My Prayer for You
A little more than a week ago, I had the opportunity to hear the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra perform Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. It was a magnificent performance where a large and diverse collection of musical instruments and voices came together to celebrate the majesty of God. This symphony, written after Beethoven became completely deaf, contains a masterful interweaving of notes… musical phrases… and choruses that is a total delight to the senses. No one would claim that all the instruments were alike, nor would they assert that all the voices were the same, and yet they all came together to create one musical offering to God that no single instrument or voice could have created independently. United under the conductor’s baton, each entity contributed something different that made the whole a great work of art.
Our text today comes at the end of the “Prayer of Consecration” or the “High Priestly Prayer” of Jesus within the Gospel of John. The prayer, which takes up the entire seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of John, is offered by Jesus, on behalf of Jesus, and also on behalf of his disciples. The early church recognized it as a teaching tool… that it was to be studied as an example of prayer… which it is… and I commend it to any of you for your study if you struggle with prayer and its expression in your life. It is also a description of the role of the disciples and of the character of the Church. The true power of this prayer of Jesus lies in its universality… that it is as true today as it was when it was first spoken. Today, we will only look at the end of this prayer… the final seven verses.
When Jesus prays, in verse 20, “on behalf of those who will come to faith or those who will believe in me through their word,” he assumes the success of the mission of those he is sending into the world. What a powerful message that sends to those whom he sends into the world. How many of us have ever heard someone pray for us who assumes that we will be successful? Here Jesus deliberately prays, not just for his disciples, but for all those who will come to believe in him through them. Can you imagine… in this diverse band of brothers… the impact of that statement? So, today, as we send those we love out into the world and pray for them, our first lesson is simply: “Assume success.” Assume that they will succeed and pray for the fruits of their achievements.
Jesus then goes on to emphasize the importance of unity within the body of Christ in the world. And, as he does so, he describes the character of that oneness… that they may be one as the Father and the Son are one... that the disciples might be in Jesus as the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son. This mutual indwelling and participation in the koinonia or fellowship of Father and Son promotes the singleness of purpose that Jesus desires in his followers… that they might indwell him and each other such that the desires of Jesus would be the desires of the disciples… those desires would flow from the oneness that Jesus has with God.
But the “oneness” that Jesus speaks of is not a “oneness” that makes them all the same. It has always amazed me that Jesus could take such a diverse group of individuals and… without changing their basic nature… transform them into a powerful force to change the world. They were one in purpose… though they were incredibly diverse in thought and action. Each one had gifts that the other did not have and… because of their different gifts… because of their different natures… because of their different approaches to people and to life… they were able to touch the lives of an incredible array of humankind in many different places with a single purpose.
The performance of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra was one example of this unity despite diversity, but there are many others. I had the opportunity this week to view the Body World exhibit at the Museum of Science in Dallas. It was a fascinating study of the diversity of the muscles… joints… organs… and cells that make up our human bodies. No, the muscles are not all the same…the joints are not all the same… the organs of the body are not all the same… and, praise God, they are not! How limited we would be if the muscles, joints, organs and cells were all the same! The exhibit brought to life the wonderful passage of Paul from the twelfth chapter of his letter to the church at Corinth where he speaks of our gifts as parts of the body. “The foot is not the hand… and the ear is not the eye,” and yet we are all one in the body of Christ. Diverse as we are, we are one in purpose in Christ… and our diversity is a gift of God that we might reach more people in Christ’s name than we could ever reach if we were all the same.
The group of graduates that we honor today is as diverse a group as I have ever known within such a small number of individuals. And, yet, as I have come to know these young men and women, I have come to appreciate their differences and marvel at how God has worked in their lives in different ways. What they will do in God’s world… for God’s people… in God’s time has yet to be revealed and yet I know, even now, that Casey will reach an entirely different group of people than Seth will reach, and Drew will touch the lives of those who will not listen to Jamie, while those she will reach will be different from those whose lives Will will touch. And, if some of you who are listening to me doubt that one of these young men and women will reach anyone for Christ, let me remind you that when my father graduated from high school, there were many in the church who doubted that he would do anything significant for God either. The call of God is a wonderful and mysterious thing. So, as we send our graduates into the world and pray for them, our second lesson is to “celebrate our unity in Christ even as we celebrate the diversity of the gifts that God has given.”
