Reading 1 Acts 20:17-27
From Miletus Paul had the presbyters
of the Church at Ephesus summoned.
When they came to him, he addressed them,
“You know how I lived among you
the whole time from the day I first came to the province of Asia.
I served the Lord with all humility
and with the tears and trials that came to me
because of the plots of the Jews,
and I did not at all shrink from telling you
what was for your benefit,
or from teaching you in public or in your homes.
I earnestly bore witness for both Jews and Greeks
to repentance before God and to faith in our Lord Jesus.
But now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem.
What will happen to me there I do not know,
except that in one city after another
the Holy Spirit has been warning me
that imprisonment and hardships await me.
Yet I consider life of no importance to me,
if only I may finish my course
and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus,
to bear witness to the Gospel of God’s grace.
“But now I know that none of you
to whom I preached the kingdom during my travels
will ever see my face again.
And so I solemnly declare to you this day
that I am not responsible for the blood of any of you,
for I did not shrink from proclaiming to you the entire plan of God.”
Gospel Jn 17:1-11a
Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and said,
“Father, the hour has come.
Give glory to your son, so that your son may glorify you,
just as you gave him authority over all people,
so that your son may give eternal life to all you gave him.
Now this is eternal life,
that they should know you, the only true God,
and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ.
I glorified you on earth
by accomplishing the work that you gave me to do.
Now glorify me, Father, with you,
with the glory that I had with you before the world began.
“I revealed your name to those whom you gave me out of the world.
They belonged to you, and you gave them to me,
and they have kept your word.
Now they know that everything you gave me is from you,
because the words you gave to me I have given to them,
and they accepted them and truly understood that I came from you,
and they have believed that you sent me.
I pray for them.
I do not pray for the world but for the ones you have given me,
because they are yours, and everything of mine is yours
and everything of yours is mine,
and I have been glorified in them.
And now I will no longer be in the world,
but they are in the world, while I am coming to you.”
I love this song by Winfield S. Weeden “All to Jesus I surrender.”
The first stanza is:
All to Jesus I surrender,
All to Him I freely give;
I will ever love and trust Him,
In His presence daily live.
However, I acknowledge how difficult it is sometimes to surrender to God in some situations. Sometimes we all want it our way and just wish God can be more permissive. We end up contending with God.
In today’s first reading, St Paul teaches us what it means to truly surrender to God. Who can read his farewell speech to the Ephesians and not be moved?
Two things I found particularly touching in his speech.
- St Paul said he has served in Ephesus with a clear conscience without misleading anyone or holding the truth from anyone.
- He said his life does not really matter to him, neither the pleasure of life nor the pressures/trials of life matters to him anymore. All that matters is to carry out the mission of witnessing to the Good news of God’s grace entrusted to him by Jesus.
It’s a simple way of saying “I have surrendered all of my life to Jesus, I am unmoved by pleasures, honour, the pride of life, I can not bow to the pressure of persecution or sufferings, all I live for is to glorify God. It’s another way of saying “for me to live is Christ…” (Phil 1:21).
In today’s gospel also, in the priestly prayer of Jesus, we see Jesus testifying that he has finished everything the Father gave him to do, he has lived for the glory of the Father- “I have glorified you on earth and finished the work that you gave me to do.”
We can learn from Jesus and Paul, the most beautiful way to live – from Paul we learn that life is more meaningful and lived to the full when lived in total surrender to Jesus and Jesus has taught us that to seek God’s glory is the essence of life.
This I believe is the kind of life that brings great peace and turns dying to a blessing.
Sermon preached by Rev. Fr. Emmanuel Okami on June 4, 2019.