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Easter May 17, 2015
Acts 1:15-17, 21-26 Psalm 1
1 John 5:9-13 John 17:6-19
1 John 5:9-13 John 17:6-19
Today is the Sunday after the Feast of the Ascension which was Thursday, or the fortieth day after Easter as we move toward the end of the Season of Easter on the Day of Pentecost. The Ascension of Christ after his post-resurrection appearances has a logical function within sacred tradition. When we look at sacred tradition we try to discern the logic and the theology present within the story. The New Testament inherited genres; they inherited prescribed ways to interpret and understand the significance of the life of Jesus Christ. In the early church there was a creative advance occurring in the notions of the afterlife. The theology of the afterlife had to change after the post-resurrection appearances of Christ. It was understood that the spiritual essence of Jesus was able to include the regeneration of his body in some way to be recognizable by those who knew him. And so in the developing theology of resurrection Christian writers began to specify how the physical body could be divinely regenerated from the spiritual essence of a person, so that from spirit a clone of one's body could be generated. And if a person would have a body in the afterlife, then there would have to be a location. Jesus in his afterlife would have to be somewhere because his post-resurrection appearances meant that he had to have a location somewhere. And so in the traditions of Enoch and Elijah, Jesus became spirited away, upward to another place. The New Testament writers had inspired imagination about that place. It was the Father's House. In the Father's heavenly house Jesus had a seat at the right hand of the Father. There was also a temple in the heavens where Jesus entered as a High Priest.
And what does the High Priest in heaven do? Jesus, the high priest in heaven does what priests do, they intercede on behalf of the people they represent.
So we have this long prayer discourse of Jesus in the 17th chapter of John's Gospel as a representation of the priestly ministry of Jesus offering prayer.
We can learn some things about Jesus and our own ministries from understanding what Jesus said when he prayed.
Prayer is a particular way of understanding how we are to use language in our lives. Prayer is derived from within the practice of language. Prayer happens because we as humans are born to have and use language. Since we have and use language, we are by nature social because we share language with other language users. Language then is expressive of social relationship. Prayer is a special way to express our relationships as we understand our lives in relationship to the very greatest of all. In our language we have the ability to be naturally humble by confessing that there is greatness beyond us and there is greatness beyond our words and language even though greatness has to be funneled and reduced to human language for us to be able to grasp the greatness of God.
What we learn from the prayer of Jesus is that he knew within himself a relationship with an inner parent, the Father, of whom he often spoke of. That Jesus addressed his prayers to his Father is important because it points us to the discovery of a caring parent who is great beyond all other greatness. We can experience amid the good and the bad things which can happen to us an anxiety and a fear that the bad experiences could actually gain the predominance even to make us feel doomed. Too many people and we at many times live under the proverbial sword of Damacles; the unfortunate event hanging above us by a hair ready to break and fall at any time. This experience can color our entire perspective with negative thoughts and patterns. The only way to counter this is to grasp onto a future of Hope through the expression of faith. And the way in which we nurture faith is to enter into the perpetual "talking cure" of the life of prayer.
Let's face it: we have language happening within us and to us at all times. So we need to give word and language an intentional purpose and direction.
You and I are talking to ourselves all of the time even as we are day-dreaming about being something else during this sermon. We are automatic word machines; the words are happening whether we acknowledge them or not and that is why we must exercise some authorship in the words of our lives.
And Prayer is the "talking cure" that we can have with the ultimate psychiatrist. Jesus talked about glory in his prayerful dialogue with the fatherized aspect of his inner life. Glory is simply a fancy religious word for "esteem." Our esteem can take so many hard hits from people who don't always know how to give it to us in the ways in which we need. People can fail us in significant ways and harm our esteem. And so we look for that esteem from the higher power, the ultimate Dr. Freud as we pour out our hearts to God at first in ways that make it seem that we are just experimenting with silence. But as we practice prayer we use language in a creative way to build an infrastructure of the life of our words which constitute and construct the meanings and the worth of our lives. And we can know in our prayer that God shares a glory of esteem which can help us to overcome the challenges we face from people who do not have the ability to give us the esteem that we need.
The prayer of Jesus also give us another clue to the purpose of prayer. It is to celebrate our connection with other people. If we come to know God as our heavenly parent, then we can also come to know that the family of God is huge and that we have many brothers and sisters. We are put here together as the family of God. Jesus prayed for his friends; he wanted them to have the very best in their lives; he wanted them to have such a significant oneness with God as their spiritual parent that they would derive Higher Power strength from within themselves.
And the outcome of discovering this Higher Power from within is to have the strength to care for our brothers and sisters in both our spoken prayers and our active prayers, the prayers of the oblationary sacrificial acts which express kindness within a community of people.
Jesus prayed that his friends would be safe and protected. Jesus prayed that they would be kept in knowledge and truth. Jesus prayed that they would know that they live in a spiritual world even while they lived in a material and visible world.
How do we live in this material and visible world with truth and knowledge and safety? We begin through the reorganization of our interior lives. And this happens in a most effective way when we learn to pray because prayer is the ability to create a word environment to relate our interior life to our exterior life in wise ways. Prayer is the ability to be humble in asking for God's help and power to help us in the tasks of living.
