Year C

John 17:20-26

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

The Prayer For the Future

There is an ancient story about Jesus’ arrival at the Pearly Gates following the Ascension. The angel host was gathered to welcome God’s Son and celebrate his return home after his incredible sojourn on earth. Everyone had questions and wanted to hear his story — born of a virgin, raised in humble circumstances, years teaching, preaching, and healing. Eventually, there was that gruesome torture and murder, but finally the conquest of humanity’s most feared enemy — death. Jesus lived through all this to share the good news of a loving God who wants nothing but the best for creation. Now the Christ is home, and everyone is exultant. Someone asks, “Lord, now that you are no longer physically on earth, who will continue to share the good news?”

Christ responds, “There are eleven who were especially close to me, and I have given them the responsibility of getting the word out.” “O Lord, these eleven must be incredible people — the best and the brightest that creation has to offer!” “Well, actually no,” the Lord responds. “These are average folks with ordinary abilities not the ‘best and the brightest’ by any means.” “But Lord, if these are only average people with ordinary ability, how can you be sure that they will get the job done?” “Well, to be honest,” the Lord answers, “I can’t be sure.” “You cannot be sure, Lord? Well, what if they fail to do the job? What is your backup plan?” Quietly Christ answers, “I have no backup plan.”

I wonder if those disciples standing there on the Mount of Olives overlooking Jerusalem, the Holy City as Jesus returns to God, had any idea that there was no “backup plan.” I suspect that they were not thinking much at all. After all, those past three years had been quite a ride. They had seen the teaching, preaching, and healing. They themselves had been in danger of torture and murder. They had been witnesses of their Lord’s conquest of death. Those days of close communion with the risen Lord may well have given them the idea that things with Jesus would resume where they had left off prior to the crucifixion. But that was not to be.

This 50 day journey between Easter and Pentecost has allowed us, God’s people, to become aware again from our readings, of our mission to overcome all that may divide us so that the world may see that God’s purposes challenge the ways of the world, so that “the world will believe that you sent me.” Yet, we are well aware it’s not easy to be a disciple of Jesus in today’s world. It was hard enough for those twelve who followed him around—those who could touch him and argue with him, pray with him, and stand in awe of him the risen Lord as he ascended back to the Father. But, if you put 2,000 years between then and now it gets even harder and I suspect it will be even tougher for generations yet to come.

Therefore, the gospel reading today, a farewell prayer and final words of Jesus to his followers before the crucifixion are so important and meant to be remembered. His words were meant not only for those first disciples, but for all who have followed since and will follow in the future. Jesus prays this beautiful chapter-long prayer that resembles the surface of a pond after throwing a stone into its middle. First, he prays for himself. He knows what is about to happen this very night; the first ripple. Then, Jesus prays for the twelve men who have been his companions in this ministry, the second ripple, and then he prays for us.  All who will believe in him through their word, the third ripple that continues to ripple out into the future.

His concern now is for the future life and ministry of those gathered around him. As Jesus was sent by God, so now the disciples are sent, and though their words others will come to believe. In the complex and beautiful language of Jesus’ prayer, we hear that the future for the disciples is possible because they are connected through him to the Father. Jesus desires for that relationship to continue: he prays, “As you, Father are in me and I in you,” so also may they be in us; “so that the world may know that you have loved them even as you loved me,” and that love with which you loved me, may be in them.  It is this love, this being in the Father, this glory that is now given to the disciples, is what the world will see and believe.

The church is intended to be the presence of Christ in the world so that people everywhere will have the right to “enter the city by the gates” of saving faith, as we heard read at the very end of the book of Revelation, but with this right comes responsibility. This responsibility leads Jesus to pray, and on this last Sunday in the Easter season his prayer is especially appropriate for us to hear as we are waiting, like those first disciples, between the feasts of Ascension and Pentecost. The risen Jesus has returned to God and we have not yet celebrated the coming of the Spirit. It is indeed a time to wonder about the future, ours and the church.

We realize that we are not simply to stand looking into the sky after the Ascension. There is life and mission ahead for us. And yet, as surely as the disciples were, we are left wondering how. The crucial reminder for us is the reminder of God’s love, and of Jesus’ hope and desire that we may become one and that through us the world may come to see and to know that love of God. We are assured that Jesus dwells in us, and that if we dwell in him, others will come to know and to have faith in that love. The hopes, dreams, and final prayer of the Lord who loves us and dwells in us will be fulfilled. And it will make a difference! In the end, we find Jesus’ prayer is answered in all who have washed their robes, giving them the right to the tree and water of life.

I would like to close with morning with an old prayer from the Danish theologian, a church Father, Soren Kierkegaard, who died in 1855 at the age of 42. He struggled with the meaning of faith as deeply as any theologian. Let us pray, “Father in heaven! You have loved us first. Help us never to forget that you are love so that this sure conviction might triumph in our hearts over the seduction of the world, over the inquietude of the soul, over the anxiety of the future, over the fright of the past, over the distress of the moment. You have loved us first, O God, alas! We speak of it in terms of history as if you have only loved us first but a single time, rather than without ceasing. You have loved us first many times and every day and our whole life through.” This is the love of God, a power strong enough to remake the world. Amen. Come, Holy Spirit!