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Today is the Seventh — and final — Sunday of Easter. Next Sunday is Pentecost Sunday.
John 17:6-19
Jesus prayed for his disciples, “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.”
Jesus prayed for his disciples.
Those words may comfort you. I hope they do. However, I confess: that’s not my first response upon reading this lectionary text.
Instead, they remind me of the penultimate scene in The Last Year of the War (Harper & Row, 1979), a novel by the late Shirley Nelson. The story is about Jo, a student at the thinly-disguised Moody Bible Institute (a fundamentalist college) during the last year of WWII. Jo’s brother is missing in action, and the uncertainty of this prompts a crisis of faith. Her seemingly perfect Christian dorm mates — Karen, Beverly, Soup, Jewel, Louise — have grown increasingly alarmed about her spiritual state. Upon returning to her room late one afternoon, Jo finds them absent:
The floor was quiet, which was baffling. This was the time for pre-dinner noise and stampedes to the bathroom…but the rooms were empty…Voices drifted faintly from somewhere. She walked toward them and stopped by Jewel’s closed door.
Someone was praying, she could tell by the tone. She heard the words “her” and “she” repeated. It was Karen’s voice. Jo was about to go away, feeling like an eavesdropper, when she heard her own name. Now Beverly’s voice took over, her words blurred and earnest. Jo something. Jo. Then Soup. She was crying. Work in her heart, they were saying. Bring her back before it is too late. Deliver her. Jo stood outside the door. Her name reaching her again and agin. Jewel. Louise. They were all in there, praying for her, and she was out here…From this backslidden condition. Break the bonds of sin. Free her from the hands of Satan.
Jo kicked open the door…She glared at them, waiting for the right words to boil up inside her.
“F*** you, holy virgins, f*** you, f*** you, f***you, perfect holy daughters of God!”
She heard, and couldn’t believe it…She ran to her room and locked the door and dropped to her knees by her bed, not to pray, but to give up at last.
I read that nearly forty years ago. And that passage never left me, because, with the exception of the profanity, something similar once happened to me. I stumbled into a prayer group praying for me in much the same way. It was awful.
When I was a student at an evangelical college we ruefully joked about such things. We all knew that the words, “I’ll pray for you,” were a kind of veiled threat. A passive-aggressive way of informing the target that they were asking too many questions, that their lives weren’t quite in line. People had noticed. “I’ll pray for you” was an unsubtle reminder to conform — or there would be a cost.
I hated it when someone said it to me — it seemed vaguely menacing or like a pious platitude.
And, in those circles, today’s passage from John was often the proof text for such prayers. Bring her back. Deliver her. From this backslidden condition. Break the bonds of sin. Free her from the hands of Satan. I’m pretty sure the women in the dorm room felt justified in their prayers, as if they were praying as Jesus himself did — Holy Father, protect them in your name…protect them from the evil one.
I wish I could have simply written, “Isn’t this nice? Jesus prays for us.” It would be true in some ways, for it is nice. But this text isn’t as easy as it immediately suggests. To be honest, I’ve always been a bit flummoxed by prayer, even before I was part of evangelical churches where prayer was weaponized against questions — or was a Christian way of saying “Have a nice day!”
I don’t think I’m alone in this. One of the questions I’m most frequently asked is how I understand prayer — both personally and theologically. The answer? I don’t know. Whatever prayer is, it seems more mysterious and elusive than definable.
A major reason why I was attracted to the Episcopal church as a young woman was the Book of Common Prayer, the liturgy and worship guide that shapes Anglican churches around the world. Still raw from the experience of discovering college classmates praying for me in an effort to fix or change me, written prayer was a great relief. The prayers in that worn red book in the pew racks were sturdy, comforting, and created by someone with no animus or agenda against me. And, of equal benefit, there was no pressure to come up with the perfect extemporaneous prayer on the spot — one for which people either judged you theologically or decided if you were sufficiently spiritual. I learned to hide in those written prayers, many of which I know by heart, and let them carry me at times when I could barely carry myself.
