Acts 16. 16-34, John 17. 20-end
On the site of the high alter of the ruined church at Mount Grace Priory nestling under the Cleveland Hills, is what looks like a stone cross but as you get closer you realise it is a sculpture of Mary offering up the Christ-child for God’s loving purposes. Mary’s shoulders are held back, and her elbows are horizontal forming the image of the cross as she holds the Christ-child before her, dedicating him to God and the world. But this sculpture not only celebrates the significance of Mary in the drama of the incarnation, but it also points to entire arc of Jesus’s life. As Mary holds the Christ-child aloft, it is as if she is not only acknowledging the sacrificial agony of the cross, but also the resurrection and even beyond that to Jesus’s ascension, His return in glory to the Father celebrated last Thursday.
Now, just as this Madonna stretches our imagination across the entire work of God in Jesus, Jesus’s great prayer from the reading in John’s gospel, reaches back even further, to Jesus as the Word in the beginning, before creation, then forward to Jesus the Word incarnate, and finally to his return in glory to the Father, the one who sent Him.
It is the last supper. Jesus has shared the great farewell discourses with his disciples, and he now prays for them. It is his last intimate moment with his disciples before his separation from them in the garden of Gethsemane. Our reading comes at the end of the prayer and in it Jesus not only prays for his disciples after he has left them, but also for those who will believe in him through their words. So, Jesus is looking beyond his death and expressing his deep desire not only for his disciples, but also for us all to be caught up in and participate in the life and love of God, and then beyond this, to be with him in his ascended glory.
I offer you two things from this - the richest of prayers. Firstly, Jesus prays that through the disciples’ words others may believe. John’s gospel begins famously with ‘In the beginning was the Word’, and in this prayer, Jesus makes many references to the Word and words. Words usually, but not always, express something of the person who speaks them. They bring invisible thoughts into consciousness. They are the means by which we attempt to communicate the truth to one another, and across the centuries words have conveyed something of the mystery of God and His love for us. But, John in identifying Jesus as the Word made flesh, is taking this a step further and telling us that Jesus is the full expression of God and John writes his words, so that we might believe in Jesus as the Messiah, God’s son. No more, no less. In Jesus, as the Word, the great mysteries of the meaning of creation and the very nature of the God are communicated through His human life. It is this Word, Jesus, with God in the beginning and who as his Son, God chose to redeem the world. Jesus is the ultimate embodiment of God, who loves us to the uttermost, offers us life in all its fullness and the opportunity to share eternal life with him in glory.
So when Jesus prays that through the disciples’ words others will believe in him, he is expressing his desire that the disciples after he has left them witness to the truth they have known and seen in him through their words. And this prayer has been and continues to be answered through the power of the gift of the Holy Spirit, given at Pentecost which we will celebrate next week.
Throughout the history of the Church, this prayer, remains at the heart of its mission. But the world’s resistance to God’s word also remains, which means that we, as today’s followers of Jesus, all face the challenge of ensuring that our words bear witness to the truth about God found in Jesus and that God’s word continues to shape and transform lives and the world today.
Secondly, Jesus prays that the disciples, might abide in God the Father and God the Son and through this intimate bond of love, that the world might know the truth embodied in Jesus and the love He has for it. It’s an image of cascading love flowing out from the loving unity of the Trinity and embracing all of creation. It’s an image of the glory of love that awaits us, and one that we glimpse today through the power of the Holy Spirit at work in us and in the world. But it’s an image that profoundly challenges us too, as we see the Church tearing itself apart and the world riddled with war and conflict.
Now, I think that the dramatic passage from Acts might give us some insight into what this looks like in the lives of individual believers. Paul and Silas are in prison for disturbing the city of Phillipi by advocating unlawful customs for the Roman people. They are chained in their prison cell. At midnight, they pray and sing hymns to God. An earthquake occurs, doors spring open, and chains fall off. The jailer fears for his life but surprisingly the prisoners remain in the prison offering him hope. The jailer takes Paul and Silas home and there, ‘they spoke the word of the Lord to him and all who were in his house’. And they all believed and were baptised. Paul and Silas’s actions and words spoke of their confidence in the love of God shown to them in Christ Jesus their Lord and through them others believed. Jesus’s prayer is answered. We too, are called by our words and actions, to share the truth of the love God shown in Jesus- the Word made flesh, and to live in the power of the love and unity of the Hoy Trinity, and in unity with one another, with the hope at the last of being united with Christ in glory. Amen.