Sunday, May 21, 2023 Easter 7
Scripture Readings: Acts 1:6-14
Psalm 68: 1-10; 33-36
1 Peter 4: 12-14; 5: 6-11
John 17: 1-11
“The Lord’s Prayer”
In the Lord’s Prayer of Matthew 6:9-13, and Luke 11:2-4, Jesus gave us a model for our prayers, a template for speaking to God showing us how to address both our relationship to Himself and the issues in our lives.
What do we pray about? In the Prayers of the People here in church using so many good litanies as a pattern or template. Or in our personal and family prayer at home, and I do sincerely hope we can all say we set aside time for prayer in our personal life. What things do we bring to God? Well, I think it’s fair to say we pray about what’s on our hearts and minds. What we’re thankful for and, more often, what we’re worried about. What we hope will be the good that surrounds us.
Jesus, through John’s Gospel, makes us privy to his prayer just hours before he was arrested. And at such a time as this, what was in his heart and on his mind?
Palm Sunday we talked about what was in Jesus mind and heart when he deliberately orchestrated the ‘Triumphal Entry” into Jerusalem. Jesus did this for his followers, his disciples, us, so they would make it through the days leading to the crucifixion and after. And then a few weeks ago, the Fourth Sunday of Easter, we remarked that Jesus went to the cross to answer our needs, heedless of the cost to Himself, unbounded in faith that God His Father was able to bring everything to completion. Here, in this passage from John, we again see Jesus focused on our needs and expressing complete faith in His Father to bring everything to victory.
Jesus begins in verses 1-5 speaking of essential things. Personal things, just between Himself and His Father. He gives us a glimpse, a foreshadow if you will, of the open, free relationship they have together. When he speaks of God displaying His bright splendour, it’s not selfish aggrandizing Jesus is seeking it is essentially God’s splendour. If Jesus’s sacrifice on cross is not sufficient and acceptable, then it will bring no Glory to the Father whose plan for our salvation will have failed. And that’s an important distinction worth noting and I think Jesus did this quite deliberately not only because it is the natural and normal motivation of His heart, and the foundation of His faith in the Father, but also for the sake of the disciples who were listening. A foreshadowing of the relationship that they, we, would have with the Father as He spoke about earlier to them in the upper room. It leads as well to a kind of handing off or extension of this relationship to the disciples, again us, as we will see later in Jesus’s prayer.
Jesus first remarks that He has brought splendour to His Father by obeying Him. Jesus did all the miracles and wondrous works that God expected of Him, up to and including the cross. And then he speaks of the divine power, majesty and honour that He shared and will share again with His Father in Heaven. This may appear an intimate, personal prayer, almost self indulgent musing. Not what we expect from corporate prayer. When we pray out loud with others present we invariably mean it to involve and draw in those who hear us. The Prayers of the People are not our individual concerns, although we often include personal praise and petition in our supplications together. They usually address broader universal or community matters that we can all relate to and so they become our prayers lifted up to God.
But here, although undoubtedly engaging in a corporate prayer with His disciples after speaking at length with them in what we refer to as “The Upper Room Discourse”, Jesus seems to be turned in on Himself and His relationship with God the Father. I think, however, we can get some help with this from another impromptu public prayer Jesus said shortly before this when he raised Lazarus from the dead in John 11:1-44, “Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and prayed, “Father, I’m grateful that you have listened to me. I know you always do listen, but on account of this crowd standing here I’ve spoken so that they might believe that you sent me.”” Jesus, by his own admission, isn’t praying out loud for His own sake, but for those around who will hear that they will, in the fulfilled answer to his call “Lazarus, come out!” would have no recourse but knowing He was sent from God, as we know many did from the crowd that followed Him from there to Jerusalem for the “Triumphal Entry” we celebrated on Palm Sunday. It is very likely then, as these prayers are part of the same narrative text, that here in the upper room Jesus is also praying, not for His own benefit, as He said, there was no need of that, but for the benefit of the disciples who were hearing Him.
Beginning with verse 6 Jesus speaks inclusively of His disciples. They are suddenly part of this miraculous cosmic and heavenly event that Jesus was just relating to. They aren’t just themselves following Jesus. They were chosen by God for this purpose “They were yours in the first place,” and purposed to Jesus for this work, “Then you gave them to me,” and I’m sure to their surprise Jesus says they have accomplished this purpose, “And they have now done what you said.”
