John 17 – One Last Prayer / Knowing God
/Lectionary Readings for Nov. 07, 2021 24th Sunday After Pentecost, Year B
Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17 Ruth and Boaz at the Threshing Floor
Psalm 127 v3 Children are a gift from the Lord; they are a reward from him.
Hebrews 9:24-28 v26 Jesus has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself.
Mark 12:38-44 The Widow’s Offering
But this week we continue our series exploring the book of John, now with Chapter 17.
Weekly Meditative Exercise
Christianity includes a long and rich tradition of embracing meditative practices as a way of keeping us connected with God, ourselves, and each other. I encourage you to spend some time each week (ideally 10-30 minutes) trying each weekly exercise. You will naturally find some more appealing and effective than others. You’ll like some but not others, and after 6-12 months you’ll better understand what’s available and what helps you.
This week’s exercise focuses on Contemplation (pages 54-57).
From Spiritual Disciplines Handbook: Practices That Transform Us by Adele Ahlberg Calhoun. InterVarsity Press, 2005.
Desire: to become aware of God’s presence in all things
Definition: “Contemplation is about waking up. To be contemplative is to experience an event fully, in all its aspects.” (Ronald Rolheiser in The Shattered Lantern)
Scripture: “We concentrate not on what is seen but on what is not seen, since things seen are temporary, but things not seen are eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:18)
As you engage with this exercise, spend 15 or 20 minutes quietly and without interruption looking at something from nature (ex: a flower, an animal, the sky, a rainbow, etc) and pray, “Lord, help me see your presence in multiple ways in this.”
You can also spend 15 or 20 minutes quietly and without interruption reflecting on a feeling you’re having or a situation in your life and pray, “Lord, help me see your presence in multiple ways in this.”
Also, I encourage you to ask yourself, “Am I using busyness to avoid something that I need to deal with?”
Contemplation helps you move beyond the immediate, the obvious, and the superficial so that you can perceive God’s presence in deeper ways.
Peace through Leadership Quotes
“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” ~ Marie Curie (1867-1934)
“The greatest use of a life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.” ~ William James (1842-1910)
We create peace within us and around us as we work through our internal and external fears. As we help others create a deeper and broader sense of peace with themselves and the world around them, we have the potential to create peace for generations to come.
Any time I preach or lead a group, regardless of age, I start the same way. I’m going to say three short sentences. Please repeat each sentence, with enthusiasm.
God made me. God loves me. God has plans for me.
Preface to Today’s Scripture Reading
Today’s reading comes from the 17th chapter of John’s gospel. The entire chapter is Jesus’ last prayer which He shares privately with His closest disciples immediately before He is betrayed and arrested. It is a cold... dark... night.
Jesus begins His prayer by looking up to address God. This reminds us of the belief that God “lived” in the heavens which were suspended above our Earthly realm (“three-tiered universe”). God was... up there, out there. You’ll hear Jesus do this again when we share Holy Communion.
Jesus opens His prayer reminding Himself and others present that “the hour has come” – a phrase He used five times in the previous chapter to emphasize the nearness of His looming arrest. In contrast to the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), the Jesus in John’s story does not appear to be terribly upset about His impending trial and likely execution.
No, the Jesus we hear today is focused on the future. He speaks of eternal life for all who know God. He speaks of glorifying God – meaning bringing honor to God which Jesus has already done by “completing the work you gave me to do” (verse 4). He speaks of unity with God and prays that all of humanity will experience the same unity Jesus felt with God and His disciples.
Jesus also says God has “given him authority over everyone” (v2). But consider how Jesus has used His power to bring healing, dignity, and wholeness into people’s lives. “Real authority is not absolute power over others but absolute love of others, shown in [Jesus’] willingness to give up everything, including divine status itself, in order to express that love [perfectly].” Jarvis, Cynthia A.; Johnson, E. Elizabeth. Feasting on the Gospels – John, Volume 2. Westminster John Knox Press, 2015. Kindle 7030.
Let’s open our ears, minds, and hearts as we hear these words of hope and encouragement.
Read John 17:1-8, 15-23 and the rest of chapter 17 this week.
In today’s reading, two verses jumped out at me and have stuck with me. The first is verse 3, “And this is the way to have eternal life – to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, the one you sent to earth.”
So much of our culture thinks about eternal life as being a destination – heaven. But Jesus describes eternal life as something we can experience here and now. And notice the only qualification He gives: knowing God.
We all know about a lot of people we’ve never met. We can read books or articles and know about politicians, actors, musicians, titans of industry, etc. But in order to truly know someone, each of us must have some interactions with them, and these interactions create a relationship – for better or for worse – that is unique to us.
Jesus does not describe eternal life as knowing about God, but actually knowing God. Lovely! So how do we do that? How do we personally “know” the Creator of the Universe?!? We start by having interactions with God. Well lovely! So how do we do that?!?
If you ask 100 different Christians who claim to have a close, personal relationship with God, “How did you come to have this relationship?” you will hear 100 different answers. 100 different timelines. 100 different descriptions of how interaction happens in their relationships. Everyone has their own path, their own journey.
Remember when you dated anyone for more than a few weeks? You went different places together. You tried a variety of activities to see what you both enjoyed. You tried a variety of foods, and music, and travel or sports, and over time, together, you figured out what worked for you. The same is true for your relationship with God. It takes experimenting and effort to transition from knowledge about to relationship with.
For the past several weeks, I’ve included different meditative exercises in our worship material. If you try any of these exercises, you can expect your relationship with God to grow and not remain fixed or stagnant. To a large extent, you get out of your relationship with the Divine what you put into it.
To which you say, “Ahh! Charles. But God is not human. God is always reaching out to us, always seeking to engage with us, always asking us out on that next date.” Yes! God is all of that – and – through meditative exercises, we discover new ways of saying YES to God’s invitations.
If you will try some of these crazy ideas like... celebrating, being grateful and attentive, contemplating, and resting – among dozens more... if you will do these as intentional efforts to connect with God, I firmly believe (based on my own personal experiences), that you will begin to have new interactions with our mysterious Creator. Please, try some of these. Try them alone or with someone else. And let me know how it goes!
The second verse that has stuck with me is verse 17 where Jesus prays, “Make them holy by your truth; teach them your word, which is truth.” Folks get hung up on the idea that we can become holy; it does not mean that we become “perfect.” It does mean that we become more like God, more like Jesus... more loving, more compassionate, more forgiving, more encouraging, more of all that Fruit of the Spirit stuff. And just like with relationships, this “making holy” takes time and work.
Through His prayer, Jesus tells us that God’s truth is our path to becoming holy. As Christians, we believe that God’s truths can be found throughout Scripture as well as through personal experiences. Some of our fundamental truths are summarized in the three short sentences we said earlier: God made us, God loves us, and God has plans for us.
Eternal life – being in relationship with God – and “becoming holy” are blessings we can enjoy now AND look forward to enjoying in new, different, and greater ways in the future. Eternal life is a way of living in love and in hope with ourselves and with others. It is part of what Jesus meant when He said “the Kingdom of Heaven is near” (Matthew 3:2, Matthew 4:17, Mark 1:15). The Kingdom of Heaven is near indeed and there is plenty of room for everyone!
Amen? Amen!