Jesus Prays

A sermon preached at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, Mason, Texas.

The Lectionary readings for the Seventh Sunday of Easter are here.

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This is the seventh Sunday of Easter, and every year on this Sunday we read a portion of John 17. This entire chapter is Jesus praying for his disciples. So, if you want to hear the whole prayer you have to come back for the next two years to hear the middle and end. Or you could just read it when you get home.

Even though in the church calendar we are a week away from Pentecost, in our readings we are backing up a bit to the night of Jesus arrest. Jesus knows he’s spending his final moments with his disciples. He’s washed their feet. The other Gospels writers have them all participate in the passover meal, the last supper between the rabbi and students which we repeat in the Holy Eucharist. Time is short and there is much Jesus wants to help them come to understand. But he’s done all he can and the disciples have their own work to do in letting the knowledge not just fill their heads but to permeate their hearts and guide their hands and feet as they become witnesses of the Good News to the ends of the earth.

Jesus has done what he came to do, to show us in flesh and blood what it is to love as God loves. And now the disciples are to carry on with this method of showing others how to live God’s love. This is how they – and we – glorify God in the same way Jesus has by living the Way of Love.

Jesus knows this will be a challenging lifelong task for all who choose to follow and he also has faith in us that we are capable of this amazing task as he prays for us and asks God to take care of us, to keep us. The greek word our English translations render as ‘protect’ is better translated as “to attend to carefully or to take care of.” In the Greek this request is much more tender and maternal, tending to our needs and helping us grow into who we are always becoming.

God attends to us by revealing God’s love to us through those around us, through scriptures that tell us the stories of our faith ancestors, through all of creation, assuring us in every way that God’s Love is the most powerful force in the universe.

Jesus prays that we would do so much more than just learn about God but that we would know God, that we would take what we know and with God’s help and the power of the Holy Spirit turn it into the wisdom that enables us to discern how to live this eternal life of God’s Kingdom on earth. Our faith isn’t an individual accomplishment but a communal journey of life as we were created to live it in relationship with God, led by Jesus, empowered by the Holy Spirit, and companioned by each other.

In the portion of Peter’s letter we read today, Peter is writing to mainly gentile converts to The Way encouraging them to remain steadfast in the teachings of Jesus even as their families and the cultures around them ostracized and in some cases even persecuted them. He implores them to discipline themselves which sounds harsh to our twenty first century western ears. We tend to conflate the word discipline with punishment. But the recipients of Peter’s letter wouldn’t have heard it that way. It has the same root as Disciple and it means to train up, to mentor, and, yes, sometimes to correct but it is about building up and growing, not guilt, shame, or tearing down. In other words, Peter is telling them to keep learning, keep practicing, keep striving, with God’s help and the power of the Holy Spirit, to be more and more like Jesus, even when it’s hard.

In today’s political environment, the words of Jesus and Peter are more necessary than ever. Regardless of what others may try to get us to believe, greed and physical force are never congruent with The Way of Jesus. When leaders try to manipulate us with fear we must hear Jesus say do not be afraid. We must remember Peter’s words “the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, support, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the power forever and ever.”

As we approach Pentecost, may God give us the reassurance that we are in this world to reveal God’s Love of the world. We are to live not staring up into heaven but in such a way that heaven is visible through us to everyone in the world. This includes our families, our friends, our neighbors, our community, and yes, beyond that, too. Jesus’ commissioning of us to go into the world for the love of the world is just as much about how we bear God’s image with those closest to us, the people we encounter in the ordinary routines of our days.

I encourage you to read this prayer of Jesus (John 17) in its entirety every day this coming week as we all prepare to celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Let it remind you that you are God’s beloved, created to live Love and glorify God in such a time as this. Amen.