If you have your Bibles today, please open up them up to John 17:1. If you want to use the red pew Bibles that would be about page 1070. If you have been here for a while, you know we have been going through the gospel of John. I looked back and we have been going through the gospel of John since February of last year. The good news is that we are on track to finish April 29. We are at a very appropriate place in the gospel because we are in Jesus’ last week of public ministry on earth. It is very appropriate because this week starts what is known throughout Christianity as the Passion Week. It is the week leading up to the death, burial, and ultimate resurrection of Jesus Christ. We are at a very appropriate place where Jesus had gotten away from his public ministry and he spent time with his disciples. Really he is done talking with his disciples and what he decides to do at this point in John 17 is offer up a prayer to God. All of chapter 17 is considered Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer. We are going to read all the way through John 17:1-26 and then we will go back and key in on some specific areas. (Scripture read here.)
That is a rather lengthy prayer. A lot of meat in the prayer. If you were paying attention, you see that there is basically one prayer broken down into three requests. Jesus prays for himself. He prays for the disciples. And he prays for all believers. In fact, if you are using the NIV you probably see these headings in your Bible. Even though we can’t go through the individual sections, I am going to try to key in on what I would consider three key requests.
The first request that we see is Jesus praying for himself. What he prays for is that he might be able to receive glory. He says “I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.” It is difficult for us to think about a prayer like this. It almost sounds a little bit arrogant. We don’t like the idea of somebody seeking their own glory whether it is a celebrity or an athlete or someone like that. Really Jesus is just trying to receive back the glory that he had before the world began. Just like we would have trouble with somebody seeking their own glory, I suspect that the disciples might have had a little bit of a problem with Jesus seeking his glory because, in the Old Testament, if we had time to look at it, we would see that God the Father doesn’t share his glory with anyone. What we see again is that Jesus is really simply seeking the glory that he had before the world began. If you were with us from the very beginning and think back on John 1 where John laid out all of John and laid out the key themes. One of the key themes early on in John was from chapter 1 of John 14 where John says “The word became flesh and made its dwelling amongst us. We have seen his glory. The glory of the one and only who came from the Father full of grace and full of truth.” John is letting us know that this man, Jesus, that has come into the world has some glory attached to him. We see Jesus just reassuming the glory that he already had before the world began. As we get into the crucifixion, as we get into the resurrection, as we get into what is called the Passion Week, it is a very good time to consider what Jesus gave up. What Jesus gave up to come down to earth and experience what we would call the incarnation; the taking on of flesh. I don’t have this verse on the screen. Basically, Paul lays it out very clearly in the book of Philippians. He says in verses 2.5-8 “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus who, being in the very nature of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself, and he became obedient to death; even death on the cross.” He had all the glory with God. He was co-equal with God, yet he did not consider that equality, that power, that glory something to be grasped, something to be retained, something to be held on to, but was willing to set that aside and become a man. In theological terms, that is called the kenosis. It is the setting aside of the glory and power of Jesus. To lay down and take on that frail humanity. We see Jesus asking for that glory back that he had from the very beginning. It is not like Jesus wants the glory for himself. He wants to share the glory with the Father. He gave the Father glory by completing the work he came to do. We see that in John 17:4 where he says “I brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.”
Stop for a minute and we think about what was the work Jesus came to do. It is easy to think going into Passion Week he came to die on the cross for our sins. That is true. But really what was the purpose of dying on the cross for our sins. It was really to open up the opportunity for relationship back with the Father. It was sin that split that relationship. It was sin that made it impossible to reach up to God. So what Jesus was doing was making the Father known again. He was reestablishing the relationship. In fact, he would say that making God known would be the key to eternal life. If we backed up and looked at John 17:3 we see “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” That sums up eternal life. Eternal life is that reconnection with the Father through the Son. That is what it is all about. It is not just about us getting a ticket into heaven. It is about reestablishing a relationship. That is what Jesus came to do. He came to reconnect us with God so that we could worship with God for all eternity. That was the work. By doing that work, he was giving the glory up to God.
