The trees have their leaves. The flowers are blossoming.
The sun has regained its strength. And the somber shadows of Holy Week seem a
long way into the past. Yet that is precisely where our Gospel reading this
morning takes us: not only into Holy Week but into its darkest moments, to the
night before the crucifixion, to what is often referred to as Jesus’
high-priestly prayer in John 17.
John does not tell us where Jesus prayed this prayer. It was
not in the upper room. It was not on the Mount of Olives. No one really knows
where it happened. And it occurs to me that there is a certain appropriateness
to that. For here we have a prayer that Jesus prayed not only at a particular
time and place and for a particular group of people, but for all of his
followers across all time and in all places. When Jesus prayed that prayer, he
was praying not just for Peter and John and Mary and Joanna, he was praying
also for Rachael and Dick and Mary Lou and Mya Htay and for each of us here
this morning—as well as for our brothers and sisters around the world: for parishioners
gathering in l’Épiphanie Church in L’Acul in Haiti, for Bishop Stylo and his
flock in the diocese of Hpa-an in Myanmar, for the good folk at Gloria Dei
around the corner, and the list goes on…
The doctrine of the ascension, which we celebrate this week,
teaches us (among other things) that Jesus continues to intercede for us at the
right hand of the throne of God (Romans 8:34), that he always lives to make
intercession for us (Hebrews 7:25), that he is our advocate with the Father (1 John
2:1). And so there is a sense this morning, as we read from this chapter, that
we are entering the Holy of Holies. We are peering into the very soul of God.
Here in these last hours before his crucifixion we find
Jesus praying for what is dearest to his heart: for his church, for that
fledgling band of disciples, so cantankerous and divisive, so feeble in their
faith, so naïve—and yet they were the ones whom the Father had given him. They were
his church. It must have seemed that its future hung on less than a spider’s
thread. And so in these last moments left he prays for them.
What are the kinds of things that you and I pray for when we
pray for the church? For money to meet the budget? For more people to fill the
pews? For a successful Youth Mission dinner? Let’s take a few moments to look
at what Jesus prays for his church—and maybe it will help us to mold our
prayers accordingly.
Unity
In the verses that we have before us this morning we find
Jesus praying for four things. The first of them is unity. For such a small
group of people the company of disciples contained a remarkable variety of
individuals: a group of fishermen, a carpenter, a tax collector and a radical
revolutionary among others. They had already skirmished over who among them was
to enjoy the greatest prominence and one had recently betrayed him. What was
going to hold them together after he was gone?
As the church began to grow and incorporate an increasingly
wider variety of people, that challenge became only more acute. It was not that
long after Pentecost before complaints were coming to the surface that
Aramaic-speaking widows in the congregation were receiving preferential
treatment over their Greek-speaking counterparts. Then there was the whole
divisive issue of how non-Jews were to be admitted to the faith, over which
Paul had some sharp words to share with Peter. On a smaller scale there was the
dispute between Paul and Barnabas as to whether John Mark should be included in
their second missionary journey. And later there were the many heresies and
false teachings that sent cracks through the church and divided Christian from
Christian.
Yet in spite of all the forces that threatened to divide it,
those early Christians discovered an amazing unity that was infinitely deeper
than the occasional fissures that appeared on its surface. It was a unity in
Jesus Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit, most powerfully portrayed for
us by Paul in his image of the church as the body of Christ. Part of the genius
of the body is that our unity is not found in our all being the same, but in
our differences. The Holy Spirit is able to take those differences and combine
them in such a way that they are not conflictual but complementary.
One of the great architects of Christian unity in the
twentieth century, Archbishop William Temple, wrote this about true oneness in
Christ:
The unity of the Church is something much more than unity of
ecclesiastical structure… It is the love of God in Christ possessing the hearts
of men [and women] so as to unite them in himself… The unity which our Lord
prays that his disciples may enjoy is that which is eternally characteristic of
the Triune God. It is therefore something much more than a means to any end…; it
is in itself the one worthy end of all human aspiration; it is the life of
heaven.[1]
Joy
The second quality that Jesus prays for his disciples is
joy. Contrary to the claims of the health, wealth and prosperity “gospel”, the
Christian life is not a stroll along Easy Street. Remember that Jesus was
praying this prayer only a short time before he would be led away to be
crucified. Just moments before, he had warned his disciples that in the world
they would face persecution (John 16:33). Yet even in the face of crushing
opposition they would continue to have joy. Why? Because joy does not depend on
what is happening on the surface of our lives. It arises from what is within.