Finally, the prayer of Jesus teaches each of us that we are called to be priestly. A priest is one who accepts that one is can ask God for help for oneself and for others at the same time. Prayer does not have to be about what I need all of the time. Prayer for others literally helps us to "forget" ourselves and our problems as we acknowledge and regard the problems and needs of other people whom God has placed in our lives.
At St. John's we have a prayer chain group who carry on the task of priestly intercessory prayer for those who honor us by asking us to pray with and for them. And in prayer there is an unseen connection which takes place; it is as though angels are created. Hope through faithful prayer can send angels as transmitting messengers to the people for whom we pray.
The Gospel for us today is that Jesus prayed to his Father; he wanted to share with his friends that same kind of prayerful relationship; he prayed for his friends and with this example we are called to reorganize our worded lives through the practice of prayer.
May God help us today to discover and exercise the priestly calling of prayer that each of us has. Amen.
And what does the High Priest in heaven do? Jesus, the high priest in heaven does what priests do, they intercede on behalf of the people they represent.
So we have this long prayer discourse of Jesus in the 17th chapter of John's Gospel as a representation of the priestly ministry of Jesus offering prayer.
We can learn some things about Jesus and our own ministries from understanding what Jesus said when he prayed.
Prayer is a particular way of understanding how we are to use language in our lives. Prayer is derived from within the practice of language. Prayer happens because we as humans are born to have and use language. Since we have and use language, we are by nature social because we share language with other language users. Language then is expressive of social relationship. Prayer is a special way to express our relationships as we understand our lives in relationship to the very greatest of all. In our language we have the ability to be naturally humble by confessing that there is greatness beyond us and there is greatness beyond our words and language even though greatness has to be funneled and reduced to human language for us to be able to grasp the greatness of God.
What we learn from the prayer of Jesus is that he knew within himself a relationship with an inner parent, the Father, of whom he often spoke of. That Jesus addressed his prayers to his Father is important because it points us to the discovery of a caring parent who is great beyond all other greatness. We can experience amid the good and the bad things which can happen to us an anxiety and a fear that the bad experiences could actually gain the predominance even to make us feel doomed. Too many people and we at many times live under the proverbial sword of Damacles; the unfortunate event hanging above us by a hair ready to break and fall at any time. This experience can color our entire perspective with negative thoughts and patterns. The only way to counter this is to grasp onto a future of Hope through the expression of faith. And the way in which we nurture faith is to enter into the perpetual "talking cure" of the life of prayer.
Let's face it: we have language happening within us and to us at all times. So we need to give word and language an intentional purpose and direction.
You and I are talking to ourselves all of the time even as we are day-dreaming about being something else during this sermon. We are automatic word machines; the words are happening whether we acknowledge them or not and that is why we must exercise some authorship in the words of our lives.
And Prayer is the "talking cure" that we can have with the ultimate psychiatrist. Jesus talked about glory in his prayerful dialogue with the fatherized aspect of his inner life. Glory is simply a fancy religious word for "esteem." Our esteem can take so many hard hits from people who don't always know how to give it to us in the ways in which we need. People can fail us in significant ways and harm our esteem. And so we look for that esteem from the higher power, the ultimate Dr. Freud as we pour out our hearts to God at first in ways that make it seem that we are just experimenting with silence. But as we practice prayer we use language in a creative way to build an infrastructure of the life of our words which constitute and construct the meanings and the worth of our lives. And we can know in our prayer that God shares a glory of esteem which can help us to overcome the challenges we face from people who do not have the ability to give us the esteem that we need.
The prayer of Jesus also give us another clue to the purpose of prayer. It is to celebrate our connection with other people. If we come to know God as our heavenly parent, then we can also come to know that the family of God is huge and that we have many brothers and sisters. We are put here together as the family of God. Jesus prayed for his friends; he wanted them to have the very best in their lives; he wanted them to have such a significant oneness with God as their spiritual parent that they would derive Higher Power strength from within themselves.
And the outcome of discovering this Higher Power from within is to have the strength to care for our brothers and sisters in both our spoken prayers and our active prayers, the prayers of the oblationary sacrificial acts which express kindness within a community of people.
Jesus prayed that his friends would be safe and protected. Jesus prayed that they would be kept in knowledge and truth. Jesus prayed that they would know that they live in a spiritual world even while they lived in a material and visible world.
How do we live in this material and visible world with truth and knowledge and safety? We begin through the reorganization of our interior lives. And this happens in a most effective way when we learn to pray because prayer is the ability to create a word environment to relate our interior life to our exterior life in wise ways. Prayer is the ability to be humble in asking for God's help and power to help us in the tasks of living.
Finally, the prayer of Jesus teaches each of us that we are called to be priestly. A priest is one who accepts that one is can ask God for help for oneself and for others at the same time. Prayer does not have to be about what I need all of the time. Prayer for others literally helps us to "forget" ourselves and our problems as we acknowledge and regard the problems and needs of other people whom God has placed in our lives.
At St. John's we have a prayer chain group who carry on the task of priestly intercessory prayer for those who honor us by asking us to pray with and for them. And in prayer there is an unseen connection which takes place; it is as though angels are created. Hope through faithful prayer can send angels as transmitting messengers to the people for whom we pray.
The Gospel for us today is that Jesus prayed to his Father; he wanted to share with his friends that same kind of prayerful relationship; he prayed for his friends and with this example we are called to reorganize our worded lives through the practice of prayer.
May God help us today to discover and exercise the priestly calling of prayer that each of us has. Amen.
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