May 12, 2024
Rev. Mary Erickson
Hope Lutheran Church
John 17:6-19
I’m So Glad He Prayed for Me
Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.
Every Sunday morning our bulletin contains a section with the names of people we are asked to pray for during the week. Some of the names stay on the list for quite a while, and others appear for only that one Sunday. During our worship, then, we include them in our time of prayer.
People in our congregation show genuine concern for these folks. I’m asked how they’re progressing. There is rejoicing when they improve and genuine sorrow when they don’t.
We regularly pray for one another. We call it intercessory prayer. When we intercede for someone in prayer, it’s like we’re ushering them before the throne of God.
The gospel singer/songwriter Dorothy Norwood wrote a song about intercessory prayer. It’s called “Somebody Prayed for Me.” Each verse lifts up someone who prays for her: her mother, her preacher. The final verse of the song goes like this:
My Jesus prayed for me, had me on his mind,
Took the time and prayed for me.
I’m so glad he prayed, I’m so glad he prayed,
I’m so glad he prayed for me.
In this week’s gospel reading, Jesus prays on behalf of his disciples. Towards the end of his prayer, he specifies exactly who he’s praying for. And it’s not just for his disciples gathered with him on that evening. He tells God that he’s also praying for all those who will come to believe in him in the future. That means he’s praying for us as well! As Dorothy Norwood said in her song, I’m so glad he prayed for me.
Jesus taught his disciples how to pray. That prayer, which has endured through the ages is close to the heart of the church. We call it the Lord’s Prayer. But this prayer found in the 17th chapter of John is the “other” Lord’s prayer. It’s the prayer Jesus prays on behalf of his church.
In the section we hear today, there are three main things Jesus prays about. The first one is found in verse 11. He prays that we might be one, just as he and the Father are one. Jesus prays for our unity.
During children’s time we became familiar with the Kenyan proverb: sticks bundled together cannot be broken. There is strength in numbers. When we stand united, we support one another in times of challenge. We’re able to accomplish greater goals. We’re surrounded by caring souls.
This is the first item in Jesus’ prayer. It’s no small thing. Our unity is vital to our life in Christ. And maybe Jesus placed this petition at the top of his prayer because he knew just how many ways we would be able to fracture our fellowship. The devil loves to divide and conquer.
The church becomes divided when we place our unity in something other than Jesus and his healing love. The global expression of Christianity is so very wide and diverse. We come in different denominations. Our denominations have sub-denominations. We self-select according to musical tastes, traditional hymns or contemporary praise songs. We divide over whether God cares more about holy and right living or more about the pursuit of justice in the world. We segregate into camps over how literally or expansively we interpret the Bible. Then we throw in cultural and racial and political differences on top of these other things.
When any of these other categories more strongly define our understanding of what it is to be a Christian and a Christian community, we start to think in terms of Us and Them. We become suspect of Christians who worship differently or hold views contrary to our own. And what has been destroyed is our unity.
There’s an old Jewish story: A Rabbi once asked his students, “How do we know when the night has ended and the day has begun?” One of his students offered an answer: “When I look out at the fields and I can distinguish between my field and the field of my neighbor’s, that’s when the night has ended and day has begun.” A second student offered her answer: “When I look from the fields and I see a house and I can tell that it’s my house and not the house of my neighbor, that’s when the night has ended and the day has begun.” A third student offered an answer: “When I can distinguish the animals in the yard – and I can tell a cow from a horse – that’s when the night has ended.”
Each of these answers brought a sadder, more severe frown to the Rabbi’s face – until finally he shouted: “No! You don’t understand! You only know how to divide! You divide your house from the house of your neighbor, your field from your neighbor’s, one animal from another. Is that all that we can do – divide, separate, split the world into pieces? Isn’t the world broken enough - split into enough fragments?”
The shocked students looked into the sad face of their Rabbi. One of them ventured, “Then Rabbi, tell us: How do we know that night has ended and day has begun?” The Rabbi stared back into the faces of his students and with a gentle voice responded: “When you look into the face of the person who is beside you and you can see that that person is your brother or your sister, when you can recognize that person as a friend. And until you can do that, it will always be night.”
The unity of the church can only be found in our Lord Jesus Christ and his healing grace. When he was lifted on his cross, he drew all people into himself. It is he who unites us.
Secondly, in verse 13 Jesus prays that we may have our joy complete. This isn’t just a little joy. The Greek verb is pleroo. It means full, filled up, to reach capacity, completed. He’s talking about a joy so large and abundant that it completely fills us to the point of overflowing.
Jesus prays this prayer as he faces his arrest, trial and crucifixion. The joy he speaks of isn’t superficial, fair-weather happiness. It’s something deep seated, something that endures even through times of great challenge and disappointment.
This kind of enduring joy can only spring from something that is greater than the sum of our sorrows. It has to derive from a source of promise and life that cannot be extinguished. It must come to us from above, from the divine love of God.
It’s this anchoring in God that inspired the psalmist to sing “weeping my linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.” It led Jeremiah to write “I will turn their mourning into joy.”
Jesus prays that his church may operate and dwell in a joy so complete and upwelling that it will absolutely fill us, no matter what. Because: when we’re filled by Christ’s joy, then there is no space for other things to fill us.
One of our greatest threats as Christ’s people is fear. It’s so very easy for fear to creep into our minds. It’s insidious. And soon we see threats lurking behind every corner. Each decision becomes critical and distressing. And the decisions we make from fear lead us to an outcome very different from ones made in joy.
Fear leads us to contract, to turn inwards. Fear turns up the volume on suspicion. It steers us to preserve and protect what we feel could slip away from us at any moment. Fear is the opposite of faith. Fear leads us to contract, to turn inwards. Fear turns up the volume on suspicion. It steers us to preserve and protect what we feel could slip away from us at any moment. Fear is the opposite of faith.
Joy is a fruit. It grows from the presence of faith, faith that God will provide. Faith anchors us in the knowledge that God’s steadfast love and life is greater than all else. It tells us that all manner of thing shall be well. Faith assures us that the providence of God is greater than all the vacillations of this world. And through that faith, our fears are extinguished and joy abounds. We live as a faith community, as people of faith, not by the fears that melt our hearts, but inspired by an abounding joy the fills us. It fills us, packed down and overflowing. Jesus prays that we may have joy, a joy that completely fills us.
Thirdly, Jesus prays that we may be sanctified. That always sounds like a churchy word. But basically, it means to be made holy, to be set aside for God’s purpose.
When I try to explain holiness to our confirmands, I pull out the pitcher we use for baptisms. “If we needed extra pitchers for a really big meal in Olson Hall, would you use this baptismal pitcher?” Absolutely not! That pitcher has been set aside for this one purpose and one purpose only. That’s holiness.
Jesus prays for how we will operate within the world. He uses the word “world” 13 times in today’s passage. He says that he received his disciples FROM the world. But they no longer BELONG TO the world. However, he’s not asking God to take them OUT of the world. Rather, he asks that they to be sent INTO the world.
We are in the world but not of it. By asking for our sanctification, Jesus is giving us a mission. He’s endowing his church with mission, with purpose. We are in this world as he was. We are here as holy agents of grace, the grace given to us through Christ Jesus our Lord. We are in this world as Christ’s ambassadors of grace and life and hope.
Jesus prayed on our behalf. He interceded for us in prayer. To intercede means to mediate on behalf of another. And this is exactly what Jesus did just a few hours after finishing this prayer. He became our mediator on his cross. In that moment, he spanned the gaping chasm between ourselves and God. He reconciled our alienation. And in his mediation, we find our unity, and our joy, and our purpose as God’s holy people.
