“Jesus’ Prayer for the Church” (John 17:6-19)

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.

---

[1]     Readings in St John’s Gospel, 320

[2]     page 64

Sermon – “If you love me” (John 14:15-27)

For the past five weeks (since Easter) we have been reading from the First Letter of Peter in our Sunday morning services. Peter writes to Christian believers who are suffering for the sake of the gospel. He is writing from Rome, more or less mid-way through the reign of the Emperor Nero. While the first great persecution following the fire of Rome has not broken out yet, pockets of persecution against Christians are breaking out in parts of the empire, particularly on its fringes.

Peter writes to give those scattered believers encouragement in the face of suffering. “Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that, although they malign you as evildoers, they may see your honorable deeds and glorify God…” “If you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval … because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you and example.” And in this morning’s passage: “Even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord.”

One of the most painful and awkward scenes to my mind in all of Scripture is the exchange between Jesus and Peter that takes place at the very end of John’s gospel. Many of you know the scene. It was some time after Jesus’ resurrection. Peter and six others of Jesus’ followers had headed back up north from Jerusalem to their home territory of Galilee. They had spent all night out on the water fishing but entirely without success. The sun was just peeking over the horizon when they heard a voice calling to them from the shore. “Fellows, you don’t have anything to eat, do you?” “No,” they shouted back. “Try letting down your net on the right side of your boat and you’ll catch some.” To their surprise they had scarcely dropped their net into the water before it was bursting with fish.

John was the first to realize what was happening. “It’s the Lord!” he exclaimed. Within an instant Peter was pulling on some clothes and diving into the water. It was after they had broiled some of the fish and had eaten them that the hard conversation began. Jesus turned to Peter and said, “Simon, son of John…” Jesus was addressing Peter by his formal name—the name he had before he had become one of Jesus’ followers—not by the name Jesus had given him: Peter, the Rock. “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” “Yes, Lord,” Peter replied, “you know that I love you.” Then Jesus asked a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” “Yes, Lord,” Peter replied once again, “you know that I love you.” “Simon, Son of John, do you love me?” This time the question really stung, because all that Peter could think of was his cowardice of only a few days before—how three times he had denied even knowing Jesus. “Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you.”

To me the scene is a foreshadowing of that day when I will stand before Jesus and he will ask me, “John, do you love me?” And I ask myself, how many times have I denied Jesus? How many times have I shrunk back from living out my faith? How many times have I allowed the fear or selfishness or rebellion or the thousand-and-one other lesser motivations that battle inside me to stand ahead of my love for Jesus? “John, do you love me?” “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Yet within my heart I know that my love is often weak and cold.

Keeping the commands of Jesus

Weeks before Peter’s painful encounter on the shores of Galilee, he had been with Jesus and the other disciples in the upper room. There he had heard Jesus say the words that opened our Gospel reading this morning: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” And so loving Jesus is more than having nice thoughts or warm feelings about Jesus, more than loving the idea of Jesus. Fundamentally, our love for Jesus is going to be measured by our actions.

The Greek of the New Testament has two words for “obey”. One of them (peitho) has to do with an enforced obedience. James uses it when he writes about putting bits into the mouths of horses to force them to obey us. The other (hupakouo) is a more responsive, willing obedience. Thus by faith Abraham obeyed God’s call to go to a land he had never known. Children are encouraged to obey their parents, not because they will be punished, but because “this is right”. The wind and the sea obeyed Jesus because in him they recognized their creator.

However, neither of those is the word that we find in this passage. When Jesus speaks to his followers, he tells them not that they are to obey his commandments, but that they are to “keep” them. The difference may seem subtle at first, but it is an important one. And perhaps to drive the point home, Jesus repeats what he says twice more over the course of the next few verses: “They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me” (verse 21). And, “Those who love me will keep my word” (verse 23). We find the same word in Jesus’ final words to his disciples at the end of Matthew’s gospel in the Great Commission: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to keep everything that I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:19,20).

