St. Mary's Episcopal Church

7 Easter
John 17: 20-26
Jesus Prays for Us

Communication is always a tricky thing. When we speak to someone, we are only doing a portion of the communication, and we can do our best to speak clearly, openly, articulately, but we can never have control over our what our audience hears. Be it one person we speak to, or a congregation, or to the entire church. The listener, hearer, reader, or has very much to do with what she hears.

My wife and I sometimes try to talk shop together, and while she is well versed in church lingo and theology, sometimes I launch into something and leave her behind wondering just what I might be talking about. More often than not, when she begins to tell me about her day in the world of environmental investigation, I get completely lost in the sea of acronyms: NOX, NOV, VOC's, PM, CO, NOE. Sometimes she has to spoon feed it to me and we end up with something like: "I went to a company and their stuff was wrong."

Fortunately, we've had time to learn to be careful in our conversation, and realize that the listening part and the speaking part are important if we really want to communicate.

Now, that example is between two people, lets consider now what it is like for John to communicate Jesus Christ to us through this Gospel reading we heard today.

We hear scripture read weekly in the Holy Eucharist. Sometimes it may be familiar to us, other times, we may struggle to understand, or we may drift off to some other place our mind wants to wander. If we have had academic study on the Bible like Bethel, which is taught here at St Mary's, we may have insight into the context of the Bible reading we hear. If, like my dad, you have been reading the daily office every morning for years and years, you have some experience, some intimate familiarity with the story of scripture, even as one portion is unfolded here in the gathering.

Those of us who teach and preach on the Bible have some tools we use to get deeper into the Bible, we have books of commentators who get at the history, the literary form, and context with in the book of the Bible it comes from. Then there is the original language, that can open up doors of rich understanding beyond even our best English translations.

All of those things help to inform the process of writing a sermon, seeking to communicate from this side, what God may be speaking to us through scripture on any given week.

But how are we to hear scripture? How are we, in this place to understand the public reading of scripture? It is unlike many other ways that we read. It is not like reading the daily paper, a private activity that gives us a glimpse of the news of the moment. It is unlike reading a novel, or any book that we read privately, or perhaps in conversation with others in a book study. And reading the Bible here in this place is even different and greater than reading scripture alone. Reading scripture alone is important, but something different happens here. First, it is a public act. We gather together to listen to one voice reading the scripture, and perhaps read along in the bulletin. The Scripture is literally lifted off the pages, and brought to life with voice, and communicated from one person to many people. And we set the readings in the context of prayer, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We gather in the name of the Lord and invite each other to acknowledge the Lord's presence with us. Knowing God is among us, the Scripture is set free in our midst, and hearing it together brings a certain amount of accountability, we all know that we have all just heard this…how will it change us? How will it shape us? The way it is read sets it apart, you can actually see, visually, that this is a different sort of reading before you even hear the text. [A person dressed differently], someone authorized by the church, moves into a special place, and reads from a big book. This is something that stands out, the same Book that we read from week after week. It is lifted up for all to see, and read loud enough so that, hopefully, everyone can hear. And the Gospel is processed not only in the midst of the congregation as if set free to move about as it moves us, but is carried to the doors, so that we cannot help but look out at the world as we hear Jesus message to us here on this Sunday [morning/evening.]

This act of bringing the text to life, the way we move and gather together to hear the readings is not accidental. It is to heighten our awareness. It is to catch our attention, it is to say, listen to this, it is special!

We are set to hear, and to begin to interpret as a community what God is saying, right now to us. And today, in our Gospel, we hear Jesus praying for us. When we listen to scripture, when we hear those words from the Bible brought to life, there is a danger of pushing a barrier up, and trying to get some distance from something so powerful. We risk thinking that in that book is a finished product, something completed and over with, as if we are only opening a history book, and we are trying to just recall the history perhaps with some nostalgia-but this text is nothing if it is only history. Today our reading resists being pushed away, or marked off as history. John's metaphysical acrobatics tease us into listening more closely to hear Jesus prayer, and more importantly, to hear who the prayer is for. It is a prayer for us.

We hear, in this prayer a conversation, a communication between Jesus and the Father. It is Jesus communicating with a listening God. We hear Jesus hope for us. His hope for our receiving of the Gospel, of our receiving of the word. His prayer is fulfilled even as we hear him praying it. The story, the word, his Gospel is brought to life in the midst of this congregation here, even as we hear him praying for us to receive that Gospel. He is praying to God, for us, for our faith, and for our belief.

And in faith we hear the prayer. We hear him praying for us, and telling God his desire that we become one with God and with generations who have received the Gospel before us. He prays that we would know God's love just as intimately as he knows God's love. Jesus prays to God that we might know their presence here with us in the Church, to know that even if time separates us from his earthly ministry, we are not separated from the Love of God. To hear Jesus prayer a different way, we might put our name in that prayer, to hear what he is saying about us:

Listen to it this way. Jesus prayed, "I ask not only on behalf of [my disciples], but also on behalf of the people of St Mary's who will believe in me through [my disciples], that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may [St Mary's] also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given [St Mary's], so that [St Mary's] may be one, as we are one, I in [St Mary's] and you in me, that [St Mary's] may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I desire that [St Mary's] also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

"Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and [the people of St Mary's] know that you have sent me. I made your name known to [St Mary's], and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in [St Mary's], and I in [St Mary's]

Jesus is here with us, praying for us to know the Love of God. He prays for us who receive his word, and he prays for those who will receive the word from us, as the Gospel is shared again and again, bringing many people in many generations into the One God who is in our midst now, praying for us, as we pray with him.