Full service can be viewed HERE.
Easter 7B
May 16, 2021
John 15:9-17
INTRODUCTION
Today is the seventh and last Sunday in Easter, and always on the Thursday preceding this, we celebrate Ascension Day. Because it falls on a Thursday, we don’t often hear the story in Sunday worship, and we won’t today, but it is an important story – that’s why we confess it each week in the creed – so I’m going to tell you. Jesus’ ascension happened 40 days after the resurrection. For 40 days he reminded them about what he taught and spoke about the kingdom of God. On that 40th day, he tells them to go to Jerusalem, because “not many days from now” they would be baptized by the Holy Spirit and fire, as John the Baptist had mentioned before. (That does happen, by the way, 10 days later, on Pentecost, which is what we celebrate next week.) He says that when the Spirit comes, they will receive power, and will be his witnesses “to the ends of the earth.” As he says this, Jesus is lifted up and a cloud takes him, and the disciples are left to figure out what the heck all of that meant!
That’s where today’s reading from Acts will pick up. Their first order of business is to find a replacement for Judas, so that they can get to the business of being witnesses with their full force of 12. The Gospel will also mention Judas, as “the one destined to be lost so that that the scripture might be fulfilled.” So we kind of get a sense of the division and the good and evil at play in the world, even from the very beginning of Christianity.
But the real point of the Gospel is not division, but unity. This text takes us back to Maundy Thursday again, as Jesus prays for his friends. In Matthew, Mark and Luke, the disciples fall asleep when Jesus prays on Maundy Thursday, but here they – and so also we – get to overhear his prayer, and his primary prayer for us is a prayer of unity: “that they would be one.” The conflict and division we still live with makes it hard to imagine that… making this prayer all the more important. As you listen to it, truly hear it as Jesus’ prayer for you, and for us, in all of the various conflicted and divided relationships we experience in this world. Let’s listen.
[READ]
 |
| Moyers, Mike. Be Thou My Vision, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=57145 [retrieved May 16, 2021]. Original source: Mike Moyers, https://www.mikemoyersfineart.com/. |
Grace to you and peace from our Risen Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
One of my favorite things to do with people as a pastor, especially after we’ve had a meaningful and self-disclosing conversation, is to pray with them. It’s strange to say this, now almost 10 years into my ministry, because this most basic and essential task of ministry used to terrify me. I was not good at doing anything off the cuff, least of all praying, when I felt that my words should all be beautiful and well-crafted, lest I somehow mess it up. I could recite all manner of memorized prayers, or read pre-written ones, but I too often got in my own way to talk freely and openly with God in front of other people.
Now, I realize God simply doesn’t care about prayers being “right” so much as God cares about them being genuinely offered. I’ve learned how to step aside and let the Spirit take over, and when we can do that, the prayer space becomes a truly holy place. It’s a space where right words don’t matter, so much as the connection we are experiencing, with each other and with God.
In today’s Gospel reading, we get the chance to eavesdrop on such a moment between Jesus and his disciples, in which he prays for them in their presence. It’s this beautiful opportunity to hear how Jesus himself talks to his Father, and careful reflection can show us a thing or two about how we, too, might pray.
Now, I realize: this is not an easy passage to take in or digest, because Jesus seems to bounce around to a lot of different themes. It’s kind of a word soup – honestly, it’s sort of like my own prayers in that way! Reading it, it’s a bit hard to follow. But buried in his metaphysical reflections about his ministry and his relationship with the Father, he asks God for a few specific things – and he also does NOT ask for a few things – and here is where we can learn something about our own ways of praying.
First, let’s look at what he does not ask for. “I am not asking you,” he says, “to take them out of the world.” In other words, Jesus does not pray that the struggles of the world will be made easy, or that we would somehow be immune to pain and suffering. Jesus acknowledges that the world is a tough place, saying, “the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world.” We strive to live godly lives, see, and were indeed called to such a life in our baptism, but the world makes this very hard to do. It presents us with unkindness, injustice, depression, loneliness, infidelity, oppression, dishonesty, illness, loss… We are no strangers to how difficult it is to live in this world. Every day we are faced with situations that make it hard to be the godly creatures we are created to be. Yet Jesus does not pray for God to take us out of this world. Facing these things – with the love of God and the power of the Holy Spirit – is a part of being a citizen of the earth, just as it was a part of Jesus’ life, when he lived on earth.
