused on Jesus himself, and contributed directly to the decision by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate to order the Jesus of history be crucified so the oppressed Jews of Galilee and Judea would remain frightened, subdued, and economically oppressed.

Should we not also exhibit the same characteristics attributed to the Lord God of Israel, the Jesus of history, and Jesus perceived as the Risen Christ in our biblical accounts? These characteristics, of course, are to be apparent in our actions, and God is met, in part at least, when these actions occur.

Romans 8:12-25
In this text God is perceived as the Redeemer not only of those in whom the Spirit of God dwells, but also the Redeemer of the universe. The creation itself will be delivered from its labor pains and will be set free to become the home of the children of God. That is Paul’s hope in this text.

Within this text we see considerable additional theological reflection to complement the Psalm 86 and Isaiah 44 readings. Here the one God, the only God, is said to operate through the Spirit of God, helping us, guiding us, interceding for us, sighing for us in our weariness, and searching our hearts.

It is essential that Paul’s terminology be employed throughout the Church, in all denominations, and not limited to certain “spiritualist” groups in which this terminology is emphasized. This is important for the unity of the Church and for our spiritual health and growth.

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
This parable of the wheat and the tares growing together until the harvest (the day of the judgment and destruction of the Roman occupational forces in Galilee and in Judea) is included only here in the Gospel According to Matthew and in the Gospel of Thomas 57. In the Gospel of Thomas it is in a shorter, more primitive form and does not have any of Matthew’s highly allegorized explanation.

The economic problem caused by the presence of ta zizania in the wheat fields has probably been known wherever wheat has been grown, at least until modern times when more pure seed grain is available. The stalks of this weed, which we represent in English as tares, darnel, cheat, or chess, look like wheat, like particularly healthy wheat, until the heads of grain appear. The seed kernels produced by this weed are poisonous when eaten by cattle or humans. For this reason, this weed is a very appropriate illustration to use to present the problem caused by members of a religious community who look like the other members, and may even for a time appear to be more attractive than the others, but who eventually prove to be poisonous within the community of faith. There was apparently a serious problem when informers allied to the Roman occupational forces in Galilee and Judea during the time of the Jesus of history and allied to advocates of Roman Civil Religion later mingled with followers of Jesus. It was a problem also for us in Arizona during the mid-1980s when informers allied to certain of our governmental agencies mingled among us in worship services and Bible study groups in order to gather evidence that some women among us had provided sanctuary for female refugees from severe oppression in El Salvador.

Regardless of whether the problem of these human “tares” and whether dealing with that problem in the form of a parable cryptogram was known prior to the time of the Jesus of history, whether this parable about the wheat and the tares originated with the Jesus of history, or whether the parable had its origin among some of the early followers of Jesus, the parable is used in Matthew 13 to say something about the qualities and attributes of God. Even without allegorizing the parable fully, in Matthew 13 and in the Gospel of Thomas 57 it is stated that “God does not pull weeds!” We may wish God would pull weeds so that the grain will be pure at the time of the harvest, but with the single notable exception of the Noah and the Flood account, our religious traditions depict God as permitting “good wheat” and “evil zizania” to grow together until the time of the harvest.

These texts are dominated by the theme of the good news of God’s deliverance of those who are suffering. In some instances, the good news is given liberally, just as God gives the rain and the snow from the skies and as the one who sows spreads the seed over good soil, among thorns and thistles, on rocky ground, and along the path. The Matthew 13 text suggests that at times the suffering of the People of God is so severe the good news from God must be disguised in parables of the coming of the kingdom and rule of God so the oppressors, even though they hear the good news of the coming of deliverance for the people whom they are oppressing, will not understand it. The People of God, however, will understand it, and even though they are suffering so greatly now they will believe and heed the good news from God and will be strengthened by it. In other instances, however, the suffering and the deliverance seem to be repeated in recurring cycles.

Genesis 25:19-34
Persons who are not in the situation of a married woman who wants so intensely to be able to have a child and cannot are not able to comprehend the suffering of such a woman. As severe as such suffering is in our time, even greater was the suffering in this situation in ancient Israel. There appears to be the greatly desired relief from this suffering by Rebekah when, after Isaac had prayed to the Lord, Rebekah became pregnant. The pregnancy of Rebekah was sorely complicated, however, because she was about to give birth to twin sons who struggled fiercely together within her throughout her pregnancy and Rebekah’s life was in grave danger.