In the same way, as a side note, our responsibility is to give glory to God. Any Presbyterians in the room? Anybody know what the Westminster Confession is? What is the first question in the Westminster Confession? What is the chief end of man? To glorify God and to enjoy him forever. I like the Westminster Confession. I like that part of it because it spells out exactly why we exist. To give glory to God. How do we glorify God? We glorify God just like Jesus came to complete the work. We glorify God when we come to complete the work that he gave us to do. The work is that we are to do good works based on our giftedness not to gain the favor of God but out of response to the love of God. We do good works. We are not a work-based operation, but basically we do good works out of the response of the love of God through Christ Jesus. I had the opportunity to do a funeral yesterday. We had over 250 people in here doing a funeral service for a man who passed away. Just a phenomenal man. He attended this church for the last year or so. A great guy. Died at 32 years of age. A veteran. A policeman but most of all he was a community servant. He was someone who spent his whole life doing good works for the community. He reached out to the children. He reached out to the people that nobody would talk to. He reached out to the youth. He was there for everybody. He was there for his family. He was there for the military. He was there as a policeman. He truly was a servant. The passage I used was Ephesians 2:10. It says “We are God’s workmanship; created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God had prepared us in advanced to do.” That is what he has done. Basically, God made us his workmanship, gave us a laundry list of good works to do and said now go forth and do them not to gain the favor of God but in response to the favor of God. Go forth and do good works and what will happen is you will be a reflection of the glory of God. That is the responsibility. We carry on that glory. We carry on the glory of God just as Jesus did good works, we are to do good works. That is the first part of the prayer. The first part of the prayer is Jesus seeking back that glory.
The second part of the prayer is for the disciples. If you look through that section, there is a lot of stuff to take in. But really, the key word that continued to pop up as I was reading it is this idea of protection. Jesus goes on to say “My prayer is not that you would take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.” That you would protect them. First of all, what he is saying is this is not my prayer. My prayer is not that you would remove the disciples out of the world but that you would protect them while they are in the world. He made sure that the disciples heard this. I can imagine the disciples sitting there saying listen, Jesus, you have kind of painted a little bit of a dire picture over these last few hours. You pretty much let us know that things are going to get dark. There is a lot of trouble we are going to face. They may be thinking if Jesus is going to check out of the world, maybe they want to check out with him. You know how Jesus talked about a few weeks ago that he was going to go to his Father’s house and prepare a place with a lot of rooms with a big table with lots and lots of food. That place is sounding pretty good right now these disciples are saying. Maybe we can go with you there. He is saying no, sorry. It is graduation time. I spent three years with you and I am not about to take you out of the world. I am going to put you to work. I am going to take this motley crew that I have invested my time in and they are going to be the group of people that are going to kick start the greatest movement in all of history: Christianity. These 11 guys are the ones that are going to kick start this movement following the resurrection called Christianity. So what is his prayer? His prayer is not that he would take them out of the world. His prayer to the Father is that he would protect them. Protect them from who? Protect them from the evil one. Who is the evil one? The devil. Satan. Beelzebub. Whatever you want to call him. The man in the red suit. Whatever you want to call it, he is saying it is the evil one.
As a side note, some people may not believe in the devil or Satan or whatever. As an author, C.S. Lewis makes a statement in his book called the Screwtape Letters. He says when it comes to demons, there are two equal but opposite errors. The first error is to disbelieve. Not believe at all. The second error is to believe and have an unhealthy interest in them. We can fall into either one of those errors. We could totally ignore the demonic or we can take an unhealthy interest in them. But even if you don’t believe in the demonic, I suspect that most people would believe in this idea of evil. There is a lot of evil going on in the world. It doesn’t take much to see the evil in the world. I think it is C.S. Lewis who makes the argument for God based on the evil in the world. He makes an interesting statement. He says that someone who says they don’t believe in God, says they are an atheist or whatever, they rightly cannot call anything evil no matter how atrocious it is. Because the minute you call something evil what you are doing is assuming there is some sort of an absolute good out there. If there is an absolute good that means there is a moral lawgiver which points in some degree to God. So evil can be the argument for the existence of God.
