The Life of Faith
Easter 7A | John 17:1-11
One of the strange delights of the lectionary is spending half of the Easter season, not in the resurrection stories, but in John’s Farewell Discourse. At first glance, this seems really wrong. We aren’t just going back in time, but going back to Holy Week. It’s a little like gathering on Easter morning and hearing the Passion. There is a tone here we have to wrestle with.
It does sort of make sense, though. Because these are stories about preparing for life without Jesus present. They are teachings that feel more relevant today than they did then. We might choose to see them now as a kind of flashback, like the things the disciples might be remembering in those days after. Sharing the memories of Jesus and saying to each other “remember when he told us this?”
This is often how it works, isn’t it? That we hear things in our lives that we know are important, but we only half listen at the time because we aren’t there yet. And then, when we get there, we go “man, I sure wish I was listening better when he tried to tell us about this.”
Last Week of Easter Themes
We come to this final Sunday of the Easter season having spent the last two weeks with this theme of continuing relationship. The gospel passages have guided us toward community and seeing ourselves within the interconnected web of creation. This is Jesus sharing with the disciples that he is connected to God in this way, that they are connected to him and to God and to each other. That relationship is our doctrine.
And we arrived this morning having already celebrated the Ascension this past Thursday. Having already experienced the goodbye and the departure of Jesus. So we receive this moment most like a flashback of any, of Jesus praying and making the will of God and his relationship with and in God known, of inviting his followers to experience all of it with him. To be in their midst in a way that centers their very witness on his physical presence in their midst.
What we get, though, is a chapter-long prayer to God in the midst of his disciples telling God about things God already knows. Which has to be weird for God, right? He even points out to God that God already knows this. Which has to be even weirder. But we know it isn’t for God’s sake that he says these things, but for the disciples and for ours. This is a moment of teaching as much as it is a prayer. And, I dare say, all prayers are matters of teaching.
About Prayer
Remember earlier in the gospels, when asked how to pray, Jesus tells them what to pray. He outlines a form of prayer we call the Lord’s Prayer, which is full of petition and repentance. But it is full of moral declarations about creating a more just world that matches the ideals of heaven. A world where we all are fed a daily fill, the absolution of debts and the expectation that we forgive the debts of others, and a protection from the seduction of evil.
The pattern of the prayer that Jesus offers the disciples throughout the gospels is one in which the person praying learns through their act of prayer to love the moral conviction of a world governed by Shalom — by peace, mercy, and wholeness. In praying we learn and by learning we come to know.
What I’m getting at is that, as much as we might be drawn to unraveling what Jesus is praying in John 17, and we often do so for the sake of establishing doctrinal beliefs and actions, it is far more instructive that he is praying in the moment when God is acting in the world. And it is better for us to prehend a vision of what prayer is for: devotion, yes, and forming us as moral actors in the world.
And Still About Relationship
Jesus prays in their midst about their relationship to him, to God, to everything. We are still talking about relationship, about love and connection and being. This is still the Way of Love.
Nor should the setting be lost on us. Jesus praying immediately before they leave the table to gather in the Garden where he will be arrested, beaten, and eventually executed by the state.
It reminds me of the college student caravan heading to Selma in 1963. How they stopped at a rest area and were given the last chance to call their parents, last opportunity to turn around (none of them did). And then they gathered in prayer, singing “Kum Bah Ya,” which means “come by here.” A community, facing abuse and violence and great suffering, praying as one, calling the holy spirit to be with them as one. It is a powerful image of sacrifice and devotion — and most importantly, community, relationship and indwelling togetherness.
Never Alone
One of the images Jesus used earlier in the discourse, which we heard last week, is to say that he isn’t going to leave the disciples “orphaned.” Which is to say, without parents. But let us hear what the more important meaning is: alone.
Being an orphan isn’t only dealing with loss or the absence of someone we love, it is to be without love. To be left without anyone who cares for us. We see this in the foster care system, where children are dealing with people who are overseeing their well being, but do they know love? Is there anyone who can commit themselves to love the one who has been orphaned?
Jesus says this is not on offer for us, because we are not going to be without love. This is regardless of the physical location of Jesus, whether his body lives or dies, we are not abandoned by God.
His departure, therefore, is not to be accounted as either permanent nor total. And furthermore, it is to be seen within the context of community, relationship, and their growing sense of who they are together.
These are who Jesus is praying for from within their midst.
In Our Midst
Who then are we praying for and in whose midst do we pray? In a very real sense, we do this together at this time with our common prayer each week. Perhaps, too, when we gather with friends or around tables for dinner. And often when we are alone! Maybe doing morning prayer with a bagel smeared with whipped cream cheese and a cup of coffee or driving in a car and sitting at a stop light or when a name comes across the phone that we haven’t heard from in some time and we are reminded of what they were going through last fall.
And because God knows our hearts we can be thankful that every bit of prayer (or skipped prayers) is not responsible for the fortunes of the world. But it can help guide who we are and who we hope to be.
This is why we do it. To be able to give grace and become worthy of grace. And not just because God is that generous, but because we long to be that generous, too. As our praying shapes believing, it might also shape our acting and become the beloved community. And that, my friends, is the whole ballgame.