Year A
John 17:1-11
The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn
Graduating Disciples
All around us and all over this country and maybe the world, commencement ceremonies are taking place. From pre-school up, young people are participating in one of the chief rites of passage in our society. They are graduating and for those graduating from high school or college, there is usually at their commencement ceremonies an address or speech by a prominent business, political, or cultural figure, urging them to find their passion and “do what they love and make a difference in our world.” All our lessons today contain versions of commencement speeches. In the Act’s text today, Jesus is giving a brief commencement speech to his disciples as they “graduate” to becoming his apostles.
Like new graduates, the disciple’s period of study with their mentor is ending and rather than encouraging them to reflect on their larger goals or seek out what they are truly meant to do, Jesus tells them that they are to get on with the hard work of “witnessing” in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. And then “while they are watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.” This past Thursday, the church celebrated Jesus’ ascending back to God. The ascension, forty days after the resurrection, marks the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry and the beginning of his role as advocate at God’s side. It marks the beginning of the “in between time” of which we are in now, that leads up to Jesus’ second coming one day in the future.
You may imagine that these followers, who have already demonstrated difficulty in understanding Jesus’ purpose among them, can use all the help they can get if their charge from Jesus to carry on his work to the ends of the earth is to have any future at all. This help Jesus promises will come soon with the gift of the Holy Spirit. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, the disciples will be and are able to set out on their own to preach the good news. In the meantime, they return to the upper room to “devote themselves to prayer” as they wait. The challenge for them as it is for each one of us in the wait is to keep our lives centered on God, rooted and grounded in God, allowing God to be the one in whom we “live and move and have our being” here on this earth.
The way they were able to accomplish this intimacy and to prepare for the coming Spirit was to devote themselves to prayer, worship, meditation, and community. This is the example Jesus gave the disciples the night they were all together at the last supper when he offered his prayer on their behalf. His commencement speech takes up all of John chapter 17, and it is the longest recorded prayer by Jesus in the gospels. The message is clear and consistent with all the stories from the book of Acts and Peter’s letter. It has to do with the fact that the intimacy known between disciples before Jesus’ death and after his resurrection is not to be broken.
Jesus prays his most urgent hopes for his disciples in these verses today. Central for Him is that they know God through his life and ministry and that all people will come to know God through him. He wanted the disciples to know the same kind of unity that he knew with his Father. “Knowing” describes an active, confessional, and intimate relationship. It is one in which we are shaped by God’s vision for love and justice and service. Knowing God becomes evident in our obedience to love God and neighbor. He prays this for all his disciples, for their protection and unity. He knew all too well the challenges of living in the world. He had faced plenty of criticism from those who opposed him and misunderstanding even from his closest friends and followers.
He was about to be arrested, tried and executed. Yet, in spite of the tremendous costs, he remained steadfast in doing the work of his Father. For whatever challenges his disciples would face in the world- whatever criticism or misunderstanding or persecution-he prayed God would protect them from losing their way. They needed protection from division and disunity and we need that protection today also. As Christ followers, we are part of the body of Christ, part of a long line of believers that stretches all the way back to the first disciples of Jesus and that stretches into the future. We have a unity that crosses centuries, that crosses generations and geography; it transcends class and culture, gender and sexuality, denominational and congregational distinctions.
In many ways Jesus’ prayer has not yet been fully answered. We’re still struggling with family and church dynamics that intensify our differences. We are still getting angry over issues that divide us and the church continues to fragment. Even individual congregations have trouble staying together. When it comes to Christian unity, we clearly have a lot of work to do and if Jesus were here today in the flesh to pray with us, his commencement speech prayer would still be the same prayer for our protection and unity; as it would have been also for the Christians alive who read Peter’s letter. His letter is written to Christians who were enduring active and horrific persecution.
The faith was illegal in the Roman Empire and was tolerated by the authorities. However, sooner or later, the need for a scapegoat or the desire to bolster faith in the emperor as a god led to an intensification of pressure and fear upon Christians. The author reminds believers that in the end, there is nothing surprising about this and shockingly suggests that they should welcome adversity as a welcome guest. In the face of this danger, he says the faithful are to cling in hope to God’s promised good and resist the devil; who divides and separates people – that is, for people to forget or abandon this notion of our connection as followers of Christ, of being united with all Christians around the world in our struggles and joys.
The final message of 1 Peter is that God will restore, support, strengthen, and establish us in this life journey. This is our hope and one this text urges us never to abandon because the exiles ultimately will be called home “to his eternal glory in Christ.” As Jesus physically departed this world to God, his prayer for us and for his disciples was that we are one and that we continue the work of justice, peace and mercy until at the end of time all of God’s promises through the ages will be fulfilled through Christ. In these final days of the Easter season, we are to worship the ascended and enthroned Christ, rejoice in the presence of the promised Spirit, and remember our calling to be witnesses. For we are called to “make a difference in our world,” this is our commencement charge from Jesus! So let us not grow weary and lose heart. Let us keep walking together and praying all the way.