Some thoughts on John 17:17-19 from Pastor Dave Jahn
“…sanctify them in the truth…”
Sanctify - To set apart as sacred to God; to make holy, to consecrate; to regard as sacred; to purify, to cleanse.
Many years ago I was given a hot tub. What my dad said to me was, “If you can fix it, you can have it”. Well, as a “fix it” kind of guy, I couldn’t resist the challenge and the thought of the bubbles and jets relaxing me after a long day seemed pretty nice too.
The good news is I did get it fixed and we enjoyed it for many years. The bad news is I had to keep fixing something on it every few months and every time I needed to fix it I had to drain the whole thing and refill it with cold water.
Somewhere in the middle of this saga I got a brilliant idea. If I bought some large rubber stoppers that I could shove in the PVC pipes when I needed to work on it I could keep the hot water in there and save me a whole lot of hassle and money. It worked like a charm.
Well, that hot tub has been gone for many years and we have moved into a new house in a new state, but the other day my wife was looking for a way of covering some new carafes she bought for making iced tea. She tried the little plastic covers with the elastic around the top, but they didn’t work very well. After looking at those carafes for a few days you’ll never guess what popped into my mind…those big, old rubber stoppers. I wasn’t even sure I had moved them to Florida with us. I hadn’t used them for years, but I tend to be the kind of guy who thinks, “You never know…I might need these someday.”
Sure enough, out in our garage, in the bottom of my plumbing bin, all covered with dust, were two big rubber stoppers. Now, as you can imagine, my wife was a little reluctant to put these things anywhere near food. After all, they had been used for something much more ordinary. They had been keeping my hot tub water from leaking all over the deck and then they had been sitting in the bottom of a bin, collecting dust. But I assured her that they could be sanctified, they could be cleansed, they could be purified, they could be set apart for a new purpose.
Well, it took some scrubbing to get that dust off. And we had to modify the stopper with a little button so that we could more easily take it out of the carafe, but it was worth the work. They have been purified, cleansed, and remade, set apart for a new purpose. They aren’t for plumbing anymore. They are for protecting our iced tea.
Now, you might be wondering, “What in the world does this have to do with anything?” In Jesus’ prayer for us in this text, he is asking God to put each of us through a similar process.
The world works every day to make us believe that we can’t change, to convince us that what we really need to be is the six billionth consumer who buys certain products in order to feel special and happy. Most of the messages that we hear tell us that we are relatively insignificant, and that it doesn’t really matter what we do. For good or for evil, we are led to believe that we can’t make much of a difference anyway. The world wants you to believe that you are just one more dusty rubber stopper, sitting in the bottom of a bin, and that there is nothing that can change who you really are.
Jesus knows better. In fact, he was so passionate about all that you can become that he spent some of his last hours before his crucifixion praying that you would know, that you would see, that you would become all that God longs for you to become.
Jesus prayed that his disciples would be “sanctified”, set apart for God; made holy, consecrated; regarded as sacred; purified, cleansed. That’s what Jesus is hoping will happen to each of us.
And how does this happen? Perhaps an even better question might be, “Why hasn’t this been more a part of our Christian experience so far?”
Jesus prayed that we would be sanctified “in truth”. He said it twice. He didn’t say “by the truth” he said “in” the truth. And, just as important, he said that God’s word is truth.
This makes our challenge pretty clear. A lot of us Lutherans have almost no relationship with God’s truth. We try to listen to readings and sermons when we feel like coming to church and if there is something we like we might ponder it for a few minutes.
Some of us enjoy a kind of educational experience with God’s truth. We want to learn more about it so that we can decide what is helpful and apply it to our lives.
I think what Jesus was talking about here is completely different. Being sanctified in the truth is not about hearing or reading something and then deciding what you are going to do with it. Being sanctified in the truth is about letting the truth into your life, letting it surround you, fill you and overcome you. It is about intentionally giving your time and your life to God’s truth so that it can do what it wants to do with you.
Jesus said, “God’s Word is truth”. Earlier in this Gospel, we are told that same Word became flesh and dwelt among us in Jesus. In other words, being sanctified in the truth means immersing ourselves in our relationship with Christ. It means setting aside time to, not just read and study the word (although that is good too), but to meditate on it and to let it soak into our very being so that it changes who we are in the world. It changes our outlook, our purpose, our very being.
Being in God’s truth changes us forever. It sanctifies us.
It’s important to mention that this is not a “work”. It’s not something that we can do and measure and compare with how others are doing. “Hey, I’m more sanctified than you!” We simply immerse ourselves in the word of God and in the presence of Christ and trust that God will do the sanctifying in God’s way and in God’s time.
When we were baptized, God promised us that we were adopted into the family of God forever and that the Holy Spirit had sealed us and had come to dwell in our hearts. Everything that Jesus accomplished in his life, death, and resurrection was promised to us. The foundation was laid for us to be all that God longs for us to be in this life.
By allowing God to sanctify us in the truth we continue the process the Holy Spirit started in our baptism. We open ourselves up to becoming something more beautiful, powerful, and world-changing than we could ever have imagined. We open ourselves up to God’s cleansing, renewing, purifying power that will recreate us and make us the kinds of disciples, set apart for God’s service, that God has always longed for us to be.
The day I wrote this sermon I began to set aside time each day to just be in God’s presence, to meditate on God’s word, and to let it sanctify my heart and my life. It is a habit that I had at one time, but I let slip under the bus of life’s busyness.
I look forward to what God is going to do in my life and I invite you to join me. Let God reclaim your heart, dust you off, take you out of the bin, and give you a new purpose. Intentionally allow God’s Word to fill your life, be sanctified by it.
I believe God has great things in store. Amen