As her sons grew, a very nonfunctional family life developed in which the father Isaac loved his son Esau, the coarse and hairy hunter, and Rebekah loved Jacob, who remained with her in her tent. The situation became even worse when Jacob tricked his bother Esau into selling his birthright to Jacob for a single, hearty meal. What we see, then, in this text is an interchange between suffering and deliverance and a recipe for further suffering.

Psalm 119:105-112
In this segment of this extensive acrostic psalm of 22 psalms within a single psalm, all of which are expressions of love for God and for God’s gift of the Torah, the psalmist, although sorely afflicted, is sustained by the Torah of God forever. By living in joyful fulfillment of the guidelines provided within the Torah, the psalmist honors both God and the Torah. This is the Israelite-Jewish model for life. It has a message also for us.

Psalm 65:(1-8) 9-13
Walter Brueggemann, in The Message of the Psalms: A Theological Commentary (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984), p. 136, classified this psalm within his category of “Psalms of New Orientation,” and suggested that “The God of this psalm not only intervenes in the historical processes of oppression, but also governs the reliability of creation, which gives life.” Brueggemann urges us to regain the sense of wonder and the ability to sing songs of praise to God about the reliability of life, as expressed in this psalm. Perhaps we can respond to Brueggemann by saying that in terms of the long haul we have not lost this sense and this ability. In the short term, however, the Holocaust and other events of the twentieth century and of the beginning of the twenty-first century have taken a heavy toll, and our sense of wonder and our ability to sing songs of praise to God about the reliability of life will be regained only slowly. Psalm 65 and our use of it this week can help us to regain this.

Isaiah 55:10-13
This text can be introduced briefly with emphasis on the power and on the efficacy of the spoken Word of God within the prophetic traditions. Here the Isaiah traditions continue the thought of Psalm 65 with an analogy that compares the spoken Word of the inspired individual of God to the rain and the snow that comes down from the sky to enliven the earth.

This emphasis on the efficacy of the spoken Word of God and on the power that comes from God through the proclamation of the Word of God is certainly needed in our time. Even when we do not see any immediate results, the Word does not return to God empty-handed.

Romans 8:1-11
It is becoming increasingly apparent that when Paul and other early followers of Jesus referred to “suffering with Christ in order that they might be glorified with Christ” they were sending a message of support and encouragement in the form of a cryptogram to other leaders of the developing Church. The top leaders of the developing Church were being martyred, not because they were good people or because they were evil people. They were being martyred because they were proclaiming publicly that Jesus the Risen Christ was Lord and that Caesar was not Lord. In certain times and in certain places, advocates of the Imperial Cult, of Roman Civil Religion, would not tolerate that. Therefore, the top leaders of the developing Church, especially those who were the most open and vocal in their proclamation of Jesus as the Risen Christ, were often in a position in which they had to decide whether they should, as Paul put it beyond this text in Romans 8:15, fall back in fear, or boldly proclaim Jesus as the Risen Christ publicly and be prepared to suffer with Christ torture and crucifixion, being torn apart by wild beasts, or some other form of horrible death. Paul did not make it easy for them to avoid martyrdom, nor did he make it easy for himself to avoid that way of witnessing to Christ. As he expressed it in Romans 8:17, the leaders of the early Church could have life in the Spirit, could be the children of God, heirs of God, and fellow heirs with Christ if they were willing to suffer a horrible death and be glorified with him (a code reference to martyrdom). This was not for Paul a way in which they would somehow earn their salvation; instead, it was a way in which they could witness to Christ, even to the point of death.

It is important for us to note that God did not rescue those early Christian martyrs from death, not even at the last moment, just as God does not rescue the martyrs of our time. The rescue is beyond the limits of this world. It is a rescue into life eternal.

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
We often make the generalization that each person should have the opportunity to interpret a parable and to apply its message to that person’s self. Included with this generalization is the idea that giving an interpretation along with the parable in some sense “spoils” the parable. There was even a time within the history of parable research when it was said that a parable should never be allegorized.

Now, however, we realize every interpretation of a parable should be welcomed and appreciated, including allegorical interpretations. In the case of this well-known parable of the sower, we benefit especially from having a first-century interpretation included in Matthew 13:18-23. It is probable that the Sitz im Leben of the parable itself is primarily the proclamation and the parenesis of the Jesus of history and that the Sitz im Leben of the interpretation provided in Matthew 13:18-23 is the proclamation and the parenesis of the early Church during the second half of the first century.