Jesus is bearing witness, for the sake of his disciples, that they are far more than just people who have decided to fall in with a great teacher or even, truly, the Messiah. They are part of a plan God has been accomplishing through His Son Jesus and, now, through them. As Jesus attests of them, “They know now, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that everything you gave me is firsthand from you, for the message you gave me, I gave them; and they took it, and were convinced that I came from you.” Or more succinctly Jesus says, “They believed that you sent me.”
And right there is the key. Not a great mission or enterprise that they undertook. Not some ascetic sacrifice denying the world and pursuing an ultimate purity. But simply that they believed what Jesus claimed of Himself in verses 1-5, which was, “So he might give real and eternal life to all in his care. And this is the real and eternal life: that they know you, the one and only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you sent.” In one sense that doesn’t seem like a big thing. We speak blithely of believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. We say it every Sunday in our creed. It’s the minimum requirement followed by Baptism, Confirmation, and regular church attendance. But for Jesus, just hours before his trial and crucifixion, this meant everything to Him for His disciples. That they believed, “beyond the shadow of a doubt,” was everything. Not just the beginning, but everything needed to complete His work.
This is why Jesus continues His prayer saying, “I pray for them.”
And this is what He prays: “I’m not praying for the God-rejecting world but for those you gave me, for they are yours by right. Everything mine is yours, and yours mine, and my life is on display in them.” There is no ambiguity or uncertainty in this. We are God’s possession by right. Jesus said in this prayer earlier that God “put him in charge of everything human” and that they were God’s in the first place but had given them to Him. So that Jesus can continue to say, “Everything mine is yours, and yours mine.”
And why is this important. Important enough for Jesus to pray this at such a time as this, on the eve of his passion and crucifixion. Because He is “no longer going to be visible in the world.” But what is going to happen is “They’ll continue in the world” while Jesus returns to His Father. And what does Jesus ask for them, for us? He says, “Holy Father, guard them as they pursue this life that you conferred as a gift through me, so they can be one heart and mind as we are one heart and mind.” Jesus asks God the Father to protect us in this life and not just day-to-day living like everyone else. Jesus is speaking of the gifted life “that [as He said] you conferred as a gift through me’. This is the life Jesus spoke of in that intimate part of his prayer at the beginning saying, “So he might give real and eternal life to all in his care. And this is the real and eternal life: That they know you, the one and only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you sent.” Jesus asks that His Father guard them because “as long as [he] was with them, [he] guarded them in the pursuit of the life [God] gave through [him]; [He] even posted a lookout.” Jesus was diligent in his care of those His Father had given him, and of us.
And if you’ve been able to follow the thread of Jesus prayer, you see that Jesus is passing on to his disciples this life that is the gift of God.
God sends Jesus into the world with this mission to confer eternal life to all in his care, that they might know the only true God. God gave him men and women who heard Jesus message and believed that he was sent from God. And now as Jesus is preparing to leave the world he prays for God’s protection of those of His who remain in the world and for whom Jesus says “my life is on display in them.”
That intimate relationship with God the Father that Jesus reveals in the beginning of this prayer He now confers upon those who simply believe. Upon us. In those first 5 verses Jesus wants us, who he allows to listen in, to have a full measure of the one on one, intimate loving and fully interdependent relationship that He has with God the Father. And then he turns it 180 degrees and we are the ones now here who display Jesus in this world. God looks at us here as if we were Jesus, His Son. He enters into a relationship with us exactly as he did with His Son Jesus. Think of it. If you read and understand these words as Jesus prayed them, when God looks at Andy, or Edna, or Judy or Darren, he sees His son Jesus. And the only thing you had to do for this to be so was believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus Christ was sent from God with His gift of eternal life, which is to know God. And right now that same God who created this universe, and you, is watching guard over you, He has posted a lookout for you, so that, along with Jesus you can say, “I glorified you on earth by completing down to the last detail what you assigned me to do.” Can you imagine praying to God, “glorify me with your very own splendour.” Sound downright cheeky doesn’t it. And yet we are invited, by Jesus, in this prayer, into a relationship with God where that is a perfectly good thing to ask. If, like Jesus, we are doing all that God has asked us to do, then glory that shines on us is shining on God as well. As Jesus prayed, “Display the bright splendour of your Son so the Son in turn may show your bright splendour.” It is a mutual glorifying and we are invited, by believing, to be a part of it.
Is there any mistaking this intention when Jesus prays “So they can be one heart and mind as we are one heart and mind.”
Next time you look in the mirror look for Jesus there. It is what God sees in you and if you can see it too, if you can believe, it may change everything else.
Amen
