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Sermon: The Seventh Sunday of Easter (A) - 5th June 2011
St Aidan's Anglican Church West Epping 8:30 am Harvest Festival
Readings: Acts 1:6-14; Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35; 1 Peter 5; John 17:1-11
One of those areas in our journey of faith where we can all struggle with is this question of Prayer. We know we should do it. But it takes a lot of discipline. And when we read our Bibles we become aware of how much time Jesus put into prayer. It was common for him to withdraw from the crowds and spend long periods of time in prayer. So if he needed to do it, how much more should we be active in prayer.
But what did those times of prayer by Jesus, involve? How would the Son of God pray? We all know the Lord’s prayer. We know it covers the basic areas of faith and life. It is an intensely practical prayer. And that is what we have again in today’s reading of John 17. Jesus is summing up all that was happening and he was praying over those matters. So in the short time we have we can look at some of the issues Jesus raised in chapter 17.
John 17 is usually called “the High Priestly prayer” of Jesus. Remember that this prayer was prayed within hours of Jesus arrest. At such times of crisis we might think of all the things that need to be done. In a crisis we seem to get busier. But Jesus does the opposite. John’s gospel reminds us that the secret at the heart of a life of faith is the need to slow down, the need to find stillness, the need to invoke the Spirit, and of slowly learning the ways and the power of prayer.
Above what we need, in the business of our lives, and what John 17 provides is this – a special framework : a moment when time stands still, or rather when you go into a different type of time. In prayer, of whatever sort, past and future come together in a new shape and you get in tune with the will of God and discover that you can adore, you can worship, you can ask for things, in particular you can ask for God’s glory and love to flood the lives of those you are responsible for. And it is in prayer, even though the world outside doesn’t see it going on, that there grows the small but all-important plant which gives focus and meaning to our faith.
It is a matter of grace that the Good Shepherd shares his pastoral ministry with his followers after they’d all let him down. ‘Feed my sheep’, says the risen Jesus to Peter, and through him to all those of us who, despite our own failures and disloyalties, are still called to be disciples. And it is because of that that we find ourselves, not only the beneficiaries of Jesus’ high-priestly prayer but also as men and women called to pray it with Jesus, called to share the prayer of the Son of God. And it is out of that prayer that all other ministries flow.
Look at what Jesus prays for. He prays that the Father will protect his followers. Up till now he’s done this himself, keeping them safe from the world of darkness that is so eager to quench the disturbing light of God’s good news. Now, with his imminent departure to the Father, he prays that the Father himself will continue that work of protection. We might be surprised that this is the first main request Jesus offers for his followers.
We might have thought he’d begin by praying that they would be fruitful in his kingdom. Well, that’s important too, and he’s spoken about it at length before, not least in chapter 15, where he sees them as the branches of the vine, called to bear lasting fruit. But there’s no point in the vine trying to bear fruit if there are rats gnawing at its root, or rival gardeners ready to dig it up and plant very different shrubs instead. If you’ve ever attempted to do anything for God’s kingdom, you’ll know there are plenty of rats, plenty of rival gardeners – and some of them come in the form of voices within your own heart and soul, telling you it’s a waste of time, what’s the point, the world doesn’t care, why not go and do something else; or, worse, suggesting that you let your self-control slip here and there where it probably won’t matter so much.
So there is the need to pray. And that is the way to the joy which springs up when the vine can bear the fruit it’s meant to. The need is to pray so that we may be protected from all that would distract us from all that would stop us bearing fruit.
And this is why Jesus’ prayer goes on. God’s people need to be made holy, sanctified, set apart. ‘They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.’ This runs counter to the world we live in. We easily slip into the error of imagining that our task is simply to find out what’s going on in the world and to bless and encourage it. We hate being confrontational, and I suspect some of us are even a little uncomfortable at the words of Jesus himself at this point:
‘The world has hated them, because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to this world.’ Isn’t this contrary to Jesus example of loving the world so much? No. When Jesus in John’s gospel says ‘the world’, he doesn’t mean ‘the world of creation’. John’s gospel is all about God’s love for the world, and its climax is in the new creation of resurrection, the redemption of the created order. No: when he says ‘the world’, rather like St Paul with the word ‘flesh’, he means ‘the world as it organises itself against God’. ‘The world’ is what is out there when people try to run their lives as though God didn’t exist; which is why there is a general worldly rejection of genuine Christianity and those who attempt to stand for it.
We are living in the middle of a major cultural turning-point, and the cold winds of the world’s hatred are blowing more sharply against those who speak for God, who live for God, whose lives show, by their holiness, that they belong to God and not to the world that turns inward upon themselves. We need to learn, always a hard lesson for Anglicans, that being loyal to Jesus will mean saying ‘no’ to a great deal that the world counts as normal and natural, whether it’s gambling or casual adultery or fiddling your taxes or telling white lies.
The church is sent out like Good King Wenceslas’s page on a bitter snowy day, into the world that hates what we are trying to do and seeks to squelch it at every turn. And Jesus prays for his followers – ‘sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.’ This is not escapist piety; it is realistic missionary strategy.
And finally, the main thing which Jesus prays for is for the unity and mission of the church, and this is the heart of it all. If God’s people are protected from evil, and sanctified in the truth which is God’s word, then the main task must be to hold together God’s people as one, in prayer and hard work, and to do it in such a way that the world may know that Jesus is really God’s son and that through him God’s love - rich, generous and overflowing, is poured out into the world.
Glory and love, - glory and love, these are the main themes of John and of this prayer. Jesus prays for us, and we must pray for one another and for those in our care, that the glory which God gave to Jesus may be given to us, that we may share in the inner life of the triune God himself. There are many mysteries to be explored there, but as in John’s gospel – which in a few verses from here will have Jesus plunged into the rough-and-tumble of the soldiers and the swords and the night trials and the flogging – so here, what this means in practice is that, flowing directly from the prayer for unity, there is all kinds of hard work to be done to take God’s people forwards as a single body, living before the world in such a way as to reveal God’s love and glory to the world.
Unity and mission, glory and love. Or as Paul writes in Ephesians 4: the one body and one spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all. That is our aim and that is our real agenda.