The secrets regarding the kingdom of heaven alluded to in Matthew 13 were apparently to be concealed not from the multitudes of oppressed Jews who heard Jesus speak about the intervention of God that would end the present age of Roman oppression. They were to be concealed instead from the understanding of the oppressive Roman forces and from those few Jewish religious and political leaders who were willing to cooperate with the occupational forces. These latter were the ones who in the form of the “Evil One” (Matthew 13:19) or of “Satan” (Mark 4:15) snatch away the seed that falls along the pathway.

As we become more aware of the pressures placed on the developing Christian leaders to submit to the demands of the advocates of Roman Civil Religion that they acclaim Caesar as their Lord and Savior, we begin to realize that the references to the “Evil One” here in Matthew 13:19 and to “Satan” in Mark 4:15 may have been subtle anti-Roman cryptograms during the second half of the first century. Such images should then be placed next to related terminology such as “Deliver us from the Evil One!” in the final petition of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6:13.

While there is interest in human love and matchmaking only in the first three texts: finding an appropriate wife for Isaac in the selections from Genesis 24, in a royal marriage in Psalm 45:10-17, and in the love of a woman for the man she loves in Song of Solomon 2:8-13, there is gospel in each of these seven texts.

Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67
The narrator of this text makes it clear that when the servant of Abraham was sent by Abraham to find an appropriate wife for Isaac from among the relatives and extended family of Abraham, the servant was led and guided by an angel of the Lord. Having given the ring and bracelets to Rebekah, the servant bowed his head and worshiped the Lord. Rebekah was pleased and along with a female assistant traveled with the servant to meet Isaac. The mission was accomplished with great satisfaction. There was good news for everyone. Isaac brought Rebekah into his tent. Rebekah became his wife and he loved her.

Psalm 45:10-17
This poetic account about a marriage of a king of Israel to a beautiful woman from a neighboring area presents the bride as joining fully into the court of her husband. Although none of these seven texts selected for this occasion are particularly relevant for association with an American Independence Day theme, this text might provide some type of contact, but is not applicable without a considerable stretch. Although an Israelite king’s power might be extended by a marriage alliance with a neighboring state, the worship life of the king and his people may be compromised. The poet attempts to avoid this issue by depicting the bride as leaving behind the family and religion of her own people. The text, therefore, might be said to be an expression of good news, with a note of caution.

Song of Solomon 2:8-13
Here we have a segment of this collection of lyric poems about the love of a woman and a man in the springtime of life. It is similar to the Genesis 24 and Psalm 45 accounts in its joyous expectations of love and marriage without the problems and difficult challenges that lie ahead.

Zechariah 9:9-12
This prophetic word is a call for rejoicing, a prophecy of peace to those who for so long have been burdened by war and by oppression. As we all know, early Christian gospel traditions applied these verses to Jesus and to his entry into Jerusalem, an entry that was followed by his arrest, torture, and crucifixion. The original context of these verses may have been the period soon after the amazing conquests of Alexander the Great. The writer of the text speaks clearly against the use of the military and against attempts to find military solutions to our problems as a people and as a nation. For us, the application of this text to American Independence Day is tenuous. Although it might have been applicable immediately after our Revolutionary War or perhaps in the aftermath of one of our other wars, for most of our national experience, the hope for an end of war has remained a short-term hope at best.

Psalm 145:8-14
In this beautiful individual hymn of praise, a favorite of Jewish and of Christian people from generation to generation, the Lord is said to uphold all who are falling and to raise up all who are bowed down. The Lord is praised for giving food in its season to all who look to the Lord and for satisfying the desire of every living being. Since the exact nature of the burden is unspecified, the psalm can be applied in any situation of suffering and burden-bearing. It is universally applicable, therefore, as good news.

Romans 7:15-25a
We have within these few verses a segment of one of Paul’s reflections over his own personal struggle with sin. The problem was not the Torah (the written Word of God at that time). The problem was with Paul’s own evil inclination, which Paul freely admitted in this text that he by himself could not fully resist. Time after time Paul did what he knew was evil. Yet he did it anyway. Deliverance for Paul and in our Christian experience comes from God through Jesus Christ our Lord, as Paul expressed it in the final words of this text. This good news is applicable in any situation and in any period of time. Paul’s stark contrast between his own evil inclination and the grace of God has become a classic in our Christian theology.

