John 17:6-19 - "Pray for Us, Lord Jesus"

            The Easter season is drawing to a close.  This is it.  Next Sunday, we will remember the glorious events of Pentecost.  The sanctuary will be decorated with 100 red geraniums, and you as the congregation will be awash in a sea of red shirts, dresses, ties, and perhaps even shoes.

            But until that time, we once again find ourselves in the Holy City of Jerusalem, where our scripture lesson has sprung from for the past several weeks.    There we are in that same upper room, having just finished the ancient Passover meal.  We are seated about the table with Jesus and his disciples.  Like them, we long for the sound of Jesus’ voice, long even more on this particular night to soak in his words of wisdom one last time.

            Jesus has been talking for a while now – in that quiet and gentle way of his. We have heard him speak of grapevines and those essential connections with God and with each other.  His words about love, about loving one another as He has loved us, still hang with a certain poignancy in the still air around us. All that Jesus says, of course, will one day be edited and codified and included as several chapters in the Gospel of John, and we will call this narrative in the upper room Jesus’ Farewell Discourses. 

Sitting there with the disciples in this quiet after dinner conversation time, we, like them, are frightened because we seem to sense that something awful is about to happen. Our world will be turned upside down, and our leader and rabbi and friend will leave us. 

We feel small and vulnerable and lost.  We sense that time is short, and we so much want to understand what Jesus is talking about because surely his message will be essential in negotiating the road ahead. 

It is growing late now.  The lit candles on our table cast their shadows of our meal.  The reflection of a half eaten loaf of bread and a cup of wine flickers and dances on the back wall of the house.  Darkness has set in. 

Jesus knows that he must go elsewhere now – and we know that too.  And so he ends the conversation – but not with a lengthy theological treatise and not even with a parable or a good old fashioned story.  He ends this time with us by saying a prayer. 

It is a heartfelt prayer, often called the High Priestly Prayer, and it is for us.  It is not a teaching moment, like so many others he has shared.  It is not about Good Samaritans or Prodigal Sons.  It is simply a prayer. 

Jesus prays for us. Jesus prays for the disciples who were his friends even though he knew, he knew that one would deny him, one had already betrayed him, some would doubt him, and all would abandon him.  But still he prays for them now.  And by extension, Jesus prays for the early Christian community to whom the writer of the Gospel of John directed his narrative. 

And in that same way, Jesus prays for us - for you and me – so many centuries later and worlds apart.  Imagine it!  Savor the reality of it!  As Fred Craddock wrote, we are like “a congregation overhearing a pastoral prayer. We are not directly addressed, but we are very much in the mind of the One who is praying."  This prayer, Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer, is for us.

We know that it is for us because it is not some high and lofty theological abstract.  Oh, the words might sound strange to us these centuries later, but they are simple words. 

We know that the prayer is for us because it is about the world in which we live where sometimes God’s saving love seems so far away.  It is a prayer for us because it is about how we live in this crazy world that is our home.   It is a prayer for you and me – a prayer for the Body of Christ.  It is a prayer for the church – a prayer or this holy agent of change with some much restorative and transformative power.

Did you know that in some Bible translations, the word, “world,” in this brief passage is used 13 times? Surely that must make it important, and, for the Gospel writer of John, it is important.  For him, the world is a dark and messed up place, but God loves it anyway.

There is darkness, and there is light – a frequent symbol and literary image in this Gospel – and the key question that rattles around in our heads as Jesus prays is this:  What is our relationship – the church’s relationship - supposed to look like in this dark, messed up world in which we live? 

And, in this High Priestly Prayer, Jesus answers that nagging question.  In the last coherent prayer that the disciples will hear him pray, in these final hours before his crucifixion, Jesus first admits the inevitable. "I am no longer in this world, but they are."  If the disciples had not already conceded this notion, it must have dizzied them with confusion, and the vulnerability those words left in their wake must have been terrifying. 

And so, for us, Jesus’ words underline a huge problem:  Jesus is no longer in the world, but we are.  Whatever are we to do with that?  Because we dare to call ourselves followers of Jesus, this is a most serious question! 

Maybe it would have been better if, as James Howell noted, “Jesus left his future presence down here in more capable hands than ours!  We're just not all that special. We feel no miraculous power coursing through our veins, our brains get blurry, we're tired, we're stressed, we're just so very...pedestrian, flat--footed, mortal...human.”

That we are!  However, we are in the world – hook, line, and sinker.  Such is our lot, and there is no getting around it.  And therein lies the tension for us.  As his followers, as the Body of Christ, as the church, we are called to believe from the bottom of our souls the message of compassion and reconciliation that Jesus preaches.  Yet all around us we see war and poverty and environmental degradation.  But we trust – it is the core of our faith – that it does not have to be that way, that the world can be transformed, nay, that it will be restored.

However, Jesus realizes this profound tension, and so he prays to God on our behalf:  "I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one,” from everyone and everything that tells us we are crazy, that the world as it is now is the best it is going to get.

Let all be well, Jesus prays.  Let all be well.  Even though Jesus is not here to protect us in body, the Holy Spirit, sometimes aptly called the Comforter, will surround us, and all will be well.  Remember those words in this High Priestly Prayer when being in the world seems darker and more ominous than you think you can handle, when you need encouragement, when the marriage is unraveling, when the cancer diagnosis is real, when everything around you is falling apart.

Jesus prays that all will be well as we go forth in his name.  Oh, we may wish that Jesus was here in body, but in a way, Jesus’ body is very much here – in us.  Teresa of Avila said "Christ has no body on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours; yours are the eyes through which the compassion of Christ looks out on a hurting world, yours are the feet with which he goes about doing good; yours are the hands with which he is to bless now."

It will not be an easy road.  Jesus understands that, but he prays that, come what may, we will have joy.  He prays that we will experience joy in finding others in a community like this one who will work beside us in the world – through mission and outreach, through being an integral part of this small town in Maine.  He prays that we will find joy even in the midst of our pain as we reach out to hold one another in love.

Jesus prays that because of such singleness of purpose, such commitment to his message, we will discover that there is more to bind us together than should ever drive us apart.  He prays that the threads of the tapestry of love that he has created will be strong enough and tightly woven enough to keep us together in the tough and potentially divisive times.  He prays that because of his message, we will all be one.

And Jesus prays that we will be sanctified, that we will be purified, that, if we cannot be made holy, at least we can love – and surely love is holy enough.  That will make us a sacred community, a community set apart, he reminds us in his prayer.  That will make us truly the church, in the world as it is but grounded in something firmer, stronger, restorative, transformative, grounded in the Gospel message. 

So pray for us, Jesus.  Intercede for us.   And may your prayers for us never cease.   God knows, you know, we need all the help we can get.  Next week, O Jesus, we will celebrate that we are born again as the church, born in the mighty wind and the tongues of fire of the Holy Spirit, advocate, guide, and comforter. 

Show us how, as the church, as your Body, to live in this dark and messed up world.  Show us how to bring your light to all who dwell in the shadows.

Pray for us, O Jesus, that we will find joy in the midst of all the discouragement and despair that we experience.  Pray that we will be made holy, pure, sanctified – as people of love, as people of your Gospel message.  Pray for us, Lord Jesus.  Amen.