7th Sunday of Easter 2024
Text: John 17:6-19
The Gospel lesson today is a bit dense. It might be best to try to unpack it.
This is Jesus’ prayer for the Church, referred to as ‘Jesus High Priestly Prayer’. This is what all priests do, pray for those entrusted by God to the priest’s spiritual charge.
John has overheard this prayer and he has recorded it for us. It reveals Jesus’ intimate relationship with the Father and shows us the kind of relationship Jesus prays for us to have with Him too. Here Jesus is praying for the disciples, but through them the extended community of his believers. He prays for 4 things specifically.
First, Jesus prays that all members of the church may be one as he and the Father are one.
There is a core belief that holds the church together. It is faith in Jesus Christ as the son of God, as the Savior of the world. If we have this faith and we take seriously what Jesus taught the disciples, which we call the apostolic teaching, and try to live accordingly, we will be united in what we believe, what we value, and the way we live. We will be One, united as brothers and sisters in Christ. This is the unity we experience when we receive communion together.
However, there is an agenda in our time that has the power to destroy this unity in belief within the church. It is called ‘diversity’. On the surface it is appealing because we want to acknowledge people for who they are, and we are all different in some way. But to set ‘diversity’ as a goal has the perhaps unintended consequence of dividing people according to superficial factors, like the way we look, or the language we speak, or the way we dress.
One of my closest friends in Christ was Jack Stalker, an Inuit hunter from Point Lay, Alaska. Jack had fought in Vietnam and returned home with PTSD. He drank too much and tried to kill himself. He was reckless on the tundra and dangerous to himself. His brother was killed and eaten by a polar bear. Jack spoke Inuit and liked country music. We also looked very different from one another. I was taller than Jack and he was darker. You might find it hard to believe we could be such close friends, but it was Christ who drew us together. Jack had been so broken, but restored to life by Jesus. When we prayed together for the members of our new Church, St. Alban’s-in-the-Arctic, we prayed as One. He would begin to pray and I could finish the thought, and he would do the same for me. We had one mind concerning St. Alban’s.
In the Church Jesus calls all who believe to be one, united in faith and trust in Him, to put aside the things that make us different. This is not to say that Christians should all think exactly alike on all issues, but what we hold most dearly is what unites us together as Body of Christ. Jack and I shared the belief that God was giving the Inuit in Point Lay a place to worship Christ.
Secondly, Jesus prays that members of the Church may have Jesus’ own joy in themselves.
Jesus has the joy of knowing the Father intimately, and we are to share in this joy. When we know that the Father is the source of all light and love and goodness, and we come into his presence we experience joy. Jesus prays for us to draw near to God as he did when he lived among us as a person.We too can experience this joy in prayer, and it will carry us through the day. It is a joy that lasts through our trials and tribulations. Knowing God intimately as Jesus did, this joy never leaves us.
Thirdly, Jesus prays that members of the Church will be kept from the evil one.
He prays this because, belonging to God, we have been sent into the world as he was for God’s purposes. “The world” is that realm outside the Body of Christ, which is the realm of the evil one, Satan. We belong to God, not the world, however we live in the world as well as the Body of Christ.
There was a seminal book written by a couple of theologians from Duke in 1989 entitled “Resident Aliens.” The premise is that we no longer live in a Christian culture, that we are truly aliens in contemporary culture. Christians live in a world that does not share the same values, a world that seeks to repress and denigrate Christian belief. The authors catalog how this status as ‘resident aliens’ has impacted the church, and they suggest what we must do to recover vitality in the Body of Christ.
Too often the Church has been tempted to be relevant to the culture, to find its place in a hostile setting, and we have drifted away from the Truth of God in doing so. This is the subtle work of Satan. Jesus prays that we may realize when this is happening and return to the truth of God.
And, fourthly, Jesus prays that members of the Church will be consecrated in the truth, which is God’s Holy Word.
Jesus prayed, “I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world.” Staying faithful to the Word of God is also how we are protected from the evil one.
Jesus also prayed, “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” To sanctify is to be made holy, as Jesus is holy, from the holiness of God. A few weeks ago Jesus called believers to abide in him and he will abide in us. We share in the holiness of the Son and the Father.
The Holy Scriptures are God’s self-revelation to us, and in them we are shown ultimate Truth.
Here we find our origin, meaning, and purpose in life. In it we discover all truth, beauty, and goodness, how God created us to live in relationship with him. It contains great wisdom for us. It cautions us against the temptations of Satan, and shows the consequences of falling away from God, the true cost of going our own way. By reading it with an open heart and an open mind, prayerfully, we come to know the grace of God, the extent to which he has gone to forgive us, his unconditional love that can never be taken away.
This past Thursday was the Day of the Ascension, when the resurrected Jesus Christ was lifted bodily into heaven, away from the disciples while they were watching. It is comforting to know that Jesus has not just left us on our own, that now he is continually praying for us. These four things for which he prays will protect us and guide us—that we may be One, that we may have his joy, that we be protected from the evil one, and be sanctified in the Truth of God. We should pray for these things for ourselves as well. Amen.