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
It is written in Matthew 11:25 that God will reveal the hidden wisdom and in 11:27 that Jesus as the Son of God will reveal it. Then in 11:28-30 the saying of Jesus calls everyone to the Matthean Jesus, that is, everyone who is laboring and heavy laden, and the Matthean Jesus will give to all who are in that condition temporal, as well as eternal, rest. Therefore, in 11:28-30 the Matthean Jesus (and the Jesus of the Gospel of Thomas) is more than merely the one who brings the wisdom of God to the unlearned and the weary; the Matthean Jesus is that wisdom personified.

These comforting words of Matthew 11:28-30 are needed as much today by all who are suffering the burdens of political and personal oppression as they were during the first century. We are grateful to God that we can be bearers of these comforting words to the oppressed people of our time and place. They are comforting words brought also to us.

We are called in these texts to lives of commitment to God and to service as People of God, to live and to serve in the world as members of a community of faith. There are no unrealistic promises in these texts that life within the community of faith will be easy. Instead, there is the expectation that there will be struggles and strife. The security for the People of God will be in their covenant relationship with God.

Genesis 22:1-14
The primary purpose of this troubling text is to depict in story form the transition for the earliest Israelites from a situation in which in some tragic instances of human sacrifices were made to a much better situation in which animal sacrifices were the norm. The primary purpose was not to indicate that God expected Abraham to be so obedient that he would kill his own, only, and most precious son Isaac in order to please God and to prove his obedience to God. The development of this text may have included factors such as the suggestion that Abraham had been elevating his son Isaac to a position higher than Abraham placed God and when we are totally obedient to the will of God, as Abraham was in this story, “God will provide.”

Although this story and the transition from human sacrifices to animal sacrifices may have been very reassuring to children who were told this story in ancient Israel, unless this story is carefully explained to young children in our culture, it is not appropriate for use today, especially for use as a reading within a public worship service. Children who may not appear to be listening may actually be listening to the story and may have horrible but unexpressible anxieties and even nightmares because of it. The more devout and seemingly obedient to the will of God the father of a child today in our culture may be, the more frightful this story will be to that child. Such a child will not be able to ask the child’s father, “If God tells you to kill me, are you going to kill me?”

Psalm 13
The struggles of the psalmist are intense. It is only within the covenantal relationship the psalmist has with God that the psalmist has hope for deliverance. On the basis of that covenantal relationship the psalmist can argue that the Lord should rescue the psalmist so the enemy of the psalmist may not rejoice.

Jeremiah 28:5-9
This portion of the section of the Jeremiah traditions describes the tension between the prophet Hananiah who predicted peace and restoration of the Southern Kingdom within two years after the surrender of Jerusalem to the Babylonians in 597 BCE, and the prophet Jeremiah who could not predict peace and restoration but had to speak about war, famine, and pestilence takes us into a realistic appraisal of the situation in Jerusalem at that time. It takes us into a realistic appraisal of our own time and situation as well. Like the prophet Jeremiah, we cannot predict peace in our time. At the same time, we should work for peace and live in peace, insofar as peace may be possible within our present limitations.

Psalm 89:1-4, 15-18
These selections emphasize the hesed, pronounced as if it were spelled chesed (the steadfast love, mercy, grace, and loving kindness) of the Lord and the everlasting covenant of God with David and with the Davidic line. The intended interpretation for Christian usage is that the Lord, “the Holy One of Israel,” has renewed the Davidic covenant in a new way through Jesus and the Church.

Romans 6:12-23
Paul wanted the followers of Jesus to whom he wrote this document to consider themselves to be dead to sin through their association with Jesus and with Jesus’ death on the cross. Because of their baptism in the name of Jesus, they are in a relationship with their Risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and alive to God. In this way Paul was urging them to avoid sin and to be fully committed to God in Christ and influenced in a most positive way by their new relationship with God and with each other in Jesus the Christ. This text, therefore, is a vital reminder to us of the significance of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection for us and of the meaning of our own baptism and of the baptism of other people.

Matthew 10:40-42
This text expresses a mystical relationship between God, who has sent Jesus, Jesus as the Christ, followers of Jesus the Risen Christ, and those who will accept the message shared by followers of the Risen Christ. Followers of Jesus are urged to be merciful and helpful to everyone who is in need. Even the giving of a cup of cold water to those who are thirsty will be seen by the Lord and will be given approval by God.

