The Question That Nobody Asks

John 17:1-11
Easter 7
May 21, 2023
William G. Carter

After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.

 

”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.”

We have just heard the opening words from the final prayer of Jesus. The Gospel of John remembers Jesus giving final instructions to his friends and then lifting his eyes toward heaven. He has told them not to worry. He has commanded them to love one another. He warns them of a hostile world that he has overcome in his cross and resurrection (16:33). Now, he seals his work by offering this prayer.

It is a long prayer, longer than the other prayers recorded in the New Testament. You remember the Lord’s Prayer, taught in Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, and offered in Luke’s gospel as a model for prayer. There’s the prayer in Gethsemane before the cross, “Father, let this cup pass; but your will, not mine.” (Matthew 26:29) And there’s the prayer from the cross, “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34)

The Bible describes Jesus as a person of prayer. He prays at his baptism (Luke 3:21), prays before selecting his disciples (Luke 6:12), prays before his transfiguration (Luke 9:29), prays before raising the dead (John 9:41-42), prays before breaking the bread (9:16). It comes as no surprise that Jesus concludes his ministry with a prayer.

But this prayer of his raises a question that I’ve never asked out loud. I’ve thought it many times through the years, but never dared to ask. When I was a teenager, taking Jesus Christ seriously for the first time, the question bubbled up – but I worried I might get in trouble for asking it. Maybe it’s a question that I alone have pondered. Maybe it’s a question you’ve never thought about.

Well, here it is. Ready for the question? When Jesus prays, who is he talking to?

Ever think about that? First time that I tuned into the question, I thought, “Here is a human being talking to God in heaven.” That’s what I was taught about prayer. We are down here; God is somewhere up there. Tell God what you need. I didn’t probe the issue too deeply. It had not yet occurred to me that God knows what we need even before we ask. Prayer was asking for what we did not have within ourselves.

In this line of reasoning, Jesus was praying to select the right people as disciples. He was asking for permission and power to feed a hungry multitude. He wanted God to forgive the world that put him on a cross. Likewise, when we pray, we ask for strength in trying times, for bread when the cupboard is bare, for the capacity to love those who do not love us, and for the teenagers to return home safely from prom night. The fragile and needy humans turn toward a strong and generous God. That’s prayer.

But when Jesus prays, particularly the Jesus of John’s Gospel, to whom is he speaking? John tells us outright: Jesus is divine. He and the Father are one. So some time in my irreverent youth, I recall the moment when a sassy answer surfaced in my brain. When Jesus prays, is he talking to himself?

It seemed a fair question. Quite a few times, John tells us that Jesus knew what he was going to do before he did it. Like when he fed the multitude (John 6:6). Or before he washed the feet of his friends (John 13:3-4). Hypothetically speaking, if you are the Christ and you know what you’re going to do, why pray? Why speak to the hidden Father with whom you are one? Sassy, yes, but I thought it was a good question.

And then we landed on the prayer for today, the long prayer that constitutes the 17^th chapter of John. Interesting, isn’t it, that Jesus doesn’t pray for us until verse eleven, the final verse for today? No, the first part of the prayer is a request that his words and actions will glorify the Father (17:1). Then he says, “Father, I have glorified you in the work that I’ve done.” (17:4) His prayer requests, then names, what has already been accomplished.

He speaks to the Father, so it’s obvious that Jesus and the Father are distinct from one another. He’s not talking to himself; he’s praying to God. Yet then he says, “I pray that they may be one, as we are one.” The Father and the Son are separate – but they are united. In fact, four time in this chapter, he declares to the Father, “we are one.”

Suddenly the light goes on, at least for me. And I realize that whenever we hear Jesus pray, we are lifted into the mystery of the Trinity. Jesus and the Father are united in relationship (The Holy Spirit too, but we’ll hear about that next week). The Jesus we’ve heard about, the One who walked the earth on Palestinian feet, was – is, and ever shall be – united with the Creator of the world. They are distinct yet there’s no daylight between them. One is on earth, the Other in heaven, yet they inhabit the same space, the same life, the same purpose. Prayer, for Father and Son, is a form of communion – of being together.

