Text: John 17:1-12 The Message (MSG)
Jesus’ Prayer for His Followers
17 1-5 Jesus said these things. Then, raising his eyes in prayer, he said:
Father, it’s time.
Display the bright splendor of your Son
So the Son in turn may show your bright splendor.
You put him in charge of everything human
So he might give real and eternal life to all in his charge.
And this is the real and eternal life:
That they know you,
The one and only true God,
And Jesus Christ, whom you sent.
I glorified you on earth
By completing down to the last detail
What you assigned me to do.
And now, Father, glorify me with your very own splendor,
The very splendor I had in your presence
Before there was a world.
6-12 I spelled out your character in detail
To the men and women you gave me.
They were yours in the first place;
Then you gave them to me,
And they have now done what you said.
They know now, beyond the shadow of a doubt,
That everything you gave me is firsthand from you,
For the message you gave me, I gave them;
And they took it, and were convinced
That I came from you.
They believed that you sent me.
I pray for them.
I’m not praying for the God-rejecting world
But for those you gave me,
For they are yours by right.
Everything mine is yours, and yours mine,
And my life is on display in them.
For I’m no longer going to be visible in the world;
They’ll continue in the world
While I return to you.
Holy Father, guard them as they pursue this life
That you conferred as a gift through me,
So they can be one heart and mind
As we are one heart and mind.
As long as I was with them, I guarded them
In the pursuit of the life you gave through me;
I even posted a night watch.
And not one of them got away,
Except for the rebel bent on destruction
(the exception that proved the rule of Scripture).
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
There’s so much in this text! We could spend a month just going through this passage, and then, when we were through, we could walk into any seminary in the world a pick up our theology degree. You could almost say that this is the Gospel in a nutshell – it’s got all the elements. And Jesus offered this prayer at the end of the Last Supper, so imagine the disciples sitting there with him, and hearing these words of grace and encouragement.
But here’s what really stuck out for me about this passage: It’s all about prayer.
Also, given that tomorrow is Memorial Day, it’s fitting to begin this sermon by talking about a World War II veteran who was one of the most remarkable men I have ever had the privilege of knowing – Fr. George Metcalf. If you’ve ever seen the movie “Patton,” you’ll remember the famous scene where General Patton calls for his chaplain and orders him to write, of all things, “a weather prayer” so that God would clear up the rotten winter weather they were experiencing, in order for his men to get their much-needed air support. The chaplain goes away to write the prayer; an hour or so later, he’s back, prayer in hand. Patton takes the prayer from the chaplain, goes outside, and reads it. Lo and behold! – shortly thereafter, the weather clears! Patton then says he wants to give that chaplain a medal “because he stands in good with the Lord.”
Fr. George Metcalf, Episcopal priest, was that chaplain. He experienced incredible hardships and had his share of narrow escapes. One example: He was on Omaha Beach on D-Day, and took off the brand-new overcoat his wife had just sent him, and hung it on a barricade so he could attend to a wounded soldier. An instant later, a German shell landed nearby and blew his brand-new coat to Kingdom Come – and poor Fr. George had to spend the following winter months without a warm coat!
But he survived the war. He came back home to St. Paul, where he served for many years at St. Paul’s Church-on-the-Hill, my wife’s home church, the church in which we were married, the church in which our daughter was married, and the church from which Katie’s Dad, my father-in-law, Gage Colby, was sent to join the Church Triumphant.
I did not know him in those days. I got to know him much later, through Gage, who was a member of the Third Order of St. Francis. Fr. Metcalf and his wife turned their home in Afton into a retreat center, and that’s where the St. Paul chapter of the Third Order met. One day, I went with Gage to one of these meetings – now, I had met Fr. George exactly once before, I believe, and that for a very brief moment. Yet, when he saw me come through the door with Gage, he called out, “Well, Bill! Good to see you! How’s Katie? How’s Nicholas? How’s Madelaine?” I was floored; I mean, Madelaine was just a few months old at that point! I stammered that they were all just fine, thanks. I am certain that he would have known who I was and all about my family, even if I hadn’t been standing next to my father-in-law. Fr. George was amazing.
But the point of all this is that, on the Sunday following Fr. George’s funeral (which I failed to attend, to my everlasting shame and regret), I was standing in the little kitchen of St. Paul’s with another of the members of the Third Order of St. Francis, talking about Fr. George, and this woman looked at me and said, “You know he prayed for you every single day.” For at least a few minutes after she said that, I couldn’t say one single word. It was all I could do to stay upright. I was utterly dumbfounded. To think that a man of that stature, a man who had served with General George Patton, a man who had not only endured World War II, but had served with honor and distinction, who had witnessed the depths of human cruelty first-hand and had yet returned home with his faith intact, would even bother to pray for a guy like me even once, much less every day for years…it was overwhelming. When I think of it now, I’m overwhelmed all over again. That shows the caliber of man Fr. George Metcalf was. If I come to the end of my life and find that I have become even a fraction of a man he was, I will consider myself blessed beyond all measure.