Five years ago Karen and I had the privilege of a week-long
visit to Libya. Many of you have seen the pictures. As a part of that trip we
drove inland from the coast across the hottest, driest places I have ever experienced,
but every once in a while we would encounter a large pipe emerging from the
sandy ground. They were vents from one of the greatest engineering projects of
the twentieth century, known as the “Great Man-Made River”. Underneath the
Sahara are forty million billion gallons of water, twelve and a half times the
volume of Lake Superior. That water was flowing through culverts thirteen feet
in diameter down to the coastal regions. As a result those areas no longer need
to depend on the sporadic showers that formerly supplied them.
For me, the enormous aquifers buried half a kilometer under
the Sahara are a parable of what joy is all about. True joy does not depend on
what is happening on the surface of my life. It is about what is going on on
the inside, deep within my heart. On the surface there will be disappointments
and sorrows. There will be dry spells and times of doubt. Those are an
unavoidable part of living in this world. At the last supper, as he
contemplated his own suffering, Jesus said to his disciples,
Very truly, I tell you … , you will have pain, but
your pain will turn into joy… So you have pain now; but I will see you again,
and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you. (John
16:20-22)
Decades later, as he and the communities of believers
sprinkled across the Roman Empire began to feel the brunt of persecution, the
apostle Peter could also reflect,
In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have
had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith … may be
found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see
him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy.
(1 Peter 1:6-8)
Such is the joy for which Jesus prayed to the Father and
which is the fruit of the Holy Spirit’s presence deep within our lives.
Protection
The third thing that Jesus prays for is protection: not
protection from persecution, not even protection from the influences of the
world, but protection from the evil one. We are all targets. We are all in the
crosshairs of the devil. And if we don’t believe that we are in his sights, we
are living in a fool’s paradise.
One of the great sources of sadness for me over the course
of my ministry has been from time to time to see people (often deeply committed
and informed believers) fall away from Christian faith. In almost every case it
was not because of intellectual objections but through moral failure. St Paul
wrote about “the flaming arrows of the evil one” (Ephesians 6:16). The devil
knows where our weaknesses are. And his aim is deadly. Have no doubt about it.
His desire is to bring you down. And he will use any means possible to do it.
We dare not underestimate the power of our enemy. At the same
time, we must never underestimate God’s power to save. Jesus is our good
shepherd and he has given us the assurance that none of his sheep will perish.
“No one,” he promises, “will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has
given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my
Father’s hand” (John 10:28-29). “Who will separate us from the love of Christ?”
asks St Paul. “Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or
nakedness, or peril, or sword? No, in all these things we are more than
conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans
8:35,37). And so Jesus asks the Father, “Protect them from the evil one.”
Truth
That brings us to the final thing for which Jesus prays in
this morning’s passage: “Sanctify them in the truth.” What does it mean to be
sanctified in the truth? The apostle Paul wrote about taking “every thought
captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5) and it seems to me that this
comes close to what Jesus was praying for on our behalf. In our confused and
conflicted generation we often hear people calling us to take a stand for the
truth. What they really mean is that they want us to throw our weight on this
or that side (and preferably their side) of a particular issue.
I believe that what Jesus was praying for was something
considerably deeper than that: not merely to stand on the truth, but to have
our lives suffused and transformed by it—to have what the Bible calls the mind
of Christ. In his book, The Opening of
the Christian Mind, David Gill writes,
Nurturing and shaping a Christian mind, trusting and loving
God with all our mind, means the possibility of seeing life and work in depth.
It means a lifelong adventure in meaning, direction, purpose and understanding.
It means being absorbed into the vantage point of the Creator, Center and
Redeemer of everything.[2]
This is not just a matter of having our minds shaped by the
truth, but our hearts and our wills as well—of finding in Jesus wisdom from
God, not to mention righteousness and sanctification and redemption, indeed the
heart and source of our life (1 Corinthians 1:30).
At this point there is not much else that I can say—or ought
to say—except to pray. And I would like to pray using the words of Jesus.
* * *
Holy Father,
we are yours and we belong to you.
Protect us in your name so that we may be one,
as you and the Son are one.
May your joy be made complete in us.
We do not ask you to take us out of the world,
but we ask you to protect us from the evil one.
Sanctify us in the truth; your word is truth.
And as we live in the world,
grant that your love may be in us,
and Jesus in us.
Amen.
we are yours and we belong to you.
Protect us in your name so that we may be one,
as you and the Son are one.
May your joy be made complete in us.
We do not ask you to take us out of the world,
but we ask you to protect us from the evil one.
Sanctify us in the truth; your word is truth.
And as we live in the world,
grant that your love may be in us,
and Jesus in us.
Amen.
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