What Jesus does pray for, however, is protection. Not necessarily protection of the body, but protection of the Spirit of God that is in them, the truth that is in them. Protect them from the evil one, he prays, from that evil spirit that would draw them away from God’s love. Protect them so that they may be one, he says, so that they may find that same love, God’s love, in one another.
That’s the next interesting thing to notice about Jesus’ prayer for us: his reason for praying for our protection. “So that they may be one,” he says. How often our struggles tear us apart! We’ve all experienced it – maybe one huge catastrophe broke apart your family, or maybe it was too many little things that all built up and finally caused you to blow up at your best friend, shattering a life-long friendship. Or you received the diagnosis that you dreaded, and instead of turning toward God and toward your friends and family, you turned away from everyone, turned in on yourself, and tried to face your trials alone. It’s true, pain does have the potential to divide us. But it also has the potential to bring us together – and that is Jesus’ prayer for us. “Protect them so that they may be one,” he prays. Protect that Spirit that binds them together, so that they will know to whom they can turn in times of suffering and hatred. So that the church might not be torn apart in times of trial and fear, but instead be built up and strengthened.
Several years ago, I read a book called, Here If You Need Me. It is a memoir of Kate Braestrup, a woman who, in grieving her husband’s untimely death, goes to seminary and becomes a chaplain to the search-and-rescue workers of the State of Maine Warden Service. Her ministry is almost always to people suffering some tragedy – the parents of children who have wandered into the woods and disappeared, people whose loved one has fallen through the ice, those left behind after someone has gone into the woods to take their own life. In one chapter, she reflects on prayer. Her first act following her ordination was to pray for the game wardens and other police officers present. Chaplain Kate’s first inclination was to pray for their protection, though upon further reflection realized that if personal safety were a top priority of a police officer, than perhaps he or she should have chosen a different profession. Instead, she prays this lovely prayer: “May you be granted capable and amusing comrades, observant witnesses, and gentle homecomings. May you be granted respite from what you must know of human evil, and refuge from what you must know of human pain. May God defend the goodness of your hearts. May God defend the sweetness of your souls.”
I don’t think that is so unlike what Jesus prayed for his disciples that night, and what he still prays for us today. He prays for the protection of our hearts, of our souls. Chaplain Kate said she didn’t pray for protection for the police officers – but I think that’s exactly what she did. She prayed for the sort of protection that Jesus asks for us. We will see suffering, Jesus says in his prayer. We will experience suffering ourselves. We will see and experience pain. But in this, he goes on, protect their hearts. Keep them steadfast. Help them continue to live in God’s truth. “Holy Father,” he prays, “protect them… so that they may be one, as we are one.”
It’s not just about us, as individuals, you see. It’s about all of us. Protect them so that they may be one – one church, one people of God, one unified body of love. Protect them from division. Make them one. Protect them from destruction of each other and themselves. Make them one. Protect them from the evils that will make their way into their lives and try to draw them away from God. Make them one.
Jesus prayed this for his disciples on the night before his death, on what we now call Maundy Thursday. But that prayer continues. In the very next verse after our reading today ends, Jesus says that he prays this not only for those present that night, but for all who would come to believe through their words – that’s all of us! Jesus prays this prayer of protection and unity for all of us, and for all who are yet to come. And so, siblings in Christ, may this also be our prayer for each other: that we will find protection from all that separates us from God, that we will dwell in God’s word and God’s truth, and that we will all be one in Christ.
Let us pray… Holy Father, protect these, your children, so that they may be one. Guard them so that not one of them is lost. I’m not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one, from all that would pull them away from you. Come now, O Prince of Peace, make us one body. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment