Easter 7 2015

7 Easter 2015

I don’t know if any of you had the chance to celebrate it or not, but last Thursday was the Feast of the Ascension—sort of a big day for the Church. Unfortunately, it’s on a Thursday, and really no one comes to church on Thursday unless they feel like their soul is imperiled. But, the Episcopal Church doesn’t do “hellfire and damnation” very well. We don’t even make distinction between venial and mortal sins—we just get cross when you use the wrong fork at a dinner party.

Well, more importantly, the Ascension, of course, was when Jesus, 40 days after his resurrection ascended into heaven to return to the Father. This then makes way for the Feast of Pentecost, which we celebrate next Sunday. And, while there are some churches who will probably celebrate the Feast of the Ascension today, I just feel like that’s cheating.

All the same, even though we’re not celebrating the Feast of the Ascension today—our readings still reflect this sense that Jesus will not be around in a physical way for much longer.

Now, chronologically in the Gospel reading, this section happens before the crucifixion. In fact, the Passion narrative begins in the very next chapter in John’s Gospel. However, the drafters of the Revised Common Lectionary found it meet and right so to assign this reading for us as we near the end of the Easter Season. And, I personally think it works as a nice prelude to the Feast of Pentecost and the birth of the Church.

  

Having a look at today’s Gospel reading, then, we know that it is a prayer on behalf of not only the disciples that Jesus will eventually leave in a bodily sense; but the prayer even includes everyone who will believe because of their witness…Effectively, that includes us.

In this prayer, Jesus gives thanks for these disciples who had become friends. He is grateful that God had given them to him, and says that he protected them, but now—as he prepares to leave them—he gives them back to the care and safekeeping of God…

Again, this prayer (which is known as the High Priestly prayer), was offered before Jesus gave himself over to be arrested and eventually executed. And even though in John’s Gospel, Jesus seems to know everything that’s about to happen—we can see in this prayer that there is still fear for what will happen to his disciples. For all that he can foresee, he can’t imagine what their fates will be… So Jesus prays for them. He hopes for them, and entrusts them (and us included) to the care of God; asking that they be made one as he and the father are One.

It’s also a prayer which demonstrates a deep love for his friends, and by extension, those of us who came to faith generations later because of these disciples. And for those of us who are implied in the prayer—it becomes a kind of timeless benediction for the whole Church.

And, well, I suppose if we were only to look at the prayer superficially, we may wonder how it’s worked so far.

  

With about 41,000 different denominations within Christianity in the U.S. alone; with the sharp divide between Protestant and Catholic—the more important division of the Eastern Churches and Rome—even the division between Mainline Protestant denominations and other Evangelical denominations—we may just wonder whether or not Jesus’ prayer was too impossible to be answered. I mean, people in congregations can’t even seem to behave and get along. So, what are we supposed to do with this prayer?

Bishop and theologian N.T. Wright makes an interesting point regarding this prayer, however. He says that we really don’t know what transpires between anyone and God when they pray… He says, it’s probably like two people looking at something that’s ‘red,’ and wondering whether or not the red that one person is experiencing looks the same as the red the other person is seeing. In other words, the act of praying for one of us may be a varied experience to another.

Bp. Wright continues by explaining that in the same way, we may wonder whether or not John remembered all of the words that he might have heard Jesus praying. Perhaps John even prayed what Jesus prayed himself for his small community of believers—these people who would, in turn, record these stories of Jesus—and even this prayer—for those of us who would come after.

  

But even for all of that, I think it’s fair to wonder why this prayer is in there, if it seems to hold up such an impossible expectation… After all, it wasn’t all that long ago in John’s Gospel when Jesus was feeling put-out with his disciples, and was telling them that they would scatter as soon as things got rough. So, again, why the prayer?

For myself, looking at the readings for today—I have to admit that I had wished that the Lectionary would have “thrown me a bone” and given me a little more to preach on—just something to get a bite. But, the more I thought about it, I think this is a very good passage for us. And, with regard to my questioning about this prayer of Jesus—I don’t know that I have a really good ‘hold’ on what I think about it. However, that’s to say, I believe there is something to be attended to here, and I think one key is what N.T. Wright said about John praying these words, as much as Jesus might have.

Here’s what I think… While I’m not ready to base my faith on whether or not I understand Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer—what I would say is that from what we can see in the prayer, Jesus prayed without any illusion of perfection in these disciples, nor in the Church that would be birthed afterward. In fact, it seems to me that his prayer is well grounded in the rational fear of what would happen to these friends of his, once the world got hold of them. (Admittedly it would be a few hundred years before the Church would try to become the Roman Empire—but I think the anxiety was warranted.)

  

This being said, it seems to me that part of living into this vision that Jesus was casting in his prayer is one that, like John, we (ourselves) should be praying. We should be praying that all of us would be one as Jesus and the father are One. We should be praying that we wouldn’t be kept apart from the world, but sent into it; and all the while not caught up in it…

And what I think we would learn from praying this prayer—what we would begin to see is that all of this: faith, worship, relationship with God—none of it is exclusively for any one of us. This is the whole meaning of being sent into the world, and the point of Jesus giving all of us back to God—we don’t belong to ourselves, and the Kingdom of God is subject to our whims.

So, to me, this also means that not only is our church, our worship, and our congregation not just for us—it’s also most assuredly not about us. This means that we’re not allowed to get offended when the subject of serving others comes up. It means that no one gets a free pass for gossip—no matter how creative our terminology about it may be. It means that the style preferences of a few do not outweigh the call for all of us to worship in spirit and in truth. And while none of this can override the work and ministry of the Church; all of it can most assuredly destroy a community, and keep it from doing Kingdom work.

  

The point is, even after almost 2,000 years of this prayer being offered on our behalf, and all that God continues to do in the Church through the Holy Spirit—we are still very much a work in progress. At best, we’re a social experiment to see what could happen if the Creator of all things broke into Creation, and called humanity to participate in the work of redemption that he started.

And so, it seems to me that this prayer is an invitation, an exercise, even, in the work of striving to be the image of the Church that Jesus was dreaming of when he offered this prayer.

Anyway, I know this hasn’t been one of my more warm, fuzzy sermons—but if you wanted that, you would be at home watching Joel Osteen, and getting an ego boost rather than a call to discipleship.

 And here it is: Jesus prayed that we would become his hands and feet in the world, to continue to bring the Good News of God’s Kingdom and love to the world…not the anxiety-ridden, dysfunctional wreck that the Church has become. If you’ve read any articles in response to the recent Pew study about the decline of the Church, you’d think we were trying to become prom queen rather than the Church.

  

I think it begs the question, then: what would the Church look like if we measured our success and our practice up against this High Priestly Prayer of Jesus, rather than the standards of corporate America? I wonder if we would begin to see the hope filled potential that Jesus sees in all of us, and in the Church he’s called to continue his work of redemption in the world?

Maybe the first step for us, then, would be working on becoming familiar with that vision, and allowing it to take root in our own hearts. Perhaps making this prayer our own is a start.