JESUS' PRAYER FOR US

 

One of the most encouraging experiences as a Christian is to be prayed for by someone else – and not only prayed for but prayed with. When someone prays for you in your presence, something special happens in your heart: you feel warmed and encouraged. There is a sense of intimacy, both between you and the other person and between you and God. It is as you are knocking on heaven’s doors together. It is one of the best ways to build relationships between Christians and one of the surest ways of ensuring unity in the church. It is hard for division to exist and take hold when people are praying together. 

 

 Also, do you know that Jesus prays for you? Do you know that he goes to the Father on your behalf and on our behalf? Listen to these words from Hebrews 7: 25: “Consequently he is able for all time to save those who approach God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.” In Romans 8: 34 St. Paul says something very similar: “It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.”

 

Robert McCheyne once said this: “If I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room, I would not fear a million enemies. Yet distance makes no difference. He is praying for me.” If you have had the experience of someone praying with you – of having someone right next to you, sitting beside you, bringing your concerns and needs before God - I invite you to imagine Jesus doing exactly that.

In today’s Gospel, which is Jesus’ final moments with his disciples before being arrested, Jesus prays for his disciples. Knowing that he will be leaving them, praying for them is the best way to prepare them. Jesus prays for three things on our behalf: protection, sanctification, and oneness.

 

 The early Native Indians had a unique practice of training young men. On the night of a boy’s thirteenth birthday, after learning hunting, scouting, and fishing skills, he was put to one final test. He was placed in a dense forest to spend the entire night alone. Until then, he had never been away from the security of the family and the tribe. But on this night, he was blindfolded and taken several miles away. When he took off the blindfold, he was in the middle of a thick woods and he was terrified! Every time a twig snapped, he visualized a wild animal ready to pounce. After what seemed like an eternity, dawn broke and the first rays of sunlight entered the interior of the forest. Looking around, the boy saw flowers, trees, and the outline of the path. Then, to his utter astonishment, he beheld the figure of a man standing just a few feet away, armed with a bow and arrow. It was his father. He had been there all night long.

 

Jesus’ first prayer for us is a prayer for protection. Of course, unlike that young boy, we have the benefit of knowing in advance that our Father is there to protect us; although just like the young boy, we don’t always see our Father guarding us. Jesus asks the Father to “protect” us. He prays, “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”  

Against what are we being protected? Jesus asks that we receive protection from the evil one, that we would be protected when faced with temptation, opposition, persecution, etc. He takes as inevitable that we will face such things.  

Therefore the  church’s life is entrusted to God and protected by Him. “What God is committed to do,” someone says, “is to preserve the oneness relationship that exists between the believer and Jesus. Nothing on earth can tear us away from our Lord.”

 

Jesus’ second prayer for us is a prayer for sanctification. Sanctification here means “to be made holy,” and being made holy means being set apart.

Jesus wants us “to be consecrated” for service. It has to do with being set apart for the purposes of God. Jesus is praying that we would be set apart by the truth of who he is for the purpose of being sent into the world. We are in the world, but we do not, as Jesus says, “belong to the world.” Being holy, sanctified, and consecrated means that we belong to God and that He has set us apart for a purpose.

Jesus is asking God to do for the disciples what he has already done for him: set them apart for God’s work in the world. Just as God set apart His Son for a mission in the world, so Jesus is asking that the Father would set apart his disciples for God’s work in the world. As Jesus says, “As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”

“Sanctification is not about living a clean or perfect life, but an obedient life. The attraction of the world, the weakness of the flesh, and the attack of the devil are daily battles. It involves a purifying of the whole life of that person or thing to the service of God. Sanctification is not about avoiding or escaping the world but yielding and surrendering to God. Being set apart does not mean we are stored away.”

Jesus’ third prayer for us is a prayer for unity.  What does it mean to have unity here? It does mean that we all agree on the same Christian life; we all follow the same practices of the Church; that we are united in confessing that Jesus is the Son of God. It means that we confess in a united way that the Father and the Son are one and that the Father sent the Son into the world and reveals who the Father is for us in order to come closer to him.

The importance of oneness and unity is emphasized over and over again in today’s
Gospel: “Protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.” “I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one.” “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.”

The purpose of Jesus’ prayer – his prayer for our protection, sanctification, and unity – is so that we would be prepared for being sent into the world. Jesus doesn’t ask the Father to preserve merely to wait until Jesus comes again. “Being set apart does not mean we are stored away.” Jesus says, “As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” We are preserved and protected, consecrated and made holy, and made one and unified so that we can continue Jesus’ work in the world. For we are in the world even if we are not of the world. And, while here there is something for us to do. Amen