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Morning Worship - 5/16/10 - In Jesus' Name
John 17:20-26
I want to say something this morning about prayer. You will note that most of our service this morning, as on any Sunday, is engaged in prayer. There are our formal times of prayer, but there are also the hymns, even scripture readings, and this sermon that can be thought of as modes of prayer.
In today's Gospel, Jesus prays. He prays aloud, in front of his disciples, leading them in prayer. And as he is leading them in prayer Jesus is teaching them to pray.
"Lord, teach us to pray," Jesus' disciples asked him one day. As you may recall Jesus gave us a model prayer - the prayer that we today call the "Lord's Prayer." "When you pray, pray like this . . ." he told them then.
Prayer, specifically Christian prayer, arises from the character of God in Christ. The church may be thought of as a kind of school of prayer. Jesus is constantly teaching us the practices of intimacy with God, an intimacy that reflects some of the Son's intimacy with the Father.
Now, the Gospel of John ends with a long prayer of Jesus that is overheard by his disciples.
Every time we conclude a prayer "in Jesus' name," we are praying like Jesus. That is, we are practicing an intimacy with God that mirrors, to some degree, Jesus' own intimacy with the Creator. For instance, even as Jesus said that he is one with the Father, in today's Gospel Jesus prays for us that we may show love and unity in the church with one another, similar to the love and unity that Jesus has with his heavenly Father.
It is a fair test for us to lay this prayer alongside our Sunday prayers and to judge our prayers by Jesus' prayer. When I do that I notice a couple of things:
First of all, I notice that Jesus - gathered with his disciples, moving towards his violent, horrible death on the cross - prays for his disciples. One might think that, knowing the fate that was ahead of him on the cross, Jesus might pray for himself, that his suffering would not be long or deep, that perhaps there might be some means of avoiding such suffering.
However, Jesus prays not for himself, but for his disciples.
Let's be honest, most of our prayers on Sunday morning and at other times are mostly for ourselves. We pray for healing or for a sense of peace and assurance or for help with our children or for some decision that we face. Jesus prays for others. He prays for his disciples.
Jesus prays not for himself but for those gathered around him. Ironically, he is praying for love and strength among those who will, later, betray and forsake him when the time of suffering comes. And yet, in love he still prays for them.
Furthermore, I find it interesting that Jesus doesn't pray that his disciples will be protected from pain or shielded from suffering. He prays that they may have unity with one another. He prays for them as a group, praying that their group of disciples will show forth unity and love, some portion of the unity and love that Jesus has with his Father.
One might have thought, knowing how the story ends, that Jesus might have prayed for their physical protection. But even in the perilous future that they face, Jesus prays for their group unity, that they will love one another, that they will stay together. He prays, in other words, that the world will be able to look at the behavior of these disciples and their life together and see him through them. Even with the dangerous future that awaits them, they are still on a mission. They still have a responsibility to witness to the world.
If most of our prayers are for our own safety and comfort, that suggests to me that we have lost a vibrant sense of mission and vocation. Surely, if we had a vibrant sense of mission, we would have more prayers for courage to witness to our faith, for more love for those in the world who have not heard the story of Jesus yet, for more compassion to not be so consumed with our own needs, but to feel love and concern for the needs of others. We might not be so consumed with our own aches and pains if we had a more vivid sense of being on Christ's mission, even in our aches and pains.
Jesus prays for the unity of his followers. How many people have turned away from Jesus, not because of some defect or inadequacy that they see in Jesus, but rather because of the sorry witness of the church? They look at the average congregation that prays in "Jesus' name," but they don't see much of Jesus in that congregation. There is backbiting, dissension, divisions, and cruel animosity. They don't see much of Jesus the Redeemer in the unredeemed life of the average congregation.
This should send a chill down our collective spine. Most of what the world will know about Jesus will come through the church. Jesus, in today's Gospel, prays for those who must believe through the witness of the church. And well he should, not because the world is so disbelieving and pagan, but because the church is so far removed from the spirit of Christ.
Perhaps this is why, in today's Gospel, Jesus does not pray for individuals but for a group. Most of our prayers are full of the first person singular pronoun - I, me, my. And yet, Jesus prays collectively, for all of us, for his followers as a group.
I remember hearing a distinguished biblical scholar lecturing to a group of us preachers. One of the preachers asked this biblical scholar what he believed to be the major source of biblical misinterpretation today. The scholar answered, "We read the Bible individualistically whereas through most of its history, scripture was read communally, collectively."
Although today's Gospel certainly challenges us, I do take some comfort in my overhearing of Jesus' prayer. The internal health of the church, the life in the "body," our collective witness, and our communal life are not small and trivial matters. And that is precisely the matter that consumed Jesus in this prayer. They are important matters of our witness. They relate to our mission.
Our unity, our love for one another, and our peace are gifts of God for which we must pray. They are life and death matters of our Christian life. To be a Christian is not simply to cultivate your own solitary little spiritual garden, but it means to worry about your neighbor, to think communally. That's what Jesus does in this prayer.
If you were praying for our church today, for the faithfulness of our congregation, for what would you pray? Unity? Concern for one another? Courage in our witness? Compassion for the needs of those outside the bounds of this congregation?
So in today's Gospel we listen in on Jesus' prayer - one of his final conversations with the Father on his way to the cross. And the good news is that he prays for us.
No, even better news is for us to note that in so many ways Jesus' prayer is answered. After all, here we are today. We may not be a completely unified church, and we are certainly not a completely faithful church in all we do and say, and yet here we are. If we have any love, community, and faithfulness, then it must come as a gift of God rather than our own achievement.
In other words, Jesus' prayer for us has been, is being, and we have faith will be answered. I suppose that means that every time in the church when we rise above being merely a gathering of like-minded and fairly likeable people and become the "body of Christ" that we are intended to be, we ought to give thanks to God. We ought to give thanks that Jesus does not leave us on our own, but that Jesus continually prays for us.
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