Now these are big thoughts. It’s so much easier to regard Jesus as the One down here and God as the One up there. Trinitarian thinking is multidimensional and so much harder to nail down. That’s why I called it a mystery. Or as one of you once said to me, “Whenever I think about the Trinity, it makes my head hurt.” Fair enough.

The concept of Trinity is more than we can take in. As one of our resident scholars asked recently, “Did God die on the cross? Or was that Jesus alone?” He paused and said, “If Jesus is God, didn’t God die?” I suggested he take a breath and have another sip of coffee. Then I pointed out that all the accounts say, “Jesus was raised from the dead.” It’s passive language, suggesting Somebody else (like God the Father) was doing the raising.

I’ve been doing this work for nearly thirty-eight years, and I don’t have it figured out. Whenever I try to explain the Trinity to kids, I oversimplify it. Then I go back to the books and discover I was teaching a fifth century heresy. I was trying to make Monophysites out of little kids.

Like I said: Trinity is a capital-m Mystery. The 17^th chapter of John is ushering us into it. Jesus, distinct from the Father, prays in communion with the Father. They are distinct and they are One. I get it, mostly. This is big, really big. I take it as truth, but I don’t entirely understand.

But here is I do understand: prayer is the practice of relationship. Through Jesus, God has reclaimed us as the Beloved Children. We belong to God, distinct from the selfish and destructive ways of the world. Because prayer practices relationship, it’s possible to pray without words. There’s a kind of dwelling. Or what Jesus calls “abiding.” It’s being still, being quiet, being held. In this quiet, we trust. We release our worries and fears. We open our hands – and therefore our hearts and minds – to the Presence which is best described as “life.” The life of eternity.

When the well-intentioned Baptists down my street ask, “Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ,” I return the smile and say, “I pray.” Prayer is the relationship. These days, my prayers are a lot less verbal, a lot less verbose, and have more of a sense of hovering, of seeking the Presence of God and remaining within it. If there’s a need, I bring it into the Presence. If there is somebody in need, I carry that person into the Light. The God I’ve met in Jesus knows what they need, knows what is best. What he desires for them is what he desires for all: Life. Abundant, Everlasting, Well-Illumined Life.

This is what is on my mind and on my heart, on the day when we “set aside” normal Presbyterians for service as elders and deacons. We ask a lot of them: care for our people and reach out to our community, plan worship services and deliver the flowers, oversee budgets and encourage the rest of us to underwrite them, take care of this building and build the people who pass through its doors.

Yet we ask at least two things more.

The first is the most obvious. They are called to serve as leaders of the church. On the face of it, the church is a very human community. There are differences of opinions in any group of people. Different points of view, different experiences, different joys and sorrows, different stations in life. Diversity is a given. Monoculture is impossible. How can we possibly remain as one?

The answer is in this prayer from Jesus. He prays it on the eve of his cross, the singular event in which he takes away the sins of the world. What holds us together is self-giving love of God shown through Jesus, by which we are claimed together as a community. We are not here because the shape of this building, the songs that we sing, the ways that we worship, the economic status of those who are here, the places where we serve, or the adjectives that the world foists upon us. All of us are here because we are forgiven and loved. Elders and deacons don’t let us ever forget that. We are included in God’s Beloved Community.

The second thing we ask of our elders and deacons is keep us in prayer. To pray for us, of course, and for the rest of us to pray for them – yet greater than this, it means to keep us grounded in the continuing relationship with Father, Son, and Spirit. The great invitation of the Gospel is to dwell in the Presence of the Holy One-in-Three who is Three-in-One. With words, silence, or deeds, to abide in Jesus as he offers to abide with us.

This is to know God, and to know God is life eternal.

To that end, let us pray: (after silence) Holy One, grant us the fullness of your presence, that we may know you, the only true God, now and forever, and that we may know Jesus Christ whom you have sent. In the light of your Spirit, we pray. Amen.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.