Continuing on, Jesus prayed for his disciples that they would be protected. But what is he protecting is the question. He is not protecting them against the trials and the persecutions. He is really not. In fact, we know later if we looked in the book of James. James says “Consider it pure joy when you face evil of every kind because it is the testing of your faith and it develops perseverance.” What I think Jesus is trying to protect is their faith. I think he is trying to say protect their faith because it is the faith that is going to enable them to overcome the trials in life. We can see this if we were to flip over to the gospel of Luke where we fall back into the Last Supper again and Jesus is about to confront Peter’s denial. He says something to him that is very interesting. He says to him in Luke 22:31 “Simon, Simon, Satan has to sift you as wheat.” And he goes on to say “But I have prayed for you Simon that your faith would not fail.” Then he goes on to say “And when you return, strengthen your brother.” It is like Jesus saying, Simon, I know you are going to mess up. You are going to deny me but I am there for you. I am your advocate and I am praying for you. What am I praying? That your faith will not fail. As you go through these trials, even go through these uncertainties, as you go through the next several hours, several days, I am praying that your faith will not fail. Finally, when you come back around and get your wits about you, come back and go alongside your other brothers and stand alongside them and strengthen them as they go through their trials. It is a perfect application for all of us. I love this passage. We are all going through some sort of a trial. Some of you are going through them right now. Some of you are going through some very intense trials in your marriages and your finances or whatever. You are going through these trials and what happens is your faith starts waving a little bit. Pretty soon you start thinking do I really believe in God. You start doubting this stuff. Here you have Jesus, the advocate up there, praying for you. Praying that your faith would not fail. Then what happens is you come around. You finally see the light of day again. He says I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail and now that you have returned, now that you have come back around and have your wits about you again, now you go alongside your brother or your sister that is going through the same thing and strengthen their faith. That is the job that he is saying you have to do here. He is praying that God would protect the faith of these apostles that were about to kick start the church.
The idea of sifting is interesting because it has the idea of separating. What is Satan trying to separate? He is trying to separate the apostles from God and from Jesus. He is trying to separate them from each other. Still even today what is he trying to do? He is trying to separate us from God, but I think he is trying to separate us from others. He is trying to separate out his church. If he can get the church splits happening, what happens is that we become totally ineffective.
This goes to the third prayer. He is done praying for the disciples. Now all of a sudden he shifts the prayer and he decides he is going to pray for all believers for all time. Jesus is standing there with a telescope and he is looking way down the years of history. He is looking at the churches and he is looking at the people. What does he see? He sees division. He begins to see an ineffective church because the church is being divided. He is looking down there and begins to pray for them. He says “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who believe in me through their message that all of them may be one. Father, just as you are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” It is a prayer for all of us today because we need that unity. Otherwise, we are not going to survive. In fact, I think it is 1 Peter 5:8. Peter says “The enemy prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” The easiest way to prowl around and get you is when you are separated. When you are separated from your family or when you are separated from your church. When you are out there by yourself, it is a little bit dangerous. There is safety in numbers. There was an example that came to me last night or this morning. It was actually a video on YouTube that I guess is making the rounds on YouTube. It is a video about a water buffalo and some lions. It is kind of a gory video but it is making its way around YouTube. I guess some people were over in Africa and they were on this safari or tour and there was this herd of water buffalo hanging out by the water, and some people were filming them. Suddenly they pan over and there is a pride of lions getting ready to pounce on them. Sure enough, the tourists go uh-oh. What happens is the water buffalo herd get a sense and start taking off. The lions take off and they are going after them. What happens is the baby water buffalo falls behind and the lions are on him. They are on him really bad. They are by the water and what happens is the baby water buffalo jumps into the water and while the lions are trying to get the baby water buffalo out of the water, a crocodile comes up and gets a hold of the water buffalo on the other side. They are there playing this tug of war over this poor little water buffalo. It is pretty gory. I thought I would show it but it was just a little bit too gory for today. They are tugging on this poor, little helpless water buffalo back and forth and the people don’t know what to do. Out of the blue, you see one of the big water buffalo come back and then they all come back and they are on those lions like stink. All of a sudden you have lions flying everywhere. I don’t know where the crocodile went. The little water buffalo gets up and goes away. A happy ending. He lived. He walked away. It is all because they didn’t abandon the little