John 17:6-19 "For What Shall We Pray?"

You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly!

         “Let’s pray,” the pastor says.  A short time of silence follows.  And then there is the connection:

         "Thank you for calling God’s House. Please select one of the following four options:  Press 1 for requests, press 2 for thanksgiving, press 3 for complaints, for all other inquiries, press 4."

         Or, how about this: "All of the angels are helping other customers right now. Please stay on the line. Your call will be answered in the order it was received."

         Or maybe this:  If you'd like to speak with Gabriel, press 1, for Michael, press 2, for any other angel, press 3.  If you want King David to sing you a psalm, press 6. To find out if your relative is here, enter his or her date of death and listen for the list that follows.  For answers to nagging questions about dinosaurs, the age of the earth, and where Noah's ark is, wait until you get here!   Our computers show that you have called once today already. Please hang up immediately. This office is closed for the weekend. Please call again Monday. End of message.

         Thank goodness prayer is really not that complicated – though, if we were to point to the passage we just read as an example of worthy prayer, at first glance, we might think differently.  Written very much in the style of the author of the gospel of John, let’s face it, the language of this prayer is densely theological, incredibly hard to follow, and in the end quite mind-twisting. 

         It is often called Jesus’ high priestly prayer because he is praying not for himself but rather on behalf of his disciples.  To put into its proper context, we should know that he prayed it as they sat around the dinner table together in that upper room in Jerusalem - just before they adjourned and headed to the garden of Gethsemane where he would pray his last agonizing, blood-sweating prayer all alone, that particular prayer for himself as his disciples gently snored in a heap nearby. 

         But the prayer we just read is found at the conclusion of the so-called Farewell Discourses, which are Jesus’ end-of-life directions to his little band of followers.  He laid out these instructions, being so acutely aware of what was likely to occur that night or tomorrow or someday soon even as they were so blissfully unaware. When we pick up the passage this morning, Jesus has been going on in his Discourse for several chapters now.

         They had completed their Passover Meal.  They had finished their final cup of wine.  He had told them about the vine and the branches, and they had reveled for a few moments in that deep sense of connection to him, to God, to one another. He had reminded them of the greatest commandment of all – to simply love one another – and they had silently pondered God’s compassion for them and, in turn, reflected on how their own compassion would stack up in comparison. 

         Now Jesus felt the need to bring the conversation to a close, and so he ended it all with a prayer – a lengthy table prayer – 26 verses in all – a far cry from “God is great.  God is good.  And we thank him for our food.” 

         However, it was not really a table grace anyway.  Rather it was a parting prayer for them, for the disciples.  He prayed for them, and because these words, first recorded by the author of the Gospel of John, have been remembered and recognized as holy words and have found their way into our church this morning, so he also prays on our behalf.  As Disciples of Christ pastor Fred Craddock imagines the scene, it was 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."

         The disciples’ lives were about to be turned upside down.  They were about to be tossed out on their own – small and vulnerable - with love as their only weapon to face a world lashing out in its brokenness.  They would face overwhelming odds.  Their faith would be sorely – and sometimes cruelly – tested.  They would feel anything but safe during this spiritual journey on which they were embarking. 

         Perhaps you know from your own experience just how they felt.  Perhaps you too have been in the same boat – on your own, small and vulnerable, wondering what sort of a weapon love can be against all the malice and resentment swirling about you.  Perhaps you have felt that the odds of your making it through this very day, let alone all of your life, are overwhelming.  Perhaps your faith has been tested – by illness, by addiction, by depression.  Perhaps you have felt anything but safe in a world that is anything but safe in so many regards.

         And if you have never felt any of those things, oh, someday you will, I can assure you of that.  However, in the meantime, perhaps you have been with or witnessed others whose world has been turned upside down, who seem to be so exposed and defenseless, who face overwhelming odds just to survive, who struggle as their faith is tested over and over again, who can never feel safe in the world that has been carved out for them. 

         Oh, though the millennia have gone by, though the particular circumstances have changed, in the end, we are still so like the disciples for whom Jesus prayed that last night before he was killed.  We are so like Peter and Andrew and James and the others simply because we are all humans – with the same human needs.  And because Jesus prayed for them, then surely he prays for us too.

         He prays that we and those we love and those we scarcely know will have strength.  He prays for oneness because he knows that is where true strength will be found. 

“…guard them as they pursue this life
That you conferred as a gift through me,
 so they can be one heart and mind…”

                 He prays that we will hang together – as families, as communities, as churches – because he knows that if we do not hang together, we will all hang separately, as the saying goes.  Disunity is always a great threat.  For example, for us, the more we can be one as a congregation – with a common vision - the more we can impact the world through our ministries.

