5/24/20

Sermon Notes:

Jesus prayed. Jesus took time out of his work and went to be alone to pray.

Jesus taught his followers to pray.

And Jesus prayed for us.

Jesus, fully human and fully divine, who exhibited special knowledge, healed the sick, raised the dead, loved the suffering back to life abundant, faced world powers with ease and faced spiritual powers with grace…prayed for us. For you and me.  

It is humbling to think about what this means for us, the level to which we are loved and the person who prayed for us. And it is intriguing to think what it means for our own practice of prayer. 

If Jesus could accomplish acts of God, as a person of God in the Trinity, what was the need for prayer? Was it his “fully human” part that benefited from prayer? And what did praying for his followers do for them? 

What he wanted he surely could have had: did he need to pray for it or for them?

In his book entitled, Tokens of Trust, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, describes the strangeness and wonder of a Jesus who prays: “Yes, Jesus is a human being in whom God’s action is at work without interruption or impediment.  But wait a moment: the Jesus we meet in the Gospels is someone who prays, who speaks of putting his will and his decisions at the service of his Father.  He is someone who is in a relationship of dependence on the one he prays to as Father.  In him there is divine purpose, power, and action; but there is also humility, responsiveness, and receptivity.”

Jesus’ last gestures before he goes to the cross are heartfelt actions and words for his loved ones. He eats with them. He washes their feet. He assures and encourages them. He prays for them. No flashing lights or descending doves, no big miracles, no victory parades nor taking down of the empire nor defeating the enemies of the empire. He simply communes with people and with God, connecting heaven and earth through simple sincerity, and showing others to do the same. Showing us to do the same, to linger on that bridge between heaven and earth, that bridge we call prayer. 

In the gospel reading for this Sunday, the seventh and final Sunday of Eastertide, we read a final portion of the Farewell Discourse from the gospel of John (John 17:1-11). In it, we hear Jesus praying. Jesus is not praying for people to make rigid doctrines that we can measure each other by and use to accuse, exclude, or judge one another. He does not pray that his followers will make him as big and as important as the king or the Roman emperor, nor as powerful as the Roman army nor as wily as the rebel zealots.

Jesus prays that God is glorified, that his completed work be used to glorify God, and that the ones who follow him experience unity and protection by being brought into full relationship with God. It is a prayer of surrender, a prayer of great love. A prayer that we are kept safe and whole in God.

Of all the things we pray for, do they not all boil down to this same prayer? A prayer to be kept safe and whole in God.

Remember that our prayer garden in front of the church is always open for prayer, and ideal for a safe, short outing, even in these worrisome times. 

I have already seen that some of you accepted the invitation to come pray and leave rocks on the marker there at the foot of the cross.

When I saw the rocks there it moved me to tears. I have spent so many hours alone at the church these last few weeks, many of them sweet hours, and many of them sad from missing you and missing our in-person worship together. 

Seeing the names of the people who worked so hard to start our church always boosts my spirit. Seeing the rocks someone left there reminded me - yet again - that I am not alone. 

We all need that reminder on a regular basis. We all need Jesus’ prayer of hope and healing, a prayer to be kept safe and whole in God. 

See you on Facebook at online Sunday!!

Yours with great love, in Christ our Lord - 
Jane