Gospel

John 17:1-11

Jesus looked up to heaven and said, "Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.

"I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. "

Sermon

Sermon
The Rev. Jack Zamboni

 

Jesus said, "It is for them I pray."

Last words matter. The words spoken at times of impending separation or death are important.

In John's Gospel the last words that Jesus says in his disciples' presence before his death and resurrection are what is called the High Priestly Prayer, the beginning of which we've just heard. Jesus and the disciples gather for the last Supper, he washes their feet; he assure them that he goes to prepare a place for them in his Father's house; he commands them to love one another; he promises that the Holy Spirit will come to them.

Last of all, Jesus prays for his disciples. Jesus prays that they will remain one as he and God are one; that they will be protected in the midst of a hostile world; that they will be made holy in God's truth. This prayer for unity, protection and holiness in truth are Jesus' deep desire for his disciples as he prepares to leave them; his last words before the coming storm of the end of Holy Week.

It is good, perhaps even moving, to recall that Jesus prayed for his disciples on the night they were last together on this earth. Still, if that were all there were to say about Jesus' prayer, it would be just a nice story. St. John, however, is very clear that this is not all there is to say. Further on in Jesus' prayer come these words: "I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word." John wanted the church of his own time - some 70 or so years later -- to know that Jesus had prayed for them in the struggles they faced. Two generations after the resurrection, in a Church beset with division and threatened by persecution, John wanted his first readers to know that Jesus loves them and prays for them just as he did for his first followers.

But it was not just those first readers that need to know this. St. John places Jesus' prayer for his followers at the Last Supper, but it has a universality that is beyond any particular moment or place. As a leading scholar of Johns' Gospel writes, "The Jesus of the Last Discourse transcends time and space." The Jesus who prays for his first followers and for the church of all generations is in fact the risen and ascended -- which is why we hear some portion of this prayer every year on this Sunday after the Ascension. It is the ascended Jesus of whom our patron St. Paul writes in Romans when he speaks of the One "who died, yes, who was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us." The ascended Jesus is the High Priest that the Letter to the Hebrews tells us has entered into the heavenly sanctuary, and who lives to make intercession for all who approach God through him. And if you pay attention to the words of today's hymns, you'll hear again of the ascended, interceding Jesus.

Put most simply: through all eternity -- and therefore at this very moment -- the risen and ascended Jesus is praying for his followers for all of God's people in all times and places - including us here at Grace-St. Paul's. As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever, Jesus prays for the church as he prayed for the disciples at the Last Supper. Jesus prays for the church's unity, protection, holiness, truthfulness, and faithfulness. The one who sanctified himself for the sake of all God's people in his self-offering on the cross prays for the church, now and always.

That Jesus has been, is, and always will be praying for the church is a good thing to know and remember. It is an essential reminder that the life of the church is in hands bigger than our own; that while we and all God's people have a real responsibility for the life of the Church in our own day, we are not on our own, as we sometimes seem to fear. All that we are and all that do is undergirded and upheld by Jesus' constant prayer for us.

It is especially important to remember this at times of change when anxiety can grow or when we can imagine that the future of the Church depends entirely on what we do. Grace-St. Paul's is facing such a time of change with Susy and my impending departures. I'm glad to say that I don't sense anxiety running high among you as you move into this transition time. Still, I don't think it can hurt to remind you that the future of this parish is not just up to you.

I remind you of that as an antidote to the anxiety that may show up when challenges arise in the months ahead. I remind you also, as a corrective to the illusion that everything depends on what you alone will do in the time to come. Your work matters -- but you are by no means the only one with a stake in the life of this congregation. God has a real stake in the life of this congregation!

I have a sign in my office given to me by a friend years ago which many of you have seen. The words remind me to keep my own tendencies towards excessive self-reliance in check. It reads:

Do not feel

totally,

personally,

irrevocably

responsible

for

everything.

That's MY job.

Love,

God.

As Christians who know that Jesus is praying for the Church we don't have to feel responsible for everything. We can live in trust in the love of Jesus who died for us and who prays for us.

How best can we do that? There are many ways, but the most important may be to join own prayer for the church to Jesus' prayer -- or better, to recognize that our prayer for the church is the prayer of Jesus at work within us. Whenever we pray, we enter into co-creative partnership with Jesus in the healing and sustaining work of prayer. And when we pray for the church together with Jesus, joining our love for the church to his, letting our concern for the church be filled with his desire for its unity, protection and holiness, we begin to trust that this desire of God will, in the end, be fulfilled.

This doesn't mean that our prayer or even Jesus' prayer gives a guarantee that the church's life will always go as it should. God does not run a magic show, so how we live and work in the church really matters - that, too, it past of our co-creating partnership with the divine. Any student of church history knows that the church has at times gone off the rails, and sometimes badly so. But that has happened most often when Christians have neglected to work in partnership with Jesus' prayer and love for the Church. It has happened when the institutional church has felt so secure in its own strength or in its alliances with other earthly powers that it has not genuinely felt the need of God. It has happened when Christians have become disconnected from of God, complacently thinking that they can manage quite well enough on their own, thank you.

However, when we live as co-creative partners in prayer with Jesus, seeking the Church's good, then the risk that we will fall captive to the temptations of self-sufficiency and fear are greatly diminished. For we discover that prayer actually works -- not as a magical way of getting God to do what we want, nor as a means of controlling other people's behavior, but as a vehicle in which the transforming love of God becomes present, active, and effective in us and in those for whom and with whom we pray. We learn through experience that the presence of God's creative love makes a difference in our lives, in the life of the world, and in the life of the church. We grow to trust that the prayer of Jesus at work in our prayer and our efforts at faithful co-creative living really does uphold, surround, protect and guide the church.

If you live and pray that way in the time to come, my friends, you will find God's co-creative love at work among you, and the future of your parish will be blessed.