What He Prayed

What He Prayed
John 17:1-11
7th Sunday of Easter
4 May 2008

Have you ever witnessed or overheard someone praying? Not the public kind of prayers, but the personal ones. I haven’t. I know someone who, as a child, would occasionally walk by his parents’ bedroom at night and see them kneeling by their bed in prayer. They were not doing it as an example to him, and it was that very fact – the fact that this was something they just did – that provided a more profound example than if they had been trying. But I think not many of us have had that sort of experience.

Prayer seems so intimate. Personal. Confidential. If we pray private prayers at all, we want them to remain that way – private. We treat them a little like birthday wishes – you’re not supposed to talk about them, right? Not if you want them to come true.

I was once at a Q&A session with a well-known preacher when someone in the audience asked about her prayer life. There was an awkward silence. Then she said, “Wow. That’s a little like asking about someone’s sex life, isn’t it?” The truth is, in our culture, we feel far freer to talk about sex than we do in talking about prayer.

What would we learn if we could listen to what people say to God in their most private moments? Would we be shocked? Inspired? Disappointed? Do most of us pray prayers that are too selfish? Do we dream too big? Do we think too small? Would our prayers show us to be vindictive, or compassionate? Faithful, or superstitious? How we pray, what we pray for, says a lot about who we are, what we believe, what we want, and how we struggle. Which may be why we don’t talk about it so much.

This morning we have the rare [and intimate] experience of overhearing someone’s prayers. And what we hear is our own name mentioned.

The one praying is a dying man, and he knows it. On the eve of his execution, Jesus has been offering last words of counsel and encouragement to his followers. But the very last thing he says in their presence before his arrest is not instruction, but a prayer. Having addressed his disciples, he now addresses God.

The air still rings with his strong words: “Take courage! I have conquered the world!” He knows, of course, that it will not look that way. He knows that in the hour of his death, and in the hours and days afterward, and for many centuries to come there will be so many signs that he has not triumphed, and it will be very hard for his people to take courage. It will be very hard for people to believe in him at all, let alone to believe that his way has prevailed.

We do not often find ourselves feeling courageous or emboldened just because someone has said “Take courage!” – and told us why we should. Just as we do not often find ourselves feeling peaceful just because someone has said, “Don’t worry!” Jesus knows that if his followers are going to carry on his work of love and grace in the face of so much opposition, we are going to need more than just his words. We are going to need his power. We are going to need his presence. We are going to need his prayer.

And this is how he gives it. In the hour of his own greatest need, he faces God with confidence – and prays for us. He prays for those disciples standing around him in those moments, and for all those of us who will come after them and seek to follow still. He prays for the church – the church then, the church now, this church, every church, every believer. And what he prays is this: They are yours. These people are yours. They are in this world, and they do not belong to it, but I have sent them into it. Protect them. Make them one. Let your love be in them. Let the world know your love through them. You, be in them, and with them, and keep them. [Keep them from evil.] They are yours. Help them know it.

It is a prayer with all power for all time in it. The beauty, and the mystery, and the good news of this passage from John is that Jesus’ last words are not to us, but for us. Our future as his disciples is not left to us – which is a good thing, because we have been known to mess things up and good – our future is not left to us, but to God. Our work as his church, our effectiveness, [even our faithfulness], is not left up to us – all of it belongs to God.

He told them, he tells us, to take courage, he has conquered the world. We come here every week to remind ourselves of this victory – that death has not won, that evil is not winning, that hate cannot triumph. And yet. Every day of our lives we are confronted with evidence that seems to prove otherwise. The world is a battleground, and evil seems to have the advantage. Our hearts are battlefields, too. We know the struggles in them. We know our own capacities for hate, and for treachery, for despair, and for deception. Our hearts are no solid proof that God’s love has won, or is winning.

Jesus’ words of triumph are words that speak of eternal and final truth. But what we see and experience mostly is neither eternal nor final. So between his words of triumph and his own experience of dejection, betrayal, and death, what he offers is this prayer. Which is to say, perhaps, that prayer is always our best bridge between what is temporary and vexing, and what is final and only good. His prayer for us is a bridge. Maybe our own prayers in his name might be a bridge too.

Whether or not, though, we can muster our own faithfulness in prayer, we are the people for whom Jesus has prayed and is praying. God’s work in the world through the church, including this one, including each one of us, is not ultimately up to us, or our faithfulness, or even our own prayers. Our future belongs to God. We belong to God.

This is a simple enough thing to say. Easy enough, even, to say we believe it. But do we understand the power of its reality? We belong to God. [That is as intimate a thing as the most tender prayer.] Belong. We belong. This is something people spend their lives searching for. Many of us spend our lives feeling exactly the opposite of it – we do not belong. Out of place in our families. Out of place with our supposed peers. Out of place in our church. Never able quite to make ourselves fit. It is in the inevitable human condition. And some of us spend our whole lives trying to overcome it, trying to find our place, trying to feel like we belong. [?]

Jesus spoke of the importance of not belonging to the wrong things. They are in this world, but they do not belong to it. By “world” of course he does not mean this earth, or creation, he means anything and anyone anywhere that is opposed to God. We are in the midst of so much that is hostile towards the truth of grace and love and justice. We are surrounded by forces of violence, greed, despair, alienation, oppression, malice, fear. This is the world Jesus spoke of. We are in it. We have been sent to it. But we do not belong to it. It does not possess us. According to Jesus in John, there is a cosmic battle waged all around us between good and evil. Jesus’ words remind us not only which side has won, but which side we belong to.

We belong to good. We belong to love. We belong to grace. We belong to truth. We belong to God.

What this means is nothing triumphalistic. Or moralistic. Or facile. What it means is that our existence and our future are held in the goodness and love of the God of the universe. It means that our lives are inhabited by this God. This God abides in us. In our church. In our daily lives. God dwells here. Here. Here. We don’t always feel it. We don’t often feel it. That does not mean it is not true. [??]

Every day we face choices – will we be cynical, or hopeful? Will we despair, or have faith? Will we be hateful, or kind? Will be small, or will we love big? We make these choices sometimes in the tiniest ways. But every day, we make them. Every day, the battle goes on, and we pick our side. And all along, there is someone who prayed for us, and is praying for us, and whose prayer echoes through our lives: They are yours, God. These people are yours. They are in this world, and they do not belong to it, but I have sent them into it. Protect them. Make them one. Let your love be in them. Let the world know your love through them. You, be in them, and with them, and keep them. [Keep them from evil.] They are yours. Help them know it.

Our lives, the life of this church, the life of God’s church everywhere, rests in God alone. Not in our own capabilities. Not in our own effectiveness. Not in our own ability to make good choices or to secure the future or even to be faithful. In God. It belongs to God. We belong to God. This is who we are. This is whose we are. [And as God’s people, we are people living towards a future reality, as well – a future in which we will fully realize and embody God’s love and care.]

What is left to do now is to lean into that truth. To let Jesus’ prayer for us take hold of us. We join our prayers with his. And we could do worse than to focus our own prayers first of all on this – that we belong to God, the God of Jesus is our very identity, and our foundation. Everything else – every prayer, every action - flows out of this prayer, and this truth.

What do you think the answer to Jesus’ prayers looks like? Can you imagine yourself and this church as part of the answer? How might your life be what he was hoping for? How might your own prayers and your choices match his own? How might this church not only pray with him, but embody his prayer?

As Jesus prayed, so may we live.