What, then, does the Bible mean when it uses the word “keep”? Literally it means to guard, to protect, to preserve. When Jesus turned water into wine at the wedding celebration in Cana, the steward expressed his surprise because, he said, “you have kept the good wine until now” (John 2:10). And so we keep things because we recognize their value. This is what underlies the wisdom offered to young people in the Book of Proverbs:

My child, if you accept my words

and treasure up my commandments within you,

making your ear attentive to wisdom

and inclining your heart to understanding; 

if you indeed cry out for insight, 

and raise your voice for understanding; 

if you seek it like silver,

and search for it as for hidden treasures—
then you will understand the fear of the Lord

and find the knowledge of God. (Proverbs 2:1-5)

In the Psalms we read of the surpassing value of God’s word:

The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul;
the decrees of the Lord are sure, making wise the simple;
the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart;
the commandment of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eyes…;
the ordinances of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey, and drippings of the honeycomb. (Psalm 19:7-10)

So it was that from their earliest days as a nation the people of Israel were reminded,

Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:6-9)

“With my whole heart I seek you;” sang the psalmist, “do not let me stray from your commandments. I treasure your word in my heart, so that I may not sin against you” (Psalm 119:10,11).

Empowered by the Spirit of Jesus

Loving Jesus, then, means having his word etched into our very hearts, finding in it our delight, our very life. Yet for how many of us is this true? Archbishop William Temple was a man of profound faith. At the same time he confessed, “Our love is cold. It is there, but it is feeble. It does not carry us to real obedience. Is there anything that I can do?” he asks. And here is his answer: “No; there never is, except to hold myself in his presence… But the Lord, who knows both the reality and the poverty of our love, will supply our need.”[1]

Jesus knows better than we do that, as much as we might want to, as hard as we might try, we cannot live the life of discipleship in our own power. And so he promises his disciples “another Advocate”, one who will be with them forever. Now if you look at that word “Advocate” in verse 16, you will see that it is accompanied by a footnote, which suggests that the word may also be translated “Helper”. And if you look at other versions of the Bible you will find that the same word is rendered “Counselor” or “Friend”. Indeed there are some translators who have simply thrown up their hands and used the word “Paraclete”, which is nothing more than an Anglicization of the original Greek word in the New Testament. My own preference is for “Helper”, as the word literally means someone who comes alongside you, to support and assist, to encourage and to guide.

So it is the Holy Spirit who takes Jesus’ words and makes them live for us. It is the Holy Spirit who gives us the will and the power to keep them on a daily basis. It is the Holy Spirit who makes the life of discipleship a possibility—and more than that, a joy and an adventure to which nothing else can compare.

Trusting in the love of Jesus

I have spoken about what it means to love Jesus: to keep his word, to be indwelt by the Holy Spirit. As we love Jesus in this way, we find ourselves being led more deeply into the mystery and the wonder of his love for us. “Those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them … and we will come to them and make our home with them.”

Karl Barth is regarded by many as the greatest theologian of the twentieth century. Perhaps you are familiar with the story of when he was at Rockefeller Chapel on the campus of the University of Chicago during his lecture tour of the U.S. in 1962. After his lecture, during the Q & A time, a student asked Barth if he could summarize his whole life’s work in theology in a sentence. Here is what Barth said: “Yes, I can: ‘Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.’ ”

As important as our love for Jesus may be, we need to put it into its far greater context—and that is the love of both the Father and the Son for you and for me. And that love is not limited. Nor is it conditional. It does not depend on our love for him. There will be times when we fail—even spectacularly—to keep Jesus’ words. There will be occasions when we grieve the Holy Spirit. Yet there will never be a time when God’s heart does not burn with love for us. As he was there for Peter on the shore of Lake Galilee, Jesus will be there with us; and, as he said to Peter, he says to you and to me once again, “Follow me.”

---

[1]     Readings in St John’s Gospel, 238,239