Is the Prayer of Jesus being Answered for Us?

7 Easter  B    May 16, 2021
Acts 1:15-17, 21-26   Psalm 1
1 John 5:9-13  John 17:6-19

 

Lectionary Link

Here's a quote from the long prayer of Jesus recorded in the seventeenth chapter of John:   "While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them"

What verb tense is "was," "protected," and "guarded?"  Past tense.  If Jesus prayed, "While I was with them," does this imply that he is no longer with them?

And if Jesus is no longer with his disciple during this prayer, where is he?

Today is Ascension Sunday.  So what this prayer may be considered is a post-Ascension prayer.  The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews wrote: Jesus ever lives to intercede for us.  Jesus is one who prays for us; he did it while he was visible on earth; he does it in the invisible realm after the ascension.

The prayer of Jesus in John appears to be a post-Ascension prayer.  So how did the words of Jesus get written down when he is already ascended?

There was a method of delivering the post-Ascension words of Jesus.  It is what I call the oracle function of the Risen and Ascended Christ within the communities of the followers of Jesus.  How is this oracle function introduced in the New Testament writings?  In various ways, like when Jesus told his disciples to speak in his name.  This means that the words that he inspired in them would be His Words too.  This means that when Paul said that he had the mind of Christ, that some of his words would be channeling the words of the Ascended Christ.  The entire Gospel preaching tradition involves a rather great presumption: presuming to speak in the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

That presumption has been widespread but only a few of those words have been written down and through a long process of church meeting votes, some have become the official text book of the church, the New Testament.

So what is this prayer of Jesus we have read?  It is an inspired writer answering the question, "When Jesus is no longer with us, "what would Jesus pray?

And this is where it really gets exciting, because it is quite profound what Jesus asks God his Father for?

He asks God the Father that each of his followers would come to be one with God as he is one with God.

Jesus is asking for nothing less than that you and I experience a mystical union with God.  This is almost too deliciously holy to even ponder.  Why?

What would happen if we really accept this and believed that we too could be such children of God?

If we believed and lived our mystical union  with God, we would be living an inspired life in our time and place just like Jesus lived an inspired life in his time and place.  Our time and place is completely different from the time and place of Jesus; so we are inspired to do things which are appropriate to the meaning of love and justice within the very specifics of our time and place.

Lot of people think to be in a holy oneness with God means one has to be somewhere completely different than in the very ordinary lives which you and I inhabit.

What do you mean?  Mystical union with God in Ramona?  At St. Mary's-in-the-Valley Episcopal Church?  Yeah right, that's even laughable.

Mystical union happens everywhere because God as the great originator is omnipresent; God is everywhere and in everything.  We human beings have the exalted privilege of consciously recognizing to very high degree of how much God is in and through us.

And this is what the prayer of Jesus is asking for us to realize.

And so the question for you and me is this?  Is the prayer of Jesus being answered in you and me?  And if it is, by accepting our mystical union with God through Christ, how are we going to live?  And what kind of parish are we going to make St. Mary's-in-the-Valley?

Let us open ourselves to the possibility of the prayer of Jesus being answered in us today.  Amen.