Hiding in ancient — or even good contemporary — written prayer isn’t a bad thing. But it doesn’t include every prayer, every longing, every struggle, every desire, every fear or hope we bring to God. All of those things are left for unwritten prayers, the words we cry or yell or speak with expectation or murmur in love.
Today’s passage is not a proscribed prayer like the Lord’s Prayer; it is one of Jesus’ prayers that happened to get written down. It isn’t a controlling sort of prayer like those from the evangelical college dorm. There is no sense that Jesus is trying to manipulate his followers or God. And it isn’t a fix-it prayer. Instead, it sounds rather desperate — Jesus actually seems to be begging God to shield his friends from the consequences of his impending death.
The word protect dominates the prayer. (The words oneness and love dominate the second half of the prayer in John 17:20-26 — sadly, those verses are not included in today’s lectionary.) Jesus wants those he loves to be safe, and to find a sense of security in their unity with each other, with him, and with God.
What is compelling and surprising about this supplication is that Jesus has no outcome in mind other than the well-being of those for whom he prayed. There’s absolutely no sense that Jesus has any other intent. And he didn’t instruct God on how to protect and guard them. This isn’t bossy Jesus; rather, this is begging Jesus. And that’s strange. Kind of like the Triune God pleading with another part of the same Being. Does Jesus even have to ask this of Abba? What about all that oneness between the two of them? In addition to being plain weird, this passage makes a mess of trinitarian theology!
Maybe Jesus isn’t trying to convince the Father. Maybe he’s trying to convince himself that his friends will be alright in his absence. Through three chapters in this section of John’s gospel, you can hear it if you listen for it — Jesus is upset. He’s trying to keep calm and carry on in the face of incredible danger. He’s being brave for his friends. But anxiety continues to break through the surface of sacred reserve. Jesus is scared for himself, the future, and his beloved companions.
And so, he uttered this panicky, pleading petition.
When he prayed for his friends, he seemed to find himself again. His words center more deeply in God, and his own fears are momentarily alleviated: The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one as we are one; I in them and you in me, that they 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 (John 17:22-23).
And that is the only answer I have to the prayer question. Other than losing myself in written prayer, hiding safely in and being shaped by ancient words, I’m almost certain about one other thing regarding prayer. It isn’t about changing others; it isn’t about changing particular circumstances. It is about changing ourselves by rooting us more assuredly in relationship with others, reminding us of our oneness with God, and experiencing the love which has held us since “before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24).
By praying for a friend who is afraid, perhaps we ourselves learn to be less so.
Years ago, at an event where I was speaking with Marcus Borg, someone asked him the prayer question. (I was relieved they didn’t ask me.) “At the very least,” he remarked, “I am convinced that prayer changes us — that it transforms those who pray.” He wrote a short article expanding on that comment:
My understanding and practice of prayer are grounded in my understanding of God, the Sacred. I see God as a presence, as the one “in whom we live and move and have our being,” to quote words attributed to Paul in Acts 17.28.
For me, prayer – addressing God, paying attention to my relationship with God — is about reminding me of the reality and presence of God in the course of my day and days. It is about centering more deeply in God and about “opening” to God. It helps me to be more centered, more present, more appreciative.
What about prayers in which we ask for something — prayers of petition and intercession? To speak personally (and how else can we speak?), I do not think of God as an interventionist — that God “decides” to answer some prayers. To imagine that God sometimes intervenes leaves all the non-interventions inexplicable.
And yet I “do” both petitionary and intercessory prayer. I pray for help for myself…I also pray for help and health and protection for family, friends, and “the world.” Doing so is a natural expression of caring; for me, it would be unnatural not do this. And not to do so because I can’t imagine how it works would be an act of intellectual arrogance — if I can’t imagine how something works, then it can’t work.
