God Prays for Us

Many of my sermons include a call to love each other. The passage for today from John 17 has been called “the high priestly prayer of Jesus”, in which Jesus prays for unity. We could focus on that unity and preach another sermon on love, but our text stops before those appeals. Our ability to love each other is based on the deeper truth that God takes care of us. This morning, I want to reflect on an essential fact of the Christian life – that Jesus is on our side.

John 17

The high priestly prayer is set in the context of the Last Supper. In John 13, Jesus washes the disciples’ feet and eats his last meal with them. In chapter 14, Jesus tells the disciples that he is the way to God and that he himself is going to God. He promises them the “advocate”, the Holy Spirit, who will remain with them after he is gone. The chapter ends with the words, “Come now, let us leave”, which sounds as though they are headed to the Garden of Gethsemane.

In chapter 15, however, they remain in the house together and Jesus teaches them about the true vine (himself) and its branches (the disciples). He repeats his call for them to love each other and promises them that the Holy Spirit will help them to overcome the hatred found in this world. Chapter 16 then finishes this time of teaching as Jesus says again that he must leave them so that the Holy Spirit (or Comforter) may come. He tells them that the time of grief they are entering will end and they will be filled with joy as God fills them with God’s love.

Following this extended time of teaching, preparing his disciples for his coming death, Jesus starts to pray to his Father. The verses we read are the beginning of this prayer.

• Verses 1 to 5: Jesus prays that God will glorify him so that he may glorify God. All that will happen is for the greater glory of God. All that he has done in his life – his teaching, his miracles, and finally his death and resurrection – has been to bring glory to God.
• Verses 6 to 8: The centre of his work has been to reveal God to the disciples. They now become the ones through whom God is seen in this world. They know what Jesus has taught, and they believe that Jesus reveals God.
• Verses 9 to 11: Now that his work here is done, Jesus is ready to go through the culmination of his life, his death on the cross. He asks that God’s Spirit will now care for the disciples and give them strength and courage to do God’s work in the world.

For our purposes this morning, I observe simply that Jesus prayed for his disciples, and he continues to pray for us – to be on our side as we live in this space between his ascension into Heaven and his return “in the same way as he was taken up from his disciples” (Acts 1: 11).

Psalm 68

The verses we read from Psalm 68 state this truth as a song of triumph and joy. God is on our side! God is for us! When we feel that all is lost, we know that God is with us. When outward circumstances threaten to destroy us, we know that God will save us. From the way Jesus prays in John 17, we know that he sees saving us as his greatest work, bringing glory to God. Unity and love are God’s gift, given through the Holy Spirit, to help us in times of distress and danger.

Linking with Ascension

Last Thursday was Ascension Day in the church’s calendar. Reflecting on Jesus’ ascension into Heaven can help us grasp how God is available to us in times of danger and how God helps us in our distress. Acts 1: 1 to 11 recounts the ascension of Jesus most fully. Jesus spent 40 days with the disciples after his resurrection. He taught them about God’s Reign in this world and repeated the promise of God’s Holy Spirit, a promise that also figures prominently in John’s Gospel.

All this talk about God’s Reign and the promise of the Holy Spirit starts the disciples thinking, and they ask if now is the time that Rome will be expelled and Israel will again be free as God’s kingdom. Jesus redirects their thoughts – as he had done so many times throughout his ministry – from this political manifestation to the birth and ministry of the church. They are to be God’s witnesses as God’s Reign spreads throughout the earth, filled with God’s Spirit: A social and theological reign, rather than a political plan.

Then Jesus ascended from them into Heaven. We don’t know exactly what “taken up” means, since Heaven is not in the sky; rather Heaven is a dimension beyond our present existence, as close as our own skin, but as far away as our minds can make it. The veil between this life and the next was made thin, and Jesus rose before them into another dimension or plane of existence. They watched and watched, until “two men dressed in white” (we can assume angels) sent them on their way with the promise of Jesus’ return.

What’s It All About?

God is on our side. Great! God’s presence with us is guaranteed by the presence of the Holy Spirit. Wonderful! Jesus will return and end all danger and distress in our world. That is really good news! But what’s it all about? Why do we even need to remind each other of these things?

Consider the way people feel stretched and distressed at the moment. I know of one work group who were Zooming together. One of them broke down crying as he described the stress of working at home, as the boundaries have become blurred between home life and work life. He had to leave the meeting because he was feeling the stress so deeply. I think of others in our community who have experienced loss – such as one who had to bury a parent with a few close relatives at the funeral, while other well-wishers attended only online.

