Sunday after Ascension
Psalm 47, Ezekiel 39:21-29, 1 Peter 4:12-19, John 17:1-19
Overheard Prayers
One of the more guilty pleasures one can encounter from time to time is to find oneself overhearing a conversation in which you are not a party. When I was a boy, this was a fairly easy thing to do. Our telephone system in those days was considerably more primitive than today, and we had what was known then as a party line. In our case, there were four other houses on the block, and all the phones in those houses were more or less like extensions of one another. If you picked up the receiver and one of your neighbors was already talking to someone else, you could overhear the entire conversation. You can imagine how really nosey people learned how to lift the receiver VERY CAREFULLY, hoping to harvest some juicy piece of gossip.
That kind of thing can still happen, of course. Not with telephones so often, perhaps. But, sometimes in restaurants, or airports on or airplanes, or other public places, you may find your attention snared by a conversation you can’t help but hear.
If there’s anything more arresting than getting to be something like a fly on the wall, it’s being a fly on the wall you are the subject of conversation. That is something very like what we have in the gospel for today.
In John 17, the apostle John preserves for us the longest recorded prayer our Lord prayed. It is astounding to me that only John preserves it. Remember, they were moving as a group, after the conclusion of the Passover meal, on their way to the Mount of Olives. Some of what John records in chapters 15-18 of his gospel must have been teaching which Jesus did as they were moving along the route to their destination.
It’s only my speculation, but I wonder if, perhaps, this prayer is recorded only by John because John alone was close enough to Jesus – close enough physically, that is – to have overheard it.
At any rate, we know for sure that John heard it, and he found himself overhearing Jesus’ prayer to God the Father, when the subject of the prayer was this disciples themselves.
In the gospel lesson we read a moment ago, Jesus is praying for two things. He prays for himself, and he prays for his disciples. Let’s look at each of these in turn.
The most remarkable thing about Jesus’ prayer for himself is how anticipatory it is. Later, in Gethsemane, Jesus will pour out his soul in anguish as the horror of his impending passion presses down on him. But, here, he is already looking beyond that passion to the results that flow from it. And his request is that God would glorify him, so that He could subsequently glorify the Father.
And, how would that glorification of the Father be accomplished? Jesus says how it will happen: “As you have given Him authority over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as you have given Him. And, this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only True God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”
Yes, Jesus’ prayer for himself is for the glory on the other side of the passion. And, though the passion still lies ahead of him in the next 24 hours, he speaks of it as if it were already in the past. “I have finished the work which You have given Me to do,” Jesus prays. “And, now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.”
The author of Hebrews in chapter 12 notes that it was for the joy set before Him that Jesus endured the cross, despising the shame. And we see that here – in the prayer he prayed for his glorification, for the capacity to glorify His father, and for a return to the glory which he had formerly known with his father in heaven.
Jesus then prayed for his disciples, and he asked two things for them.
First of all, Jesus prayed for their preservation. He noted that the Father had already preserved them up to that time. “I have manifested Your name to the men whom you have given Me out of the world. They were Yours, and you gave them to me.” They were gifts from the Father to the Son.
“While I was with them in the world, I kept them in your name,” Jesus says. But, now he is going to depart the world. And this prompts his prayer that even as he had preserved them safe from the world, so God the Father would continue to preserve them once Jesus has left this world.
Jesus’ disciples are going to face many and difficult trials in the years ahead. They will have two enemies – the world itself, and the god of this world, the devil. And so Jesus prays for this way:
“I have given them your word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that you should keep them from the evil one.”
But, Jesus prays for something more than mere preservation from their enemies – he prays that their separation from the world and the devil will be completed, augmented, exaggerated, if you will.
“They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them by your truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. And, for their sakes, I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth.”
It sounds odd, perhaps, to think of Jesus being sanctified. The idea is to be set apart for God’s purposes. It does not necessarily mean what we often mean by it – to be cleansed from sin, particularly faults and folly and sin patterns. That is, of course, a necessary consequence when you set apart a sinful man or woman for God’s purposes – God will work in his life to cleanse him from sin. But, the primary idea of being sanctified is to be set apart for God’s purposes alone – to accomplish the work he gives us to do.
I wonder how much of what John overheard in this prayer he actually understood at the time. Clearly, he remembered the prayer, whether because of his own memory or because he was aided by the Holy Spirit at the time he composed his gospel.
Of this I am certain – when John did compose his gospel, many years after this prayer had been prayed, I am confident he rejoiced that Jesus had prayed it, and so should we rejoice.
Can you imagine how radically different things would have been if the Apostles in those first years had NOT gotten it right? Can you imagine how devastating it would have been if they had not been preserved from the attacks of the Evil one, or if they had succumbed to all the blandishments and temptations of the world to conform to its values?
The record we have in the New Testament shows how vital these prayers by Jesus were. The persecutions meted out to the Apostles were intense, and ended in all of them being martyred for their testimony. But, they held fast their testimony to the gospel.
The occasions for disagreements and conflicts
among them were, no doubt, numerous. The chief of these was the dispute between Peter and Paul over the Law of Moses in the church at Galatia. This dispute was the occasion for the first general council of the Church, recorded for us in Acts 15. But, their unity held fast.
And, so it was for the first generations of Christians, who built on the foundation of the Apostles work in that first century after Jesus ascended into heaven. They got it right. And this prayer which Jesus prayed for them is why they got it right.
We are now 2,000 years removed from this prayer and the men for whom Jesus prayed on that occasion. What shall we think of it?
I suggest we think three things:
First, that we be grateful for this testimony of the advocacy which we have in our Great High Priest. Clement of Alexandria in the Fourth Century was the first to refer to this prayer as the High Priestly Prayer of Jesus. He was, no doubt, influenced in this choice of words by the teaching found in the Epistle to the Hebrews, on Jesus’ current priestly ministry in heaven on behalf of all believers. Here, in this prayer, we can see something of what that looks like, as Jesus served as a Great High Priest for his own disciples before he left them in this world.
Second, I suggest that the things Jesus prayed for then are things which he continues to pray for us, for within sixty years of the time when Jesus prayed this prayer for his disciples, they too were gone from the earth, replaced by their own disciples. And, then those disciples died – many of them martyred for the faith – and they were replaced by their disciples. And, so on down the centuries until today.
The world still hates Christians for the same reason that it hated Christ Himself. The world is still the provenance of the Evil One, who is eager to attack those who do the will of Christ. I am grateful for the record of this prayer which Jesus prayed for his disciples, for I know that it is something very like what he prays for you and me in heaven.
And, finally, we have in this prayer a clear agenda from our Savior for our lives here in this world, during the time we remain in this world. He desires – he prays – that we will be set apart from it. Though we are in the world, we are not of the world, and this is most clearly seen when the word of Christ dwells in us richly through the ministry of these Apostles for whom Christ prayed before he departed this world.
God grant that we may prove faithful to the word of Christ that comes to us through these disciples for whom Jesus prayed. And, for Jesus’ sake, may God also grant that this word would set us apart from the world, so that we might be sanctified by the truth and so show ourselves to be his disciples.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
