In the name of the Risen ☩ Lord. Amen.
Have you ever heard someone create a word to fill in a gap in our language? Sometimes we just have to do this because the sense of the word we need doesn’t exist. This often happens when we turn a noun into a verb. Think of how sometimes people say “dialoguing” instead of “having a dialogue.” Linguists call this “verbing” or “verbification,” when we take a noun and turn it into a verb. In today’s Gospel text from John, there is a similar linguistic shift that happens between the Greek text and our English translation that obscures the implications for our faith.
In the Greek that John writes in, the phrase “sent me into the world” is a probably more recognizable as a noun in English – the verb is apostello, where we get the word “apostle.” So when Jesus says “As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world,” a more accurate way of translating that might be “As you have apostled me into the world, so I have apostled them into the world.” The implications for the subtle shift in translation can have a huge impact on the way we interpret and live our faith. Our faith is not a status that we carry, rather it is a way of life we inhabit. Apostleship should be a quality that describes not us, but rather the way we live and move in this world.
The word “apostle” is a compound word in Greek, apo is a prefix meaning “away from” and stello is a verb that means “to send.” So “apostle” means to “send out.” This “sending out” is at the core of who we are as followers of Jesus Christ. “Apostle” is not just another word that we can use to describe ourselves, it’s not a churchier way of saying that we are a Christian. Rather, being apostled is at the core of our faith. We are a sent people. As people apostled by Jesus, we are to be always on the move, always going to new places, always having new encounters. As Christians, there shouldn’t be any grass growing under our feet, as we have been sent out by God in love.
The place that Jesus was sent into, and we, in turn, are sent into is “the world.” Now, you might think “Good, I’ve already done that, I live in the world.” And you do, but we have to remember that when John speaks about “the world” he’s not so much referring to the physical universe as much as he is the realm of existence that is opposed to God. The world stands in contrast to the Kingdom of God. This is why Jesus, when Jesus apostles his followers, he tells them to be “innocent as doves and wise as serpents.” As we well know, the world can be a challenging place. The world doesn’t run on the economy of grace, the world is full of fear, greed, and doubt. And that is precisely the place that we are apostled into.
But we must always bear in mind that famous verse from earlier in John – “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that we might have eternal life.” While the world might be opposed to God, God is not opposed to the world because God so loves the world. So as we are apostled, we must always remember that we go into the world that God loves deeply. The Christian witness is always done on behalf of the love of God and serves the love of God. It’s an important question to always put before ourselves – am I going in love, or something else? Do people see the love of God in me, or do they see something else like selfishness, or anger, or resentment, or judgmentalism, or stinginess?
In thinking about how we are to be apostled people in the world in which God loves, we turn to another verb in John. This entire passage is a prayer that Jesus offers to the Father on our behalf, and he prays “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth… For their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they may also be sanctified in truth.” That word “sanctify” means to “make holy,” “consecrate,” or “set apart.” It’s interesting that earlier in this prayer, Jesus addresses the prayer to “Holy Father,” and that word “holy” is the same as the sanctifying action that Jesus asks for on our behalf. Jesus’ prayer is that we become like the Father – holy or sanctified.
Certainly, this is a high calling: to be holy and sacred as God is. That word “holy,” for a first century Jew, would have conjured up images of the Temple. The Temple was a place of holiness, a place where God’s presence rested. As we are looking towards Pentecost next Sunday, this is what the Holy Spirit will do to us. We will become like the Temple – that place where God dwells. Like the Temple which was set apart for the service of God, we are set apart for the service of God.
One theologian has said that “sanctification is getting used to your justification.” By this, he means that being made holy, being sanctified, is the process by which we grow into the grace and love of God. Being holy doesn’t mean that you are a do-gooder, it doesn’t mean that you live without sin, it doesn’t mean that you are “holier than thou.” Rather, when Jesus asks the Father to sanctify us, he is asking that we grow in the truth of God’s mercy and peace towards us.
We are sanctified, as Jesus defines it, by coming to more fully know the truth. Ours, unfortunately, is a culture that is not very truthful. Built into our Constitution in the Fifth Amendment is the idea that if it’s inconvenient, you don’t have to tell the truth. With the proliferation of media outlets, spin is more common than truth. In 2005, Stephen Colbert coined the word “truthiness” as meaning something that seems to be or feels like truth, even when it is not; and in 2016, Oxford Dictionary named “post-truth” as the word of the year. Facts are no longer objective realities, they are subjective opinions. And, to be clear, this is not a political commentary, it’s a social one. Politicians certainly did not invent lying and they’ve only capitalized on our unwillingness to be rooted in truth instead of emotion or opinion. So it’s no surprise that because the world has become untethered from the acceptance of there even being truth that, in turn, the world is so unholy.
Truth, though, is what sanctifies us and what prepares us to be apostled into the world. We are sent only with a truth to proclaim – that God is love, that grace is abundant, that peace is possible, that Resurrection is our reality. Our work as Christians is to root ourselves in these truths so that we can take them with us into the world. These truths are ones that we can enter into more fully by doing what you’re doing right now – by gathering as the community of apostles to praise God. Prayer and worship are so crucial to being sanctified in truth because they remind us and reorient us to the truth of God’s love when we live in a world that so often makes us forget that truth.
Reading Scripture is another fantastic way to know the truth – so try to read the Bible more often than you already do. If you read the Bible rarely, try to read it occasionally. If you read it every once in a while, how about reading it a few times a week? If you read it daily, give yourself the time to reflect more on what you’ve read. Not sure where to start? Read a chapter of a Gospel each day or read a Psalm a day. As Jesus says “your word is truth,” so by dwelling in the word of God, we will encounter the truth that will sanctify us.
As we saw in the fact that apostling is a verb, what we do is also important in knowing the truth. In the reading from Acts this morning, the apostles are discussing the need add someone to their ministry – but the word that is used for “ministry” is important. The word they use is the Greek diakonia, which is where we get our word “deacon.” A deacon’s ministry is rooted in the idea of waiting tables – of making sure that everything is ready to feed those who are hungry and then cleaning up. This understanding of ministry means that we are to serve others, and in serving them we’ll encounter the truth that the least shall be the greatest, we’ll be reminded that God will provide in abundance for all, we’ll know that love is not an emotion but an action. The truth of God, which makes us holy, is not something that we are to primarily read books about or think about, but it is a truth for us to put into practice by serving others.
Through prayer, through Scripture, and through service, we enter into the truth of God’s love and grace for us. This truth makes us holy, it sets us apart because these truths distinguish us from an untruthful world. God sanctifies us in this truth because we have been apostled, sent out, into the world to share these transforming truths. It is ours to go into the world and share the truth of God – the truth that there is enough, that you are loved, that you are forgiven.
Faith is all about the verbs. Keep in mind that we are the objects of the verbs, not the subject. It is God who sanctifies, it is God who makes true, it is God who sends us out. How will the verbs sanctified and apostled have an impact on you? How will they transform you? As a way of entering into the truth of God, you might make this prayer about being sanctified and apostled this week: O Lord, show me your truth and transform me in it, that I might be sent into this world in your love. Amen.
