On John 17:6-19

Thursday marked the 40th day after Easter, which is the day when Jesus ascended to heaven. His ascension into heaven is as important as the rest of his ministry on earth. It is not an add-on. It is important because of who Jesus is when he returns to heaven. When he came down from heaven he was fully divine. But when he returned to heaven he was fully divine and fully human. He came down as God. He returned as God and human, as one of us. Jesus was the first human to enter heaven. It was necessary for him to return to heaven to fulfill His purpose, which is to make a way for all of us to go to heaven. The ascension completes Jesus Christ’s mission to earth. Now He sits at the right hand of the Father. And He prays for us. Isn’t it good to know that of all the people that may be praying for you, there is another person that is lifting you up in prayer, and that person is Jesus Christ?
What we have in ch. 17 is Jesus praying for His disciples, and for us. The disciples, and us, are overhearing this prayer that Jesus is offering. And there is a lot in this prayer. You know, the way John writes, with a limited vocabulary and with words and phrases that are woven together and have layer upon layer of meaning. He can pack a lot of meaning in an economy of words. And sometimes it’s hard to unravel all that is being said here. So it is with his writing down of the prayer Jesus offers for his disciples. It’s a challenge to understand everything being said in this prayer. We’re going to try to follow a few threads.
Before getting into some of what Jesus is praying for, let’s reflect on what the disciples would be facing once Jesus left them. Most of us have experienced the realization that the one we depended on for daily life, for guidance, for security, for stability, that this person has left us. Maybe it was your mom or dad. Maybe it was your wife or husband. Maybe it was your closest friend. And life without that person is a life that feels very different. Your world is turned upside down. You are lost. This person was such a part of your life that without them life just doesn’t seem like it can hold together. It is a confusing, uncertain, and unsettling place to be. It could perhaps even make a person wish that they could die too.
Jesus knew that once He left His disciples, that they were going to be vulnerable. Their whole life was wrapped around Him. They would be confused and uncertain about what they were supposed to do now that Jesus was gone. It was because of what the disciples were going to need, in order to keep it together and keep living the life Jesus taught them, that Jesus prayed to His Father. He cared about His disciples. He loved them. He wasn’t going to just leave them on their own. He was going to lift them up in prayer so that they could be confident and unified after He leaves them.
One of the things Jesus prays for is for His disciples to be protected. Jesus says in the prayer, “I have protected them while I was with them. And I have kept them together, united in their faith, except for one who by necessity had to betray me in order to fulfill the scriptures. So now, I put them in Your hands. You protect them.” While Jesus was with them, He protected His disciples from straying away from the faith, except Judas, of course. By His teaching and His example He was able to show them how to live, how to be truly human as God made us to live. Now that He was leaving, He knew that the disciples were still going to need some help in this area because living like we are meant to live, ironically, is very hard to do. Sin is rampant. We have a tendency to not live as we ought. So Jesus is not willing to leave us on our own because He knows that won’t work out so well. So, He prays to His Father to protect us. And that’s what the Father does, by sending down the Holy Spirit to be a paraclete. Paraclete means to come alongside. The Father protects the disciples, protects us, by sending the Holy Spirit to come alongside us, to teach us, to compel us, to correct us, to show us the way, to heal us of the ravages of sin that afflict us, so that we can more fully live our lives as God intends for us. So, one thing that Jesus prays for is that they not be left on their own but that the Father now protect them, and us. And the Father answers that prayer by sending among us the Holy Spirit. And that’s what we will celebrate next Sunday, which is the Day of Pentecost.
The other thing Jesus prays for is for the disciples to be sanctified. To be sanctified is to be set aside for a special purpose. Jesus is sanctified. He, being a man, was set apart for a special purpose, which is to redeem all of humanity from slavery to sin and death. Jesus prays that the Father would sanctify His disciples, set them apart, for a special purpose. The Father answers this prayer. The disciples, and us, are being sanctified, that is, being set apart for a special purpose. We are becoming something different from what is common. We are uncommon, or, as Paul once described us Christians, a peculiar people. There is something qualitatively different about us. Jesus talks in the prayer about how He is not of this world and says that His disciples are also not of this world. Here, world means worldview, the way one understands reality. It is our experience as Christians that when we look at the world and our lives through the lens of faith, that the world looks different and our place in the world, our understanding of the world and what most matters, it all changes. It is as if we have been born again. As followers of Jesus, we are being set apart, in the world but not of it. We live here, but our citizenship is in heaven. You could say that as Christians we have a sort of dual citizenship. We are Americans but we bow our heads only to God. We love, support, defend, and pray for our nation. And we are grateful for those who have died to protect and extend the principles upon which this nation was formed and seeks to perfect. We pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. But there is another country, another nation, a holy nation, with a King and a Law, to which we obey and are ultimately accountable to. The king is Jesus and the Law is the Law of love. And that holy nation is the church, a nation that is held together by Christ, a nation that recognizes no border of geography or even of time. For we, the church, are a nation in which it matters not if you are an American or an Iranian. Nor does it matter if you are alive on earth or in heaven, for we believe in the communion of the saints, that all who have died in faith are gathered together and are among us, looking down on us. So, dual citizenship, maybe that captures the set apartness that Jesus prays for us. William Willimon has captured something of the dynamic of who we are by saying that we are resident aliens. Our true home is heaven and we are a colony, God’s kingdom on earth. Paul talks about how we are ambassadors of Christ. Our church buildings can be understood as embassies, or “heavenly consulates.” This is what Jesus is getting at in this prayer, that just as He is not of the world, so we are to not be of the world but separate, distinctive, an alternative way of being. Still in the world, but not of it.
I know, this is getting kind of deep. Let me try to tie this down by pointing out the impact of this prayer on the disciples. What is reassuring to the disciples, and for us, in this prayer is that as Jesus is leaving them, He is not leaving the disciples to fend for themselves. He’s not turning the keys over to Peter and the rest and saying, “Good luck. Don’t mess it up.” No, Jesus is praying for them. And He’s praying for us. We have the Holy Spirit, to guide, guard, and protect us. We, as the church, are not on our own. Even though Jesus is not physically present, He is still connected to His disciples. Jesus did not place His disciples into the hands of some great, divinely appointed leader. He placed His disciples into the hands of His Father. There can be no greater assurance of protection than this, to know that we are in good hands, the hands of the One who created us.
Their future, our future, the future of the church, is in the hands of God. And that is good news. The church has faced ups and downs all through its history. The church has been and still is persecuted and threatened. The church has and still is experiencing great vitality and growth. There have been high points in our life together and there have been low points when the church was hanging on by a thread, a barely flickering candle. Through all the threats, external and internal, the church remains. And the future of the church is secure, of this we can be certain. That is because the future of the church is not in our hands. The future of the church is in God’s hands. It is not our burden to save the church. It is our burden to be the church. Our burden, our task, is to follow the Spirit. Our task is to be who we are, children of our heavenly Father, the hands and feet of the Son, being born anew and empowered by the Holy Spirit. Our task is to be one, even as the Father and the Son are one, that is, united in mind and will. It is a big task. But we are not on our own. Our future is in God’s hands. So, let us learn from the past, live for today, and trust our future to God.