Easter 7B
May 12, 2024
John 15:9-17
INTRODUCTION
Today is the last Sunday in the Easter season, 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 (“he ascended into heaven”) – so I’m going to tell you what happened. 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. (We’ll see that part of the story next week on Pentecost, 10 days after the Ascension.) 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 to make of all that!
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 reading 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 from John 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]
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Ok, let’s just say it: that Gospel reading is a difficult one to follow.
On the one hand, it’s a really incredible moment – we get to overhear Jesus praying for the disciples, and us, by extension. It is often quite meaningful when someone says they are praying for you, but here it is not just any someone: it is Jesus! Praying for us. Like, whoa.
On the other hand, this prayer is a bit of a word soup, a collection of words and concepts that kind of hang together, but also bounce around and repeat and don’t have a natural arc… though to be honest, this is sort of how my own prayers sound, as my mind darts from one request to the next before I find my way back to my original purpose for praying.
But difficult though it may be to follow, in the end I’m still just floored by the fact that this is happening at all, that Jesus is praying for us and we get to eavesdrop. So I don’t want to just zone out and glaze over; I want to hear it, soak it in, understand, and experience how cool it is that Jesus is praying for me. So let’s break this down a bit: what is Jesus praying for, for us?
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, you 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 would not be torn apart in times of trial and fear, but instead be built up and strengthened.
In the best-selling memoir, Here If You Need Me, Kate Braestrup reflects on her ministry as the 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.”
It's similar to 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.
View full service HERE.
No comments:
Post a Comment