We could name other losses and problems within our congregation, but we have care groups and deacons as places where we talk about those struggles more fully. We speak about such things in public only with the permission of the individuals involved. Nevertheless, we know that they are part of our lives, and many people feel a level of stress that is hard to describe. We don’t want to make a fuss, but we know we need help. So, what should we do? How do we respond as people who believe in Jesus and live under the Rule of God?

A Digression

Let’s take a rabbit trail, which should bring us back out on to the main road: the question, “Why did Jesus ascend into Heaven?” Jesus came into our world to bring us the good news of God’s Reign. “Repent! The kingdom of God is here!” In his death, Jesus took the sins of the world into himself, reconciling the world to God. In his resurrection, he defeated sin, death, and hell.

Why then did Jesus not stay with us? Risen from the grave, he could have ruled over all creation as the eternal and triumphant Son of God. Instead, he went away. Why? In John’s gospel he says that he goes away so that the Holy Spirit can come, but if Jesus had stayed with us, we would have the fullness of God present and would not need anything else. Why did he leave?

The text does not really give an answer. Here is my speculation, based on a common way of understanding this matter down through the centuries. When Jesus returns “in power and great glory”, the time for choice is past. As Paul puts it in Philippians 2, “Every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Another term for the return of Christ. When Jesus returns, everyone will see the choice that they have made in this life – to follow God or to turn away from God. C.S. Lewis portrays this event in a remarkable way at the end of the final book in the Narnia Series. I adapt his picture this way: At the end of time, when Jesus returns, every person on earth will walk past him and look him in the face. Everyone will recognize Jesus for who he is, the Eternal and Glorious Son of God. Some will recognize Jesus and know that they love him: They will enter God’s presence forever. Some will recognize Jesus and know that they hate him: They are banished from God’s presence forever. There will be no choice in that moment; rather each one will discover and see clearly the choice that each one has made throughout life.

Jesus left his disciples and this world in order to create the space within which we can choose to follow him or not. He gives us the Holy Spirit because no one can choose to follow God without God’s help. He removes the full glory of God’s presence in the person of the Risen Lord because that presence would overwhelm our senses and we would lose the power of choice.

There is great mystery in all of this – that God should give us the dignity of choosing to follow, that God should agree that we may reject or accept God: this is mystery beyond words. It is also at the heart of reality. When Jesus returns, the time for choice is past; while Jesus is gone and we have God’s Spirit, God also gives us the time and ability to choose for or against God.

Back to the Main Road

The great danger of our lives is that we may choose against God without even realizing what we are doing. We have good intentions, as they say. We want to do good things, but we are faced with the pressures of daily life. Over time, we become less and less aware of God, so that when we finally come face-to-face with God, we don’t like what we see. We become caught up in the struggles of our time, and we forget the most important relationship of all.

Think of it this way. I don’t turn off my computer at night anymore; I just let it “go to sleep”. The trouble is that computers gradually build up little bits of information in their “random access memory”, and these extra unneeded bits of information gradually clog up the computer’s ability to run. Occasionally, my computer gets so full of stuff it doesn’t need that I can see a lag of five seconds or so between typing something and the words appearing on the screen. When this happens, the best thing to do is turn the computer off, which lets it dump all the information it no longer needs. When you turn it back on, it runs almost as good as new! One of the first pieces of advice that IT support gives you is to reboot your computer. It’s amazing what a reboot can fix!

One way that we could respond to all that has happened is by stopping our frantic rush to do things and listen for God’s voice and dwell in God’s presence. We can, if you will, accept the lockdown as an opportunity to reboot the computer of our minds and allow our souls to shed all of the busy-ness that has taken over our lives. We can choose to experience this time of trouble as God’s grace, reminding us to dwell in God’s presence and in the fountainhead of God’s love.

The Province of Manitoba has announced various relaxations of the lockdown. We are watching people across Canada and the United States emerging from their homes, wondering how we are supposed to live in the “new normal”. It has struck me how many people want to pick up where they left off with no change. They have a chance to reboot their lives, and they say, “No!”

When my computer freezes and I have to shut it off by unplugging it completely, it asks me a question when I turn it back on: “Do you want to restore the pages you were working on?” There are those who treat the lockdown that way: Restore the pages I was working on! Give me my life back, with all of the overwork and stress and everything else! I don’t want to learn anything!