         It is that vine and branches business again.  Life flows from that single root and throughout the vine bringing nourishment and strength to each of the branches.  There is something important about interconnectedness, not only between the vine and a single branch, but also among the branches themselves. 

         Remember how we talked a couple of weeks ago about those giant and ancient sequoia trees on the West Coast? They might be hundreds of feet tall and tens of feet in diameter but they have very shallow root systems. And the only way they can withstand the winds and rains and stress of the centuries is because they intertwine their roots with others, drawing their strength from one another.

         Lasting strength is not born of isolation, but it is born of community.  May we ask in our own prayers that Jesus pray on our behalf for strength – for our families, for our church community, for our nation, for those who are the least of these, the vulnerable ones in our world.  Oh, Jesus, we pray for strong and caring communities and particular strength to the least of these – you know who they are.

         If oneness was the first thing that Jesus prayed for, then the next was that God will protect us. 

 “Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name…”

         As Lutheran pastor Tim Shrimpton writes, “We want to feel safe because so often we don’t. We feel adrift in the world. We feel like there’s nothing we can do to protect ourselves. We often feel powerless to affect any changes or to secure anything good for ourselves and others. And even when we can and do accomplish things to help and protect ourselves and others, we know that there is always a hard limit to what can be done. We can raise our children well and equip them for life, but we cannot protect them from every hardship. We can make careful plans for retirement, but we can’t stop emergency bills or economic downturns that hinder our savings. Things can feel somewhat hopeless at times.” 

         Jesus prays for God’s presence in our lives, but in our lives here and now, on this earth. 

 He does not pray that we will be somehow miraculously taken out of the world, but rather that we will be protected from whom the Gospel writer calls the Evil One (which probably has a different manifestation for each one of us). 

         We live in this odd and often awkward tension between being part of this fractured world in all its horrific and outlandish manifestations, but nonetheless a world we have no right to escape, and being set apart as a faith community within that crazy, jaded world, a faith community committed to its transformation into the Kingdom of God.

“I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one.”

         It is a dangerous world out there.  That Jesus knows for certain.  But he also knows that we are not meant to be sequestered safely away from the trials we face, but rather that, in the midst of those trials, we will eventually know God’s presence, and we will trust in the protective power of God’s love. 

         Though it might be a lot easier otherwise, Christianity does not, as Lutheran pastor David Lose reminds us, “provide an escape from life’s difficulties, but rather offers support to flourish amid them.”

May we ask in our own prayers that Jesus pray on our behalf for protection against whatever evil we and those around us – both far and near – may face – war, earthquakes, health crises, loneliness, addiction, all those things that beat us down and wear us out.  Oh, Jesus, we pray for God’s protection from the evils that the world encounters – you know who they are.     

         And finally Jesus prays for a way out of our hopelessness.  He prays for a path forward when there seems to be no path.   Jesus prays for guidance.

“Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.”

         As United Church of Christ pastor Kate Huey notes, “The question we must ask focuses on how we will order our lives and examine our priorities and shape our institutions, especially if we are really, really close to God because of our knowledge of Jesus.” 

         We have a purpose here – each one of us – no matter how worthless or undirected we may feel at times.  And it is a holy purpose that we are called to live out. 

         We are the ones who know in our hearts that the Kingdom of God is not just a pleasant illusion – but is and can be even more through our efforts – a reality.  We are the ones who know the power of love and can affirm that it is the way – the only way – to forgiveness and reconciliation.  We are the ones to model a new life – where violence and abuse is not countered by even more violence and abuse, but where love trumps everything.  May we ask in our own prayers that Jesus pray on our behalf for guidance as we continue to try to walk his Way.  Oh, Jesus, we pray that God will guide us on our journey – you know its twists and turns.

         And so Jesus prayed that final evening, and his disciples listened, and soon thereafter Jesus uttered the final Amen.  His lengthy prayer was over, and he headed out to the garden of Gethsemane and all that would await him there. 

         But his words – the words of this high priestly prayer – the words that ask God for strength when there seems to be no strength, protection when we seems so vulnerable, and guidance when the path is full of so many twists and turns that we do not know how to move forward – the words of this prayer are still whispered – here – in this space – now by us – for ourselves but more often for others: Pray that God will give them strength, O Jesus.  Pray that God will protect them.  Pray that God will guide them always.  O Jesus, we pray all this in your name, you who are the Risen One, who by tradition has now ascended into Heaven to be with the Creator, who in your love intercedes for us and for the world.  Amen.

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church U.C.C., Raymond, Maine