delivered 24 May 2009
by Rev. Dr John Evans
The Most Reverend Desmond Tutu (image: Encyclopaedia Britannica)
Acts 1:15-17, 21-26
Psalm 1
1 John 5:9-13
John 17:6-19
Desmond Tutu, in speaking of the apartheid struggle in South Africa, says that he was sustained in those arduous years by the knowledge that around the world people were praying for him, and for the end of apartheid. This gave him hope, determination, even joy: he was not alone. Not only were there the prayers to God of those engaged in the struggle – but around the world people also prayed for justice and peace in that once-troubled land.
The message of today is quite simple – we are a people for whom Christ prayed. As Jesus says, in his prayer to the Father:
“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.” (John 17:9)
Indeed the whole of chapter 17 of John’s gospel is known as the high-priestly prayer. Jesus, acting like a priest or indeed the high-priest, intercedes before God, God the Father, on the behalf of his followers. He simply prays for them.
We are thus a people who have not only been taught, warned , chastised, encouraged and profoundly loved by Jesus, but also we are ones for whom he has prayed.
What does this eavesdropping sort of account of this prayer we get in John’s gospel at the end of all his teaching at the time of the last supper, mean for the disciples, for us, for the church today?
Like Desmond Tutu, I find the idea that someone would pray for me quite amazing and quite humbling. To be told and be assured by others, sometimes complete strangers, that they were praying for you, is a truly loving and uplifting experience. Your cry for help, your difficulty or perhaps even your joy and excitement – say at your marriage or birth of a child – is shared, and presented before God. The fact that someone has prayed, let alone the outcome of what that prayer might be, is a loving and generous act.
How much more does it mean when it is Jesus himself who prays?
And so the fact that Christ prays for us is possibly sufficient as our message for today – but we also should really note for what he prays. This too is very significant, and actually quite challenging. Primarily Jesus is concerned about the ongoing life of the Christian community – particularly as he is not going to be around. Indeed it is this group, as we have discovered in recent weeks, he says has a relationship like a shepherd and their sheep, or a vine and its branches or, last week, simply that of friends.
Jesus prays for at least four things for this group: that the community be protected from evil; that it be unified; that it fulfil Jesus’ joy; and that the life of the church be distinct from the life of the world.
The dominant concern of Jesus is that his community, which does not now belong to the world, be protected from evil as it lives its distinctive life in the world.
To live in the world is risky. Being identified as this unique community that clings to the name of Jesus, poses a threat to all the accepted absolutes and certitudes that determine the world’s values. The way of Jesus, both then and perhaps just as poignantly today, is different from the way of the world: it is based on love, not power; community over selfishness; life, indeed a full life, over death.
Judas’ capitulation to the pressures around him, which our passage acknowledges, illustrates what can happen within the ways of the world.
However, the consequence of these different values is that the security and stability of such a group is not assured. This can mean physical danger for such a group. It also can mean that the group can experience a drifting away, and the very viability of the group is threatened. Perhaps we are seeing this within our own culture and our own time? So it is interesting Jesus specifically prays that the Christian community not be taken out of the world, becoming isolated, exclusive, sectarian and pure – existing in some separate closed-off place.
Rather he prays that the church still operate in the world but be guarded by a Power not known to the world. He prays for the church’s protection. The church’s radical other-worldliness (not belonging to the world) thus becomes its core identity. It is not called upon to compete with and just mirror the world’s values, but to rely upon God’s peace, presence and protection. Whenever it neglects this almost mysterious otherworldliness, and the mystical and spiritual power of God, it exists just as an institution like all other institutions. It will contradict its very being.
Pope Benedict XVI greets Bartholomaios I, Archbishop of Constantinople
The second concern of Jesus in this prayer is that the Christian community exhibit the same oneness that exists between himself, Jesus and the Father. Here is the plea that has been at the heart of the ecumenical movement, and the formation of the Uniting Church.
