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The Seventh Sunday of Easter Almighty God, the breeze of your love and grace is ever blowing; may we set our sails to capture that breeze, and may it inspire these words and those who hear them. Amen Cleaning out a closet the other day, I found an old piece of embroidery my mother made for my children when they were small, on which she cross-stitched a simple children’s prayer: Father in Heaven, hear my prayer. Seeing this brought to mind other simple childhood prayers, ones I learned and ones that I taught my own children, including the ubiquitous, “Now I lay me down to sleep…” These prayers speak of the innocence with which children approach prayer, the innocence and openness and joy they naturally bring into their encounters with God. Sadly, as we grow up, as we mature cognitively and experientially, we lose that innocence and openness, and often the simplicity of our early prayers seems not to work for us any more. We Episcopalians have a complicated relationship with prayer. On the one hand, we are a people shaped by our prayer book, a treasure trove that both forms us and helps us articulate our beliefs, and whose words and phrases work themselves into our very hearts. On the other hand, take that book out of our hands, and we can be awfully uncomfortable with prayer. Most of us do not have an easy relationship with spontaneous prayer, especially if it is “out-loud.” We stumble and we stutter and we struggle to put into words that won’t embarrass us our heart’s deepest longings. In today’s gospel, we hear Jesus in prayer. Throughout the gospel narratives, we see Jesus withdraw to pray, but we are rarely privy to what form those prayers take. The disciples must have wondered themselves, and in Matthew and Luke’s gospels we hear them ask Jesus how they should pray. Jesus’ answer is, of course, the prayer we’ve come to know as the Lord’s Prayer, itself based on a very Jewish pattern of daily prayer. The prayer we hear in John’s gospel, however, is longer, deeper, and more multi-layered. It is prayed not in response to a request from the disciples, nor in one of Jesus’ solitary prayer sessions on a hillside. Rather it comes at the conclusion of the last Passover meal Jesus shares with his disciples. As the story is told in John’s gospel, Jesus and his friends linger at the table after dinner, perhaps over a glass of wine, and Jesus speaks long and movingly to his disciples about who he is and what is to come, a speech we’ve come to refer to as the “farewell discourse;” we’ve heard pieces of that discourse in our gospel stories about the good shepherd, and the true vine and disciples as friends over the last few weeks. At the end of that discourse, Jesus prays what has become known to us as the “High Priestly Prayer.” This long and heartfelt prayer is directed to God, his father in heaven, but it surely was meant to be over-heard by the disciples as well, and it provided for them even more reassurance of Jesus’ love and care for them. Facing the immediacy of the cross, as he surely knew he was, Jesus might have prayed for many things, but he chose to pray for his disciples and for the whole body of believers who would come after them. In this prayer (referred to as a “high priestly” prayer because Jesus intercedes as a high priest on behalf of his people) Jesus expresses the deep and abiding love he holds for his disciples even as he beseeches God to protect them, to sanctify them, and to empower them to carry on with the ministry he has entrusted to them. This ancient prayer speaks not only to the reality of the disciples, facing the loss of their teacher, their friend, their messiah, but also to our reality, some 2000 years later as followers of that same messiah. Unlike the twelve, we have the benefit of all those years of reflection on the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension; we have experience with the church that grew out of their ministry and we know the power of Jesus in our lives and in the world even after all this time. Yet, like the disciples we often find ourselves scared, feeling alone and uncertain, longing for some tangible reassurance of God’s presence. For us, then, as for the disciples, this high priestly prayer provides a powerful model not only of how we should pray, but also of how we should live, and it serves as a call to commitment—commitment to a life of prayer and service. The high priestly prayer begins by glorifying God. Before all else, we are reminded that all that we are and all that we have come from God and are a reflection of God’s own glory. As we pray and as we live we are called not only to bask in that glory but also to honor it and to offer it back to God—to offer it in praise and thanksgiving but also in the very way we live our lives. After glorifying God, Jesus moves on to pray for the well-being and protection of his followers. Just as the disciples did, we need that holy protection from the things in this world that distract us and pull us away from God and from the work God calls us to do—both the work of worship and the work of mission. In our prayers we must seek that protection and empowerment and in our lives we must rely on it, drawing our strength from it, resting in it when we are weary and worn, assured of God’s deep and abiding love for us. Finally, just as Jesus prayed for those who would come to believe because of his disciples, we are called to pray and work for those who may not know God’s love, for those who still long to hear the Good News of Christ. Jesus’ high priestly prayer must have been a solace to his disciples both when they heard Jesus utter the words, and later as they recalled them after all that happened. And couched in the beautiful language of the Fourth Gospel, they are a solace to us as well. We are reminded that we are a community for whom Jesus prays. As such a community we are held in God’s grace and God’s glory. But even as we rest in that grace and glory, we too are called to pray, to work, to love in God’s name. Let us pray. Holy One, loving father and mother, we ask you to bless us that we might glorify your name, the only true God whom we know through Jesus Christ your son. Protect us in Jesus’ name so that we might all be one; sanctify us in the truth that is your word; send us into the world as you sent your Son to make disciples. As you are in Jesus and he in you, may we also be there so that the world might believe and that we might abide in your love unto eternity. Amen |
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