“A rather specific and needful prayer”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Sunday, May 12, 2024
John 17: 6-19 (Forward, p. 14) CEV p. 1124
Today’s passage is taken from what is often called ‘the High Priestly Prayer’ and was probably uttered in the Upper Room on Maundy Thursday, even though it is never indicated as such. But, seeing as Jesus and the disciples immediately left for the Garden of Gethsemane right after this prayer, it would seem likely.
If so, this prayer comes at a rather crucial juncture in time. He correctly describes His disciples as ‘being in the world but not of the world’, and here He means, not the world as meaning planet earth, but as the world as ruled by Satan, as a belief system that does not know or honour God, and as populated by people who are subject to these two forces.
Once again, Jesus is spot on as He goes further, in saying that these followers of His are hated by the ‘world’ because they don’t fit in, because they haven’t ‘bought into’ this world and its values hollis bollis. People who go against the flow, who are counter cultural, are often criticized and marginalized, so why should those who follow Christ’s way, and not the world’s way, be any different?
And so, in light of this, Jesus promises to keep us safe (see verses 11-12) not just in a general way, but also safe from the evil one (verse 15). And given what would take place in just a few hours’ time with Jesus’ arrest etc. this promise is very appropriate and needful.
However, Jesus does more than just pray for our protection. He also prays:
-for their oneness, their unity (verse 11d).
-for their adherence to the truth and their closeness with God (v. 17).
-for their mission in the world (verse 18). So, despite their not
being of the world, and being hated by it, they are not to desert it,
but rather, to go into it and love it and seek to save it. Talk about
sheep going into the midst of wolves!
So here Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer makes an abundance of sense. Being ‘hated’, rejected, despised, opposed by both Satan and ‘the world’ put them acutely in danger’s way and subject to attacks that might undermine their
oneness or unity, subject revealed truth to questioning and erode their relationship with God. And given that they were to actively seek to penetrate 'the world’ for God and reshape its ways, they—and we—would be even more prone to attack. So, here is where Jesus’ promise of protection is most needed and wanted. Amen.
Forward notes: “And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one” (verse 11).
“On the night before his passion and death, John’s Gospel gives us what is known as Jesus’s Farewell Discourse, which includes a prayer addressed to his father in heaven on behalf of his disciples and us. I am struck by how Jesus, the father, and the disciples are all intertwined in Jesus’s prayer, that we know the father by knowing Jesus and abiding in him.
“I am also struck by how far we are from Jesus’s desire for us. Jesus prays for unity for his followers and that our unity might mirror the bond between the father and son, but Jesus’s followers have been divided for millennia.
In this period of decline in institutional Christianity, perhaps we can put aside some of what divides us from other Christians and seek to live into the unity that Jesus desires for us.”
Moving Forward: “What are some tangible ways you can work toward unity in the wider church?”