John 17:11-19 (Easter 7B)
St. John, Galveston 5/12/24
Rev. Alan Taylor

+ In Nomine Jesu +

Grace and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
 
All three of the readings this morning deal with the subject of prayer. In the Acts passage, the disciples prayed for God’s guidance as they choose the man to replace Judas Iscariot. They put forward two men, Justus and Matthias.  A rather short list, but a “call list” nonetheless. “They prayed and said, ‘You Lord, who know the hearts of all, show which one of these two you have chosen.” And, by the Holy Spirit, they chose Matthias.
 
In I John we are assured God hears us when we pray and that He answers us according to His good and gracious will.  “If we ask anything (the Apostle says) according to his will he hears us.  And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of Him.”
 
Finally, in John 17, Jesus prays on behalf of the Church. I think this whole section is a mystery that’s hard to fathom. I mean, Jesus praying to Himself, that is? The 2nd Person of the Holy Trinity, the One who Himself is very God of very God, sets aside time for devotion and prayer!  It begs the question how does God pray to Himself?  We are tempted to say that Jesus prays only “according to His human nature,” as if Jesus, God in the flesh, could do something in one nature apart from the other. In reality Jesus couldn’t anymore pray apart from His divine nature than He could die on the cross apart from His divine nature. There really isn’t any point in trying to understand it.  Rather, we simply stand in awe of the mysteries of God. Here, Jesus prays to God, just as, on the cross God dies for the sins of the world.
 
Part of the wonder of Jesus’ prayer is not only that He prays, but, that He prays for His Church, past, present and future, which is to say, He prays for you and me. The Psalmist couldn’t understand why God even cared about mankind as a whole, much less why He cared about him individually. O Lord, he said, “when I  look at your heavens, the work of Your  fingers, the moon and the stars,  which you have set in place,  what is man that you are  mindful of him, and  the son of man that you  care for him?” 
 
While we might ask others to pray on our behalf, we can rest assured that our Lord has and does intercede on our behalf before the throne of grace even today. “For  there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man  Christ Jesus,  who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is  the testimony given  at the proper time.” Tuck that little nugget of Gospel away in your heart, my friends.  Jesus is your intercessor, even now, as He was in the days of the Apostles. Sitting at the right hand of the Father, Jesus, who is still the God and man, prays for you.    
 
We live in a sophisticated world, don’t we?  Science has sought to explain the origins of the universe. In many respects it has succeeded. In other’s, it has not. Man is understood to be a blank slate on which society can, with the right information and with the right surroundings, compose a perfect script.  Evil, as a quality or characteristic, is denied, in favor of lesser and greater degrees of good. Satan is turned into a mythical, fairy tale figure, the stuff of overly active religious imaginations. And the devil laughs, for, by stealth he gains the greatest advantage over his avowed enemy. He has, you see, but one goal, namely the destruction of God’s Kingdom of grace, which resides in this world in the Church and thus in you.
 
Jesus has prayed for you that the Father would “keep you from the evil one.”  To that end, He has built a fortress around you in the person of His Son. Indeed,“for us fights the Valiant One, whom God Himself elected. Ask ye, who is this? Jesus Christ, it is. Of Sabbaoth Lord and there’s none other God. He holds the field forever.”          
 
As we walk through this world with Him in the fight against the evil one, Jesus asks that we may be one (vs.  11). “And I am no longer in the world, but  they are in the world, and  I am coming to you.  Holy Father,  keep them in your name,  which you have given me,  that they may be one,  even as we are one.”
 
Division in the Church is a terrible commentary on the sinfulness of the human heart. God created us to be one. In fact, in a greater and deeper sense the Church is one, for there is “one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all.” 
 
Still, we live in a world where faith is to be believed and confessed.  Unfortunately we have this strange notion that variant confessions of the faith are good because they give people different options for the expression of their faith. We can call them Lutheran and Methodist, Presbyterian or Episcopal, option A or B, original or extra crispy. We can call them what we like, but God’s truth is to be confessed in unison, not in disunity.  

Interestingly, I came across a term the other day, in a recent document of our church body, the LCMS, the term was theological diversity. What, I asked, is theological diversity? Actually I asked the question in slightly different words.  The assembled group couldn’t even agree on what the term means. 
 
Jesus had something to say about disharmony in the Church. He asked Peter who the people said that He was. The people had all sorts of opinions about Jesus. Some of them thought He was John the Baptist raised from the dead.  Some of them thought He was Elijah or one of the Prophets. Jesus then said to Peter, but, “who do you say that I am?” Peter’s confession, that “Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God,” laid a foundation on which the Church would be built, a foundation so strong that “even the gates of hell would never be able to prevail against it.” The masses would be divided because they would insist on their own opinions. The Church would unite under the confession of the Apostles and the Word of God. Jesus prays that we would be one.
 
He prays too that we would have the same joy as He. “I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have  my joy fulfilled in themselves.”
 
Disappointment, suffering, and even hatred may come after us, but our joy is in the Lord. Joy, you should know, isn’t the same thing as happiness.  Happiness thrives on favorable circumstances. Joy transcends what is now, by what will be. Our joy is in knowing that regardless of what is happening in our lives our God is in control, for He rules the heavens and the earth.  Luther, picking up on the subject of joy, once said, “a man has as much laughter as he has faith.” What he meant by that is that, even in a world gone amuck, the Christian, with a rye smile knows that GOD WINS and therefore THE VICTORY IS HIS!!  
 
Finally, Jesus prays that we may be sanctified in truth by being set aside, just as He was set aside, for His mission of the cross.  “As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And  for their sake  I consecrate myself, that they also  may be sanctified in truth.”
 
Did you ever wonder why God doesn’t just take us home now? Clearly He has a plan for our lives. He has a plan for your life, one that He is fulfilling even now. His Church is in the world to pray for the world, to bear witness to His Word, to confess what is right and what is wrong and ultimately to mimic John the Baptist in saying “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”   
 
Having sent you into the world, Jesus prays that you would be “sanctified in truth.”  We are forever tempted to wander, aren’t we? We follow detours and look for easier ways. Yet he continues to pray that His word would have a profound effect in our lives, that His life, death and resurrection would so captivate us that our lives would be transformed. And indeed, they have been, for, as God’s dearly loved children we live cruciform lives. “For me (the Apostle said) to live is Christ and to die is gain.” My friends, by the Word of God, through the Spirit, you have been sanctified, you have been set apart. The purposes of God for you have been fulfilled and they will continue to be fulfilled.  Jesus has prayed for you and His prayer has and will be answered by Almighty God for what Jesus prays is without doubt the will of His Father. 
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.

+ Soli Deo Gloria +