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Sermon - The Seventh Sunday in Easter (B) - 24th May 2009
St Aidan's Anglican Church West Epping
Readings: John 17:6-19
One of the most significant aspects of our life of faith is the matter of prayer. It is one of the great gifts and blessings given to us by God. Through prayer we are always connected to our creator. We can bring all our concerns, all our joys and fears to God in prayer. And in the Bible no one prays as much as Jesus prayed. We might think that he was the last person who needed to pray. But repeatedly in the gospels we are told of Jesus persistence in prayer and at times, the contents of those prayers. And his was a great mission so we can readily understand why Jesus prays for himself but why would he pray for his disciples also? We might answer that by saying that he is praying for them because they are his disciples. But how did they come to be in that relationship with him?
This is not asked as an obvious question. It’s a question that the text is concerned to answer; it’s a point that Jesus bases his prayer for the disciples on – and so it must be an issue of real importance for us to grasp. What gives Jesus’ prayer for these disciples its reality is the relationship he shares with them.
There are three parts to this.
First, these disciples belong to the Father. These men have been given to Jesus by his Father. “They were yours”, says Jesus. They belong to the Father in a special way. And they were given to Jesus “out of the world”. That highlights the Father’s choice, free and deliberate.
That is how these men had come to belong to the Father; he chose them out of the world. And that small phrase, “out of the world” also suggests that, like us, they had previously belonged to the world with all its corruption. There was nothing inherently special about these men that drove the Father to choose them; it was simply the free choice of God.
Second, they were the Father’s gift to his Son – The Father chose them and gave them to his Son (vv.6,9) and so the Father and Son share in all things together (v.10).
The Father will rescue this world through his Son and will remake all things in and through him, so anyone who wants to share in that future must be joined to the Son – and that is what has happened to these men, by the will of God. They are a gift to his Son, in order to bring glory to the Son through their sharing in all that the Son is and has achieved.
Third, there is the response of faith – How do the disciples experience this for themselves? How is it made true in their own lives? In this way: Jesus made the Father known to them and they obeyed the Father’s word to believe in his Son (v.6). They accepted what Jesus said and knew with certainty that he had come from the Father and believed that he had been sent by the Father (v.8).
In these words of Jesus we see the work of God being realised in the experience of the disciples – he chose them and, as Jesus revealed him to them, they received and believed his words.
In all this we see why Jesus is praying for them. He makes it quite plain that he isn’t praying for the world but for those given to him by the Father. This prayer is specific to their calling as disciples, as those who know God and are called to make him known.
One big thing this tells us is that the divine mission is not in danger, it never has been and never will be. Everything is in the hands of the Father and his Son.
Now having established the basis of his relationship with these men, Jesus then specifically prays for them. His prayer is very revealing; in essence he prays for their protection.
Why do they need to be protected and who from? Jesus stresses that his disciples no longer belong to this world. And because of that, trouble will come to them – but notice where he locates the trouble: we need protection not from the world in general but from “the evil one” (v.15). He is the one who stands opposed to God and his mission in the world and he is the one who stirs up trouble against God and his people.
So how does Jesus intend to protect us from the evil one?
Jesus says, “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world” (v.15). That means that all our attempts to evade the world and to run from any engagement with it are contrary to the prays of Jesus.
We often think safety is only gained by removal but that isn’t always the case. Jesus is not praying that we be removed from the heat of the kitchen; rather, he is praying that we be protected whilst still in the world. How can that be?
“Protect them”, Jesus prays, “by the power of your name” (v.11). He isn’t saying that there are magical properties in the mere name of God; he is speaking here of the full character and person of God. And notice his own connection to that: “the name you gave me”.
While in the world, Jesus protected his own – kept the powers of evil at bay, corrected and rebuked his disciples and so on. As he prepares to leave, he is asking his Father to continue that same work of protection – probably through his Holy Spirit.
But what is this protection for? “That they may be one as we are one” (v.11). The purpose of God in Jesus is to bring unity into a divided world, to unite all things under one head, even Christ (Eph. 1:10). Satan’s strategy is to divide God’s people and so ruin that great plan; Jesus prays for his people’s protection that they might embody the reality of his saving and healing work.
Jesus also prays for his disciples to be protected because they are in the world but no longer of it and as such they will face the hostility and the rage of the evil one. But, in the face of that truth, Jesus doesn’t simply pray for protection, he prays too for sanctification. He prays that his disciples would be visibly set apart for God and God alone, that the Father would mark them out as his and demonstrate that ownership.
That sanctification will occur because Jesus set himself apart for them (v.19); their being set apart for God will be the fruit of the setting apart of Jesus and the fulfilment of his mission in the world.
The way their sanctification will be accomplished is through the truth of the message of the Cross.
And as Jesus prayed for his own so too must pray for ourselves. We must pray that the God would do his sanctifying work in our lives, that visibly, we would be the fruit of Jesus having set himself apart as the servant of God. It’s not enough to listen to God’s words or to read it privately; we must couple those activities with sincere prayer that we would benefit from God’s words.
And the setting apart of the disciples as those known by God and owned by God is not simply for our sakes. In v.18 Jesus again speaks of having been sent into the world by the Father and of his sending his disciples into the world too. He sanctified himself for their sakes and the clear implication is that his people are to be sanctified, set apart for God’s use, for the sake of others too.
No calling was heavier and more onerous than the calling Jesus received, yet he was a man of joy. And he wants us to share in that joy – not by running from the battle, nor by isolating ourselves far from the spot where mission hits the road, but through knowing his protection and his deep work of sanctification in us. As we embrace our calling, the words of Jesus breathe joy into our hearts.
We have much to celebrate, because in Jesus we have the victory.