The theme of “Power and Glory” permeates these readings, as is appropriate for this Sunday after the Ascension. In Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35 the Lord God is said to be able to bring rain in abundance, to cause the mountain at Sinai to tremble, to destroy the wicked, and yet to be the gentle protector of orphans and widows. In Acts 1:6-14 it is said that the eleven disciples will receive power when the Holy Spirit of God has come to them. According to the 1 Peter 4:12-14 and 5:6-11 selections the God of all grace, whose glory is revealed in the Christ and in the Spirit of God, has called those to whom 1 Peter is addressed into God’s eternal glory in Jesus Christ. In John 17:1-11 the Johannine Jesus asks the Father to glorify the Son, so that the reciprocating glory the Father and the Son are said to have shared before the world was made may be shown in the lives of the members of the Johannine community.

Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35
The power that is attributed to the Lord God within the earlier Israelite oral and written traditions is requested for the present. The Lord is perceived as awesome in power and at the same time as gentle and caring. This is basically the way we as Christians perceive Jesus as the Son of God raised from the dead and ascended into the heavens. We too want those who are wicked to perish by becoming kind and considerate and we want the righteous to be joyful.

Acts 1:6-14
With its emphasis on power to be received from the Holy Spirit and used by those who shall be witnesses to Jesus Christ as Lord “in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth,” Acts 1:8 provides the programmatic theme of the entire Acts of Apostles document. This was followed in Acts 1:9-11 by a vivid literary drama scene in which the expectations of the followers of Jesus that he would come again in the clouds of heaven as the Son of man to usher in the end of the present age of Roman oppression were combined with the obvious situation of no continuous presence of the Risen Lord Jesus in physical form among his followers. This Acts 1:9-11 Ascension account, therefore, paved the way for the Lukan playwright’s Christian Pentecost drama that would follow in Acts 2. Acts 1:9-11 is also an expansion of the Lukan writer’s less developed Ascension account in Luke 24:50-53.

As in Luke 24, the divine message is relayed in Acts 1:9-11 by “two men” who in this Acts 1 account promise Jesus will come again in the same manner as the disciples saw him going up into the sky. There is no doubt of the effectiveness of the vivid literary drama scene of Acts 1:9-11. It fixes in our minds the way in which Jesus left the earth and will come again. Nevertheless, we should not be limited in our expectations regarding eschatology. The return of Jesus should be considered within the context also of other biblical and post-biblical anticipations of the “last things.” For example, the oppressive Roman Empire no longer exists, and we have ways of transportation for leaving the earth and returning to it that are not limited to being taken up in a cloud and returning from a cloud.

We note, finally, that Acts 1:12-14 links the eleven disciples closely to the women who are said to have been the first to experience the empty tomb, to Mary the mother of Jesus and to Jesus’ brothers. This should be compared to the Fourth Gospel tradition, which claims the mother of Jesus for itself and with its high Christology and exclusivity removes all references to Jesus’ brothers and depicts Mary as taken into the care of the Beloved Disciple, its principal symbol of itself.

1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11
Reflections over the significance of what it means to “share in the sufferings of the Christ” provide much of the reason for the composition of 1 Peter, and our own interest in what “sharing in the sufferings of the Christ” may have meant for the writer of 1 Peter and what it should mean for us continues in our time. We are increasingly aware that “sharing in the sufferings of the Christ” meant during the last decades of the first century what happened when followers of Jesus were boldly and openly proclaiming that Jesus raised from the dead rather than the reigning Caesar is Lord.

For our time, Hans Küng in On Being a Christian (New York: Doubleday, 1976), pp. 576-581, suggests that suffering by bearing the cross of Christ means we are called to relieve the sufferings of others, we should not complain when we suffer because of our own transgressions, and when we suffer because we live as Christians we should seek to find meaning in that suffering. We should not tolerate needless and meaningless suffering for ourselves or for others, but when we can do nothing to alleviate our pain and suffering, we should look forward with curiosity to see how God will make good use even of that suffering, including the time when we face our own inevitable death.

John 17:1-11
Within this prayer of the Johannine Jesus for unity between the Father, the Son, and the Johannine community of believers, the Weltanschauung of the Johannine community as a sectarian group of followers of Jesus is readily apparent. In this prayer the Johannine Jesus does not pray for the world, since, even though God loved the world and sent the Son to die for the world, the world rejected the Johannine Jesus. Although the Johannine Jesus is no longer in the world, the members of the Johannine community must be in the world. Unlike the Apostle Paul, who in Romans 8 expressed great love and concern for the world, the Johannine community in this John 17 prayer of the Johannine Jesus rejects the world. What shall be our relationship to the world as we close out another Easter season and enter into the observance of another Christian Pentecost?