Conclusion

The miracle is that God gives us choice. Just as Jesus did in the Ascension, God withdraws enough for us to decide what we want to do. God gives us the Holy Spirit to help us to re-orient our lives around God, but God will not compel us to do so. When Jesus returns, all choice is over. Meanwhile, we can choose to embrace God, to reboot our lives, to restore the original operating system with which God made us.

A few evenings ago, I made a mistake typing on the computer. It was a simple mistake, and the level of frustration that I felt was out of proportion to the actual problem. Afterwards, Lois asked me, “Why were you so upset?” It felt much bigger than it was, because we are under a lot of stress after two months of lockdown. I am under less stress than many. I think of those whose business is threatened by the measures we have taken as a province, or those who are out of work, or those who have lost loved ones, or those who live alone, or those who have had to work on the front lines of the pandemic. It’s not surprising if we experience a collective breakdown. A news report on Thursday said: “It’s estimated that roughly 11 million Canadians will experience ‘high levels of stress in family and work settings,’ according to Health Canada data revealed to Global News. Close to two million Canadians are predicted to show signs of ‘traumatic stress.’” That’s somewhere around 30% who face debilitating stress. These are people we know.

My message this morning is one of faith and of hope. We are experiencing the stage in which Jesus withdraws into Heaven; we also have the promise of God’s continued presence through God’s Spirit; we know that Jesus will return. Our task is to become silent in God’s presence, knowing that God gives us space to choose God’s love and care. During the going deeper time, perhaps we can explore how we do this. It is a great opportunity, but it is also a challenging and frightening time. Perhaps I can say it best in the words of a hymn (#502 in HWB):

Spirit of God, descend upon my heart, wean it from earth, through all its pulses move.

Stoop to my weakness, mighty as thou art, and make me love you as I ought to love.

I ask no dream, no prophet ecstasies, no sudden rending of the veil of clay,

no angel visitant, no opening skies; but take the dimness of my soul away.

Hast thou not bid us love you, God and King? All, all thine own, soul, heart, and strength and mind;

I see the cross, there teach my heart to cling. O let me seek thee and O let me find!

Teach me to feel that you are always nigh; teach me the struggles of the soul to bear,

To check the rising doubt, the rebel sigh; teach me the patience of unanswered prayer.

Teach me to love thee as thine angels love, one holy passion filling all my frame;

The baptism of the heaven-descended Dove; my heart an altar, and thy love the flame.

Steinbach Mennonite Church

24 May 2020

Texts

Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35

For the director of music. Of David. A psalm. A song.

¹ May God arise, may his enemies be scattered; may his foes flee before him. ² May you blow them away like smoke—as wax melts before the fire, may the wicked perish before God. ³ But may the righteous be glad and rejoice before God; may they be happy and joyful.

⁴ Sing to God, sing in praise of his name, extol him who rides on the clouds;
    rejoice before him—his name is the Lord. ⁵ A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. ⁶ God sets the lonely in families, he leads out the prisoners with singing; but the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land.

⁷ When you, God, went out before your people, when you marched through the wilderness, ⁸ the earth shook, the heavens poured down rain, before God, the One of Sinai, before God, the God of Israel. ⁹ You gave abundant showers, O God; you refreshed your weary inheritance. ¹⁰ Your people settled in it, and from your bounty, God, you provided for the poor.

…

³² Sing to God, you kingdoms of the earth, sing praise to the Lord, ³³ to him who rides across the highest heavens, the ancient heavens, who thunders with mighty voice. ³⁴ Proclaim the power of God, whose majesty is over Israel, whose power is in the heavens. ³⁵ You, God, are awesome in your sanctuary; the God of Israel gives power and strength to his people. Praise be to God!

John 17:1-11

Jesus Prays to Be Glorified

17 After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed: “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. ² For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. ³ Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. ⁴ I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. ⁵ And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.

Jesus Prays for His Disciples

⁶ “I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. ⁷ Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. ⁸ For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me. ⁹ I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours. ¹⁰ All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them. ¹¹ I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one.

Going Deeper Questions

1. What do the ascension and the second coming of Jesus mean to you?

2. How have these been preached in your experience?

3. I suggest that the pandemic is actually God’s gift to help us discover God’s presence. How does this claim fit with your experience? 

4. “God is on our side.” How does this claim fit with your experience?