baby. They stayed together as one. It is the same way for people in the church. When we are together as one, it is hard to attack any one person. The bottom line is there are people missing today that have fallen away from the church. Now they are out there all alone. Now you have Satan like a prowling lion going around looking for someone to devour. That person that is not connected to a church, not connected to God is pray to be attacked. They are. They are attacked. Their marriages are attacked. Their finances are attacked. Their faith is attacked. They fall away from the church and Satan has one more number. He has one more person that pulled away from the church. As I say this, the idea is that it is not just for the people within this church, Bellevue Christian Church. The idea of oneness that I believe that Jesus is praying for is the oneness in the entire body of Christ. In other words, it includes the people we don’t like sometimes. Maybe it is the Presbyterians. Maybe it is the Methodists. Maybe it is those wild, crazy Pentecostals. We are supposed to be one body in Christ. The Catholics, the Baptists, the Methodists, the Presbyterians all together as one body because as we serve one body and we go out into the community, and we know that there are a lot of problems in this community, we don’t go out there as a single church. We go there as a Body of Christ. We go out there and we begin to deal with the roaring lions. We are not afraid to deal with them because there is strength in numbers. I by no means stand here and say I am the master of Christian unity. I can’t say that. What I can say is that I have made an effort.
My effort towards unity stems from my days in the seminary. We were required, and it was actually one of the best portions of my seminary time, to do an internship. We were required to do an intern as a chaplain in some sort of medical facility. I chose to do my chaplain internship in one of the largest hospitals in the country, the Cleveland Clinic. If you have ever been to the Cleveland Clinic, it is huge. They are dealing with some of the hardest issues. It is a heart hospital. They deal with a lot of heart surgery and related heart issues. I was assigned to the Cleveland Clinic and I was part of a very intensive area. It was very difficult because I was not only part of an ICU unit. I was seeing death almost every single night. About five deaths on average. Plus I was separated from my two children. At that time, Austin and Natalie were back in Oregon for the summer and not only that I was grieving the loss of my first wife, Dana. I am in this very intense environment. Smack in the middle of it, I wasn’t doing a chaplaincy by myself. I had to do a chaplaincy with a bunch of other people that weren’t part of my Christian movement, part of the Christian church. I was one of eight. There was a Presbyterian, an Episcopalian, a Methodist, a couple Lutherans, a nun, and then some lady from Princeton and I don’t know what she believed, but she was there. Here I am amongst these people and they called me basically the Bible thumper because I was the one that said when we are dealing with something, let’s just open the Bible and see what the Bible says. So I was referred to as the Bible thumper of the group. To be honest, when I got there, I really didn’t like a lot of those people and they didn’t like me. I didn’t care. I just wanted to get through that summer. I just wanted to get through that internship. As time went, it was very interesting because we began this camaraderie that was born out of the method of performing our chaplaincy work referred to as action, reflection, action. In other words you don’t go and open a book and look up how am I going to be a chaplain. How am I going to minister to a dying patient? We were told to just take action. Just show up in the room. So we would show up in the rooms. We would go to our respective floor. Then we would come back and reflect on it in the process of group time. All these denominations processing these intense life-death issues together. We would get into theological discussions that would turn into arguments. We would get into shouting matches. But the funny thing is that over time, we began to really respect each other. We began to understand each other and we began to learn about each other. Over time, I really had just a phenomenal respect for a lot of them. In fact, I can partially attribute the fact that I am a pastor here today is because of a comment that one lady said. This Episcopalian lady in her 50s. She was a widow too. We would sit around and have lunch together. Those who know me well, know that I can be kind of a wishy-washy indecisive person. But I was really wishy-washy when I first began seminary. I had just come out of the business world and I didn’t know if I wanted to be a pastor. I didn’t think I was equipped to be a pastor. Every day I am bemoaning it. I can’t do this. I don’t feel like I am a pastor. I just don’t think I am called to be a pastor. I think this woman got tired of hearing me. We were sitting down in the cafeteria having lunch. She looked at me and said “Listen Chuck. Let me explain this to you. There is a salt shaker. There is a pepper shaker. There is a fork. There is a spoon. There is Chuck the pastor. Now get over it and get on with it.” At that moment I said to myself I guess I am a pastor. It was as simple as that but it was such a powerful moment. I needed somebody to tell me quit thinking you are not a pastor. You are a pastor now get on and do the work that you are called to do. That is what I did. I got that through an Episcopalian woman. That is who I got it from. I didn’t get it from my seminary. I got it from an Episcopalian woman at the ICU unit of the Cleveland Clinic. My point being there is value in coming together with those of different faith traditions because you do learn from each other that you have something to contribute to the equation of Christianity.