But what is this oneness? While ‘oneness’ can and does have its visible expression – like a union of churches which we once were, in this context oneness is not really to do with institutions and bureaucratic structures, but with the mutuality that exists between Jesus, Son and God, the Father. Each glorifies the other. Each suffers with the other. The actions and words of the one, are the actions and words of the other.
Jesus asks that the church display this reciprocal ‘abiding’, indwelling, that characterizes true love. So are we joyful when another part of the church, of the body of Christ, is joyful? Do we mourn when they mourn? Are we one, in our loyalty to Christ?
Oneness, misunderstood, can be an imperial term – forcing everyone to be the same. Here Jesus prays of oneness, born of his own vulnerability and love.
The third petition is startling, and I think we often forget it. It asks that God bring to fulfilment in the community Jesus’ joy. That’s right, there be joy in the church!
“I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves.” (17:13)
What a contrast this presents to the enmity of the hostile world! To the doom and gloom we so often encounter within the world – and often within he church.
Obviously such joy is not to be equated with happy smiles and warm hugs – a superficial bonhomie, or a happy-clappy sort of life. Joy derives from the very words Jesus has just spoken, words that have offended the world and evoked its hatred. They are words that bring life, hope and love. Joy comes from the truth, not from a plastic and artificial life.
An engraving depicting 2nd-century French bishop, St Iranaeus
Irenaeus, an early Christian leader, said the glory of God was humanity being made fully alive. In the mind and heart of Jesus, joy is the consequence of our life together, and this fullness of life. Joy comes from his offer of life; life instead of the death-dealing ways of the world. The fullness of life gives joy. Jesus prays we have this joy! Do we show this?
The final petition is that God sanctifies the church (vs. 18–19). This could mean many things, but it seems the verb here refers to the cultic language of the Old Testament, where priests and animals were set apart for sacrifice, and through the Holiness Code (Lev. 17–26), the whole nation was directed to live as a special people separated for the service of a holy God. In this they would be especially blessed.
The sanctification of the church has to do with its distinctiveness in the world. In a sense, the church is a community like many other communities in society, distinguished by neither its virtues nor its moral perfection. However its separateness, its unique identity, its special quality, is the gift of God. God assigns to it a special role to play and calls it to live as a community of strangers, a community drawn together because of Jesus, which, like its Lord, does not belong to the world. This community knows and experiences the truth, the truth of God’s love and hope, and through this they have this distinctiveness. In this way they are to be sanctified and richly blessed. We are sanctified and richly blessed.
So Jesus prays for us; and he especially prays that our community be protected from evil; that it be unified in our love of God; that it fulfil Jesus’ joy; and that the life of the church be distinct from the life of the world and thereby be richly blessed.
And so we might think, what more is there for us to do? In a sense that is all we need to do. Believe this is the case – and not get too anxious about our finances, or our strategic plans, or small numbers, or that we seem all to be getting older, or perhaps that we seem unlikely followers of Jesus. We are richly blessed, God the Father will answer such a prayer, and after all this was the prayer of Christ himself.
However, just in case we may feel this leads to an easy solution – a triumphalism, because the power and might of God is on our side — a feature we tend to emphasise at this time when we recall the ascension of Jesus (last Thursday): our psalm for that day, which we sang earlier in the service, is about the might and power of God:
The Lord, the most high, is terrible, a great king over all the earth.
God reigns over the nations; God sits on his holy throne. (Psalm 47)
Here is another view of God, which I think is evident here in this prayer of Jesus. God is fundamentally a compassionate God; a God who literally, in the Latin, suffers with us: cum (with) + passio (suffering). ‘Compassionate’ thus means ‘suffers with’.
Jesus in this prayer is acutely aware of what lies ahead for him. He begins the prayer: “The hour has come” – in other words, the time for his death has come. His prayer for us, is predicated on the fact God will be with him, Jesus, during this hour of suffering. He is the crucified Christ who will be with us as we endeavour to be his followers.
Yes Jesus prays for us; and yes, the future and joy and hope of the Christian Church is ultimately God’s concern, and not our doing; but this will be achieved by a compassionate God, the God and Father of the suffering one who died and rose again because of us.
