Mothers Pray; Jesus Prays too

7 Easter  B    May 13, 2018

Acts 1:15-17, 21-26   Psalm 1

1 John 5:9-13  John 17:6-19

Lectionary Link

Today on the Sunday after the Ascension, we've read the Gospel which includes the "true Lord's Prayer."  What is often called the Lord's Prayer, is more rightly called the "Our Father" or the pray that Jesus taught his disciples to use.

The "Lord's prayer" in John's Gospel, which is more of a mystical discourse, is not found in the other Gospels which were written before John's Gospel.  One does not fully understand how anyone could have gotten so much access into the private prayers of Jesus to be able to give a verbatim account of a prayer of Jesus.

John's Gospel was written rather late and so it includes within it the beliefs, practices and the mysticism of the early church.  The form of writing was done by writers who believed that they had the "mind" of Christ and so such inspired writers could be oracles for the prayers of Christ whom they believed to be ascended and was seated next to God the Father and who was interceding on behalf of his disciples and friends.  One clue of this might be the phrase: "While I was with them...."  So if Jesus was no longer "with" the disciple when he was offering this prayer, where was he?

This prayer discourse of Jesus teems with so many meanings, I can only edit a few from it for our faith meanings today.  I would suggest to you a few words to ponder from this prayer attributed to Jesus, perhaps in his ascended state and channeled through the Gospel writer.

Here are some Johannine words: Name, World, Being One and Sanctify.

Onama is the Greek for "name."  The name of God and the name of Jesus is a big thing in the Gospels.  To know the name of God and Jesus was not like getting a listing of names from a directory.  Knowing the name of God and Jesus was a very secret and mystical thing.  Knowing the name of God and Jesus occurred when one had come into an intimate relationship with God and Jesus.  In the Hebrew Scriptures communities and until today, the name of God was unknowable in the sense that it was so great one could not presume to pronounce it.  But we Christians, have presumed to pronounce it as "Jehovah" or "Yahweh."  

An Arab proverb is based upon a belief that there were 100 names of God but human beings only know 99 names because the 100th name is a secret.  Hence the riddle: Why does the camel always have a silly grin on his face?  Because he knows the 100th name of God and he is not telling.

Jesus stated in his prayer, "I have made known your name to them."  And what was God's name for Jesus?  It was Father.  Or for St. Paul, God's name was the intimate word for Father: "Abba."  Simply "Daddy! " Who can rightly use the name "Daddy?"  Only a beloved child who has this special intimate, adoring and adorable relationship.  Such a name seems so secret and restrictive because it means that one has come into the qualifying relationship to know God in such an intimate way.  Jesus was saying that he had such an intimate relationship with God as his Father to be qualified to bring his disciples from his credible status to a similar intimate relationship with God so that as children we could know God in such intimate personal terms as "Daddy" or "Mommy."   On this day, "Mommy," might be a fitting name of intimate relationship with God, too.  Jesus shared an intimate familial relationship with God with those who were made sons and daughters of God.  The Gospel for you and me today:  You and I can be on intimate terms with God too.

The next word of the prayer of Jesus:  World or in Greek Kosmos.  In John's Gospel, God loved the world, God came to save the world, but humanity being a part of the world was not supposed to love the things of the world or be of the world.  So world meant all of the external created order but also it meant having a wrong relationship to the external order, in the sense that we project our desire upon all of the things in our world and are often brought to idolatry reflected in our addictive behaviors.  Jesus told Nicodemus that he needed to be born again or born from above.  He needed to be born and live from within the inner spiritual world so that he could love the world through God's love and not through addicting desire.  In this prayer of Jesus, Jesus asks that his disciples might attain this right relationship with the world.  Our interior lives need to be so rightly constituted that we know how to relate to the external world with care and concern and enjoyment but avoid idolatry and addiction.  The Gospel for you and me today:  Let us learn to love the world through God's love and not be slaves to our projected desires.

The next words are "that they might be one as we are one."  In John's Gospel Jesus said, "I and the Father are one and if you have seen me, you have seen the Father.  In John's Gospel, Jesus also claimed identity with the holy name of God when he said, "Before Abraham was, I am."   In a world of diversity and difference how can we talk about unity or oneness?  I am not you, you are not me; how can we be one?  The unity of identity found in what might be called a harmony is what characterized the sense of belonging or merging and this is found in the language of mystical experience.  I have become one with all things.  St. Paul experienced this identity and merging with Christ:  "I have been crucified with Christ and I live, yet not I, for Christ lives within me."  

In contrast the neurotic man, Woody Allen wrote about his mystical experience, he wrote, "I am two with nature."  Being two with nature and all things expresses the alienation of sin.  Accepting the One Community of Everything in a profound sense of connectedness is the Oneness that Jesus prayed that his disciples would know and experience.  He prayed that they might know this oneness of intimacy, just as Jesus knew it with his Father.  Sometimes church leaders use this prayer to talk about unity among all of the Christian groups, but the oneness is much more profound than simple church agreements.  The Gospel for you and me today:  Jesus prays that we will have this continuous mystical experience of connectedness known through harmonic relationship with everything.

The last word from the prayer of Jesus that I would like for us to consider is "sanctify."  This is one of those special religious words used so often that we don't know what it means.  And even when we say, to sanctify means to make holy, what does holy mean?  Jesus prayed for his disciples: "Sanctify them in the truth; your word is the truth."  This is the way that I understand sanctify:  It means to be drawn to participate and devote oneself to the highest possible value of life.  Life and the life of words is a process of attaining values in life.  Attaining value is a progressive adventure of life and we are helped to attain values by the most enlightened examples in our environment.  The Ten Commandments set the worship of the One God as the supreme value of life.  Following the 10 Commandments and living in an environment that enforces them can help us teach, practice and learn right social behaviors but the commandments as coming from our external world can present us with demands that we find them hard to live up to.  This is why we need the interior expression of the Higher Power of the Holy Spirit.  The work of the Holy Spirit is to sanctify us.  That is, the Spirit calls us to our most inward Self and from this Inward Self we attain the power to keep the law of self-control over the behaviors of our lives.  Jesus said to the Father, "Your word is truth."  Jesus also said that such words were Spirit and life.  We need to discover the inner constitution of the words of our lives to maintain us in the highest values.  The progressive discovery of life is to discover sublime values and then organize in intentional ways our entire lives around these sublime and supreme values.  The intentional organization of our lives around the sublime values of our lives is how we participate in the sanctification of our lives by God's Holy Spirit.

Today, we are asked to believe that Jesus in his ascension into the interior abode referred to as "heaven" is there praying for us and the people of the world.

What is he praying?  That we identify with God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit and so know the secret and intimate name of God as children of God.  That even though we live within the attractions and distractions of the external world, we learn how to live in this world and love the world through the love of God and not through addicting desire. Thirdly, we learn the secret of unity in the midst of difference and diversity.  We choose the harmony of oneness in difference and always live in the Spirit of connectedness and integration with all that is.  Finally, we live sanctified in God's truth; that is we accept the Sublime presence of God found in the highest values known to us and we intentionally organize our lives around these sublime values.

Today on Mother's Day, let us be thankful that our mothers never stopped praying for us.  And in so doing, they entered into the prayer ministry of Jesus Christ, who ever prays for us and in and through us.  Amen.