By the time we left, we still disagreed with most things. But we made a commitment. We said you know what, there is value in this. So when we go to our respective churches out there in the world, don’t forget this. Don’t forget the importance of connecting or fellowshipping with people from other faith traditions, even the extreme ones. When we moved here in 2004, I found out we had this thing in town called the Fellowship of Ministries. I begrudgingly became a part of that. We have the Methodists, the Presbyterians, and all those different denominations and we have me in the middle of it. People don’t know what we are because we just say we are Christians. They say you can’t just be a Christian. You have to be something. No, we are just Christians. Once you get over that hurdle, we started fellowshipping together. We share about each other’s events and over time we began doing things together. We do the annual crop walk together. We do the baccalaureate service together which we are going to be doing here on June 3. We do what we call the annual cross walk and Good Friday service together. This Friday, we will be doing it again. I think it is the fifth year I have participated in it. It is a wonderful event because we start at one church, we start at the Methodist church this year, and we have this wooden cross. We all meet there and anybody in the community that wants to meet there, we meet there and we carry this wooden cross down Lincoln Avenue. We stop at different places. Usually in front of a church or whatever and we say a prayer together. To be honest, it doesn’t get a lot of participation. Usually it is about the same 30 or 40 people every year that come out. Sometimes a year comes around and I say oh we have to do the cross walk again. I realize it is not about how many people come out. It is about the fact that it is a witness to Christian unity. It is a witness to this prayer of Jesus. It doesn’t take a lot but that is the kind of stuff we have to do. That is the kind of stuff we are called to do. The more we do that kind of thing, the more we are able to take a stand against the enemy that is prowling around looking to devour.
In summation, Paul says the same thing in his letter to the Ephesians when he writes “Make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and the father of all, who is overall and through all and in all.” Do you hear that word? One. That is a unity. There is no Christian organization that has every single element of doctrine down. We all can learn from each other. We are all here to learn from each other. We are all here to stand in spite of our differences. God says I am going to throw you all in the same room and throw you all in the same community now get along. As you get along that is going to be a witness to the power of God on earth. That is what we are supposed to do. In summary, we have the three prayers. Jesus praying for the glory. As he gives the Father glory, we give the Father glory through our works. We have the prayer for the disciples. The prayer for the protection not to remove them from the trials but to protect their faith in the midst of the trials. Then we have this prayer for the believers of all time. We have the prayer for oneness and unity. That we would all be one Body of Christ as we go forth carrying Christ’s agenda into the world.
In closing, Jesus obviously is praying within hours of his arrest, his betrayal by Judas, and his ultimate crucifixion. I thought this week it would be appropriate on Friday evening to maybe get together and do a prayer together. This actually came to me last night. I was kind of struggling with this because I knew I had two chapters left to get to the resurrection. I have 18 and 19. The resurrection is in chapter 20. My option was to go to Easter and go to John 20 and then after Easter backtrack and talk about the resurrection. I said God there has to be an answer in here. There is. Just get together and read it through together. Read it through together as brothers and sisters in Christ. Read through sections of chapters 18 and 19 and don’t worry about who shows up. If three people show up, we will split the two chapters among the three people. We will read through the sections and as we read through the sections we will stop and pray. We will pray for unity. We will pray for the glory of God. We will pray for the people that are struggling and need some sort of protection out there. So that is what we are going to do. This Friday, Good Friday, 7 o’clock meet here. If you can make it great. Don’t feel any pressure about it. If you can make it here, show up. We will read through those two chapters. We will pray together. We will come together, and we will be nice and ready for Easter Sunday as it comes. Let us pray right now.
