Seventh
Sunday of Easter (A)
May
24, 2020
Text: John 17:1-11
Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!
Our
Lord Jesus Christ has ascended into heaven.
He is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. And as He says here in our Holy Gospel, the
Father has given Him “authority over all flesh” (John 17:2; ESV), the
authority He already possesses as God now bestowed upon Him as Man, and this
authority is for a purpose: “to give eternal life” to all whom the Father
has given Him, all whom the Father has drawn to saving faith in Christ. Jesus reigns.
He is the Ruler of all things. He
is our King. And His rule always has as
its aim the purpose of saving us and giving us eternal life.
What
else is Jesus doing there at the right hand of the Father? He is praying! “I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those
whom you have given me, for they are yours” (v. 9). Jesus has the Father’s ear. He is interceding for His Church, for
you! And this morning we get a little
glimpse of the content of His prayers.
Jesus bears our flesh. He knows
our need. He is one of us. And on that basis, He knows just what petitions
to present to the Father on our behalf.
As He is removed from our sight (though very much still present with us
in His Word and Sacraments), Jesus knows how challenging and difficult it will
be for Christians living in a fallen world hostile to Christ and His
people. He knows that there are dangers,
and He knows our frail nature. So He
prays that God would keep us. “Holy
Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me” (v. 11). The Name, of course, is the Name placed upon
you in Holy Baptism: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is the Name Jesus bears and reveals to us
in His Holy Word. It is the revelation
of God as our God, our Father, who loves us and gave His only Son
into death to make us His own.
And
He prays that in that Name, we Christians would be one, just as Jesus and His
Father are one. Jesus and the Father
(with the Holy Spirit) are one by nature.
Christians are one by grace. Such
unity is a gift from God. It is not
something we can create by brushing aside doctrinal differences or basing unity
on superficial expressions of sentimentality.
It is a unity we discover with one another as we unite around the
Word and gifts of Jesus, a unity we recognize as we mutually confess. God has done it. It is His work. He has given it to us out of His own goodness
on account of Jesus.
Thus
King Jesus prays for us at the right hand of the Father, and what could the
Father possibly say to His Son but an unqualified “Yes!”? Yes, the Father will keep us. Yes, the Father will make us one. Yes, He will bring us into the unity of the
blessed Trinity. See how this High
Priestly Prayer of Jesus flows out of His Ascension and drives us toward
Pentecost and the Gift of the Holy Spirit, and Trinity as God reveals His own
essential unity in Three Persons. Heady
stuff these next few Sundays. But the
key point is this: The Father hears Jesus’ prayer and answers by sending you His
Holy Spirit.
And
why? That you may have eternal
life. “And this is eternal life, that
they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (v.
3). Such knowledge is not simply an
acquaintance with the persons or the facts.
It is an intimacy. I can say I
know President Trump, but I actually have never met him. I simply know about him. On the other hand, I can say I know my wife
and children, and you understand that this is a different kind of knowing, a
knowing in relationship, a knowing that binds me to them and that deepens and
grows each day. That is the knowledge
Jesus means when He speaks of knowing the Father and the Son. He is speaking of faith.
And
notice, this knowledge is eternal life.
Eternal life is not just some future event when you die and go to
heaven. It is now, knowing the
Father, knowing the Son. Believing. Trusting.
Yes, there will be eternal life in heaven, and we long for the full
manifestation of our eternal life in the resurrection of our bodies on the Last
Day. But don’t think this life is all
something to come later. You have it now. You know God now. Through Christ. And so you live in God now. Through Christ. Through His glorification, by which He
means His suffering, His death on the cross, His resurrection from the dead,
and His ascension into heaven. His glory
is His saving work by which He makes you His own.
Jesus
prays for you that you may have life through His saving work. And now you pray. You pray through Jesus. This is the incredible thing about your
Baptism into Christ. Now that you are in
Christ, you have all that is Christ’s!
And that means you have the Father’s ear! That is why Jesus teaches you to pray, “Our
Father who art in heaven.”
You
never pray independent of Jesus. This
is, by the way, what it means to pray “in Jesus’ Name.” It is not just tacking on the magic words at
the end of a prayer. Those are fine
words to say at the end, but they aren’t included in the Lord’s Prayer, and yet
whenever we pray the Lord’s Prayer we do so in Jesus’ Name. It means that we pray to the Father through
Jesus. In fact, this is a whole
Trinitarian action. Remember what St.
Paul teaches us in his letter to the Romans: “Likewise the Spirit helps us
in our weakness. For we do not know what
to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with
groanings too deep for words” (Rom. 8:26).
So we pray our faltering prayers, marked as they are by the weakness of
our flesh, but the Spirit takes up those prayers with groanings too deep for
words, inexpressible in human language.
And He places them in the wounds of Christ, who speaks them before the
Father on our behalf. And the Father
always hears and answers our prayers for the sake of Jesus Christ, His Son.
When
you are praying, you can form an image of it in this way: As you pray in the
Spirit for a particular situation or a particular person, you are placing that
situation or that person in the wounds of Christ, who is risen from the
dead. His sin-atoning blood covers all
that is wrong and bad with the situation or the person. And in that condition, covered by His blood
and death, He presents the petition before His Father. And the Father answers through the atonement
and resurrection victory of the Son. Our
Lord’s resurrection life bestows all that is right and good upon the situation
and the person. Now, of course, this is
all hidden. It may not look like
the good has happened when, for example, the person you prayed would be healed,
dies. But God is doing His thing. His ultimate good. And we know what that is by Jesus’ prayer
this morning. He is keeping His own unto
eternal life. And that, whether we
realize it or not at the time, is ultimately what we’re praying for.
But
do you see what this does for your whole life now in Christ? You can live confidently and faithfully now
in the midst of a world hostile to Christ and His Christians, simply commending
all things to the Father in the Name of the Son. And you can know: He is keeping you. He is keeping his Church. He is giving you eternal life. No one can take that away.
Yes,
the world will try. We learn that from
St. Peter this morning in our Epistle (1 Peter 4:12-19, 5:6-11). The world will mock you and reject you and
throw all manner of roadblocks in the way of the life and mission of the
Church. We know from history and from
the situation of our brothers and sisters today in many parts of the world,
that the world may imprison you, torture you, or even kill you for the Name of
Christ. The devil will rage. He prowls about like a roaring lion. Your sinful flesh is weak. But none of that changes the truth of
it. The Father keeps His own in Jesus,
as Jesus prays this morning. He keeps
you through it all. He gives you eternal
life. Beloved, pray. And rejoice.
And live. In Jesus. For His life is yours. And He is risen! He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!
He lives and He reigns. And right
now, this very moment at the right hand of the Father, Jesus prays for
you. In the Name of the Father, and of
the Son (+), and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
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