Acts 1: 15-17, 21-26
Psalm 1
1 John 5: 9-13
John 17: 6-19

On the 11th of April 1970 at 2:13 EST Apollo 13 was launched. Since Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had walked on the moon’s surface in July of 1969 nothing that NASA attempted had seemed impossible. Apollo 12 had also been successful but Apollo 13 was the mission that almost never made it home. 46 hours into the mission things were going more smoothly than they ever had on a space mission. One of the officers at Mission Control told the crew that they were “bored to tears down here”. It was quite a while before anyone mentioned boredom again, for 55 hours and 46 minutes into the mission, the crew, which had just finished a television broadcast showing how they lives so effortlessly in weightlessness, signed off by wishing everyone a nice evening. Nine minutes after they had signed off, Oxygen tank #2 exploded causing Oxygen tank #1 to fail as well. The astronauts were without electricity, light, heat and water - and they were 200, 000 miles from home. They sent the terse message to mission control, “Houston, we have a problem”. The time was 9:08 pm on April 13.

The one lifeline between the three astronauts and the thousands of NASA scientists was the communications system. Everyone knew that there would only be one attempt at bringing them home. Various scenarios were tested in the simulators before being radioed to the crippled space craft as they attempted to do something which they had never anticipated. Three lives hung in the balance, as calculations were made and even as needed equipment was jury rigged. On April 17 the three astronauts were successfully returned to earth.

I can hardly imagine what it must be like to be in space, either standing on the moon, or looking our the window of a spacecraft, or floating in space tied to the craft by a seemingly thin tether and to look at the earth. Neither can I imagine what it must have been like to be looking at the earth from that distance and know that there was a good chance they would never set foot on it again. For we ALL know that humans do not naturally belong in space; despite all of our technology, the planet earth is our only true home. Even in the Sci-Fi world, earth has a special appeal. In Star Trek: Voyager the crew is stranded 70,000 light years from earth and they have many adventures on their new mission: to find a way home, to planet earth.

Yet, in today’s reading from the gospel, the world and it’s importance for people of faith seems to be very much diminished. The passage I read is part of what has long been called, “Jesus high priestly prayer”. Jesus, came from above, from God to reveal God’s love and call to persons chosen by God, to give them a mission, and then return to his pre-incarnate glory. In this passage the world is viewed in very negative terms; as something we don’t want to get too close too; as something foreign and hostile.

First, we need to realize that what Jesus is talking about is not ‘planet earth’ , or ‘the creation’, but rather, the ‘cosmos’, which is the sphere of opposition to God. It is not other people, but ‘those forces opposed to the sovereignty of God’.

In this prayer he offers four ‘petitions’. ONE, for the community of faith, his followers; TWO, for a unity of that community; THREE, that joy, Jesus joy, be present among the community; and FOUR that the community of faith be sanctified, or set apart from the world.

It is important that we remember that this ‘separateness’ is not an attempt at moral perfection or great virtue but it is a call of God and as such, it is God’s gift.

All through the biblical record the people of Israel were called to be a light to the nations. It was a call to service not to privilege, but at various times in their history they saw it as just that and they forgot the call of God.

All parents know how difficult it is to set rules, guidelines and boundaries for their children, especially if they are seen by their children as more strict than those other children are required to follow. Sometimes parents have to assert their authority and say something like, “Those are the rules and that’s final. This is not you friends’ house and we do things differently here!”

Similarly, in the community of faith, we set our values and our priorities by the call of God in Christ, and not by the television, by the advertising industry, or by what ‘everyone’ else is doing. Yet the parents are there to provide guidance and reminders of the rules and their importance. Parents cannot set the rules and boundaries and then just leave the children to their own devices. Of course, as children grow and mature the kinds of advice and guidance they need change with their experience and the situations they encounter. Eventually, they reach adulthood and independence and are able to choose which rules and norms to follow, but they alway have the ones with which they grew up as a starting place, as a foundation.

In order to get an handle on this passage it is important to remember that it comes just as we are saying goodbye to the resurrected Jesus. After his Ascension, 50 days after Easter, Jesus as said to have been taken from them and they were promised the gift of the Holy Spirit. This prayer is part of that preparation for his departure. Like children leaving home, the disciples and the rest of the community must ‘grow up’, they must learn how to apply what they have learned from Jesus to the lives which they will face on their own. Jesus knows that as they go our into the world, they will face opposition, challenges and temptations to give up on what they believe, or to soften it, or to change it. In order to know what to do they will have to rely on the Holy Spirit, whose coming we will also talk about next week, but they will have to remember that they are called by God to be ‘in the world’, but to be swallowed up by the world, or to be overwhelmed by the world.

Like the Apollo 13 astronauts, floating in the hostile environment of space, who had to rely on the connection to mission control, we too need to rely on our connection to God, to others within the community of faith, and to what we have been taught by Jesus, in the pages of the scriptures. We need to remember that we are called to follow Jesus of Nazareth, not to be like everyone else, and that we will be given what we need for that journey.

(We gather today around the table and we remind ourselves what God has done over the years, and we remind ourselves what God has done for us in Jesus. As we break the bread and pour the cup we gain strength for that journey)

We have been called on a journey of faithfulness. Let us face our decisions with the faith and the faith and the courage that only God in Christ can give to us.

Amen.