So I don’t believe that God sometimes intervenes to answer prayer. But this doesn’t prevent me from thinking that prayer sometimes has effects, even though I can’t imagine how. I am very willing to think of other ways of imagining God’s relation to the world, such as speaking of divine intention and divine interaction…I am convinced that prayer changes us — that it transforms those who pray.
Maybe Jesus didn’t know how prayer worked either. Or, maybe he understood on such a profound level that his prayer in John 17 is a model for how we all should pray — for protection, unity, awareness, and love. Even when we’re anxious. Or desperate. When we care so much about others that we long for their well-being and safety in difficult times. Perhaps especially then.
Prayer isn’t a magic trick or manipulation. But it is mystery and transformation. And, with that, I’ve learned to be, at the very least, content.
INSPIRATION
May all beings be filled with joy and peace.
May all beings everywhere,
The strong and the weak,
The great and the small,
The mean and the powerful,
The short and the long,
The subtle and the gross:
May all beings everywhere,
Seen and unseen,
Dwelling far off or nearby,
Being or waiting to become:
May all be filled with lasting joy.
Let no one deceive another,
Let no one anywhere despise another,
Let no one out of anger or resentment
Wish suffering on anyone at all.
Just as a mother with her own life
Protects her child, her only child, from harm,
So within yourself let grow
A boundless love for all creatures.
Let your love flow outward through the universe,
To its height, its depth, its broad extent,
A limitless love, without hatred or enmity.
Then, as you stand or walk,
Sit or lie down,
As long as you are awake,
Strive for this with a one-pointed mind;
Your life will bring heaven to earth.
— from The Sutta Nipata (a Buddhist scripture), Discourse on Good Will
I don’t know where prayers go,
or what they do.
Do cats pray, while they sleep
half-asleep in the sun?
Does the opossum pray as it
crosses the street?
The sunflowers? The old black oak
growing older every year?
I know I can walk through the world,
along the shore or under the trees,
with my mind filled with things
of little importance, in full
self-attendance. A condition I can’t really
call being alive.
Is a prayer a gift, or a petition,
or does it matter?
The sunflowers blaze, maybe that’s their way.
Maybe the cats are sound asleep. Maybe not.
— Mary Oliver, from “I Happened to be Standing”
If you’re anything like me, you probably want to bury your head in the sand until next November and not spend a moment thinking about politics.
But too much is on the line to ignore what’s going on — that’s a luxury and privilege we can ill afford.
My friend Tripp Fuller and I want to HELP with the problems of overload, denial, and depression regarding the upcoming election. So, we joined forces with another buddy, Tim Whitaker, and SIX amazing scholars of religion to create a “summer school” course on faith and politics that isn’t just about how bad Donald Trump is, complaining about the endless election, or shutting down talk about religion and politics. We’re going to help you think about politics and encourage people to discuss this fraught topic THEOLOGICALLY, not just with fear or talking points.
Check out FAITH & POLITICS FOR THE REST OF US
Don't settle for simplistic narratives or tribal divisions.
Join us on a journey of discovery, dialogue, and transformation as we reimagine the possibilities for public Christian theology in today's complex world.
The class is hosted by us, but it is produced by Homebrewed Christianity (and not The Cottage). Information and registration are HERE.
This is a donation-based class (you can contribute anything from $1 - $999,999), that goes to Homebrewed for production costs. And honestly, every question you can think of asking about the course is on the website. Scroll through the page for the entire line-up and FAQs.
And yes, you will be able to use the material for groups and Adult Ed classes.
Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul.
It is daily admission of one's weakness.
It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.
― Mahatma Gandhi
The function of prayer is not to influence God,
but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.
― Soren Kierkegaard
It was difficult to digest the whole musing once this C.S. Lewis quote took over my thoughts, so I will re-read. He wrote about why he prayed (not what is prayer).
"I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I am helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God. It changes me." C.S. Lewis
I am thankful that I can access all you offer on my laptop, that I am not required to install an app.