At this point in Jesus’ prayer, he chooses to use that marvelous perfect passive tense when he says “that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me.” The “becoming completely one” is a continuous action from the past… into the present… and on into the future. Our becoming one as Christians is not a momentary thing… something that just happens… and then is. It is a continuing perfection that we work on for a lifetime and that God then continues to work on in our children and grandchildren. The unity of the Church is rooted in the unity of God, but that unity is a continually evolving thing… something that grows as we grow in Christ… and matures as we mature in our faith and in our relationships with one another.
Anyone who has been in a relationship with another person for a long time knows that that relationship does not remain static. It grows… and changes… and matures through the different experiences of life. This is true of any living organism… and a relationship is exactly that… a living organism that must be fed and nurtured to grow and mature. I look at how the city of Stephenville has grown and changed just in the three brief years that I have been here. It is different today than it was then… and yet, it is still fundamentally the community that it has always been. There is something at the core that holds it together as a community even though Fiddle Creek opens and Rebecca’s closes… or Beall’s and Joy’s move to new locations… and Tarleton adds two thousand (2,000) new students… a new housing complex… and a new multipurpose facility. We grow in Christ in the same way… shedding old ways of being in relationship with him… and with our brothers and sisters in Christ… as we see new ways of working together to be a witness for Christ in this community. If we are not continually growing and changing, we are not alive in him. So, as we send those we love out into the world and pray for them, our third lesson today is “to grow and change and mature in our relationship with God and with each other.”
Finally, verses 25 and 26 of our text say that Jesus, the Revealer, makes God known to us and will continue to reveal the truth of God to those whom God has chosen and, through us, the world will come to know God. Our relationship with each other… the visible unity and love of the church… is its witness to the world that God is present and active in this world. This unity is more than the unity of a diverse group of individuals in one particular church… it is also the unity of all Christians across denominational lines. The practical reality is that our greatest witness to the world is how we treat each other and whether others are drawn to the love and mutuality of what they see in our relationships. Our witness to the world begins at home… in our relationship to each other… continues in our church… in the care that we show one another as members of this church… and spreads out from that into a love that crosses all institutional lines and doctrinal differences to include all of our brothers and sisters in Christ around the world. John 13:35 says “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” In our experienced love of the Father, we, as believers, are bound together despite our multiple differences. And, we are linked in love with disciples past and future. Bureaucratic mergers and institutional unions have rarely made the witness of the church more effective, but the quality of its life… the intensity of its expression of love for the world… and the depth of caring between its members have been essential to its proclamation.
We exist in a pluralistic world where the majority vote with their feet. If they don’t like what is going on in the church they currently attend, they take their marbles and go down the street… or they go home, never to darken the door of a church again. Our children build the foundation of their faith upon the example that we, as adults and as practicing Christians, set. That example should be the image of God as revealed in the person of Jesus Christ and then reflected by us to our children… to our brothers and sisters in Christ… and to the world around us. The love and mutuality that exists between the Father and the Son is the pattern card for our relationships with each other. So, as we send our graduates into the world and pray for them, our final lesson is “to become… and continually work on becoming… the body of Christ in this world, so that others may be drawn to us in Christ’s love.”
Will, Drew, Seth, Jamie, and Casey, my prayer for you is that you may have all that Jesus prayed for his disciples: that you may experience success in your endeavors, that you may remain unified in Christ as you celebrate the differences between you, that you continually grow and mature in your faith in God, and that you continually work at becoming a true reflection of Christ so that others may come to know God through you. May God bless everything that you do. Amen.
John 17:20-26; Psalm 97