It also shows the incredible power of prayer. No time spent in prayer is ever wasted. I know I go on too long with our Prayers of the People, for example, and I admit it – but prayer is not just important, it’s our “hotline to God,” as well as our lifeline from God.
Fr. Mark Link recounts the following true story: “A speaker was lecturing on Scripture. Afterward, a woman gave him this note:
‘On the 12th anniversary of my daughter’s emotional illness, I asked Jesus to help her, as he did with the woman in the gospel who had a hemorrhage for 12 years…. I simply told Jesus that I believed he could heal our daughter, and that I had enough faith for both of us…The next day we noticed the first signs pointing to a recovery. That was six years ago. Today she is a healthy young woman. Even more beautifully, Jesus is using her to help others.’”[1]
The power of prayer cannot be overestimated. Even when it appears that our prayers are not answered, they are. Oh yes, they definitely are. When we pray, we turn our hopes, our fears, our desires, over to God – and when we do that, any control we might have or think we have over the outcome of our prayers is null and void. It’s now up to God, totally, fully, and completely. We’ve given it up; it is now for us a matter of faith that God will grant our prayers the solution he sees fit. That’s the tough part of prayer.
Believe me, when I saw my Dad lying there in that hospital bed, surrounded by more blinking and bleeping machines than a Star Trek set, with tubes stuck into every available orifice, and wires attached to every available patch of skin, oh boy, did I pray! I prayed that Dad would fully recover and be that same “Good Old Dad” I knew and loved so so so much. That was what I prayed for in the first few days. But I also knew that – according to the doctors – there was less than a 3% chance that that would happen. 3% – not very good odds. In other words, “Good Old Dad” was not coming back. So, finally, as that horrible, horrible, horrible week wore on, a week that seemed more like a lifetime with each passing hour (I think I have a pretty good idea now of what hell is), my prayer changed from what was really more of a self-centered desire to have “Good Old Dad” back to one of “Yet not my will, but yours be done.” I prayed instead that Dad was in no pain, and that, when the end came, it would be swift. Above all, I prayed that Dad would be greeted by his Mom and Dad when he got to Heaven – and could spend Eternity with them, and of course, fishing, catching the big ones – as well as beating my Uncle Bill at golf. That would be Heaven for Dad (not sure what that would be for Uncle Bill, though!)! My prayers, in short, evolved to include trust.
So part of prayer is trust. Trust that God will take away the pain we express in (at least some of) our prayers, and take the hope, and the love we feel for those for whom we pray in other prayers, and bless it, make it holy, and answer it in a way that shows that great Love that is the very Heart of God.
That Heart of God prays for us.
“I pray for them.” This is analogous to how our Communion liturgy puts it, that Jesus has ascended to Heaven and “ever lives to pray for us.”
These are not just words on paper. They describe the reality of our lives like nothing else can. They remind us that, when God makes a promise, he keeps it. Jesus “ever lives to pray for us.” He prays for us incessantly. What an incredible gift that is!
But it’s a gift that we have to share. When we pray for others, we keep them close. We don’t forget them; our hearts are stirred toward them, and we find ourselves hoping the best for them. I think that might be how Fr. Metcalf knew who I was. Hoping the best for those whom we keep in prayer is especially necessary and important – and you might find this a little jarring – when we pray for those we might not like all that much, those who may have injured us in some way in the past and who we might not feel are “worth the effort.” Jesus tells us this: “You have heard that it was said, Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” (Mtt 5:43-44, CSB)
That’s how we’re identified as Followers of Jesus. Long ago, a man named Aristides once described the followers of Jesus Christ to the Roman Emperor Hadrian like this: They love one another. They never fail to help widows; they save orphans from those who would hurt them. If they have something they give freely to the man who has nothing; if they see a stranger, they take him home, and are happy, as though he were a real brother.”
That’s quite a testimonial to the Christian life. So I wonder: How is it that a community of disciples comes to love like this?
The priest of a Christian church in Iraq tells the true story of a woman whose son and husband were killed by a police officer. When the police officer was caught, he was placed on trial and he was convicted of the crime. As the judge considered his sentence, this is what the woman said: “He took my family away from me, and I still have a lot of love to give, and he needs to know what love and grace feel like—so I think he should have to come to visit my home in the slums, twice a month, and spend time with me, so that I can be a mother to him, so that I can embrace him, and he can know that my forgiveness is real.” So I wonder: How is it that an individual disciple of Jesus Christ comes to love like this?
There are many elements, I imagine, but one of them, and the most important, has to be an active prayer life. That woman truly is “plugged in” to that “hotline to God.” When Jesus commands us to “love one another as I have loved you,” our first and best response is to start praying!
We are Jesus’ emissaries to the world. We have been granted that same gift of the Holy Spirit that the first disciples were given. Prayer is the main tool at our disposal! How we pray can be structured and formal, or it can be as free as the Spirit – how it’s done is not as important as that it is done. As Meister Eckhart, the medieval German mystic, tells us: “If the only prayer you say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.”
Let’s use that tool of prayer, and see what happens!
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
[1] Link, Mark, S.J., Jesus: A Contemporary Walk with Jesus, Allen, TX, Resources for Christian Living, 1997, p. 193