Jesus Prays for His Church

[This message was shared earlier today with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

John 17:20-26

This morning’s gospel lesson, John 17:20-26, is part of what’s often called Jesus’ high priestly prayer. In it, just before His crucifixion and resurrection, God the Son pours His heart out to God the Father. Our lesson for today contains what may be the most remarkable part of the prayer. Here's why: Jesus prays for us, for you and me. He prays for those who have received with faith the Word about God so loving the world that He gave His only Son that all who believe in Him will have life with God. In today’s lesson, Jesus asks the Father for three things for us, His Church.

The first thing that Jesus prays is that His Church will be united. Take a look at the lesson beginning at verse 20. Jesus prays: “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

Jesus prays that His Church will reflect the unity that the Father and the Son have. Jesus says that when His Church is united, it proves to the world that Jesus comes from God the Father and that the Father loves His Church with the same love He bears for Jesus.

This petition of Jesus’ prayer has often been misconstrued both inside and outside of Christ’s Church. 

Within the Church, it has been used by some as an excuse to enforce institutional uniformity among church members and pastors, often in support of false teaching and evil ends. 

For example, the Medieval Church had a system of church indulgences by which believers were told they needed to buy or work their way out of damnation. When Martin Luther challenged this as being unbiblical, pointing out that the Bible teaches that we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ and not by anything we do, he was accused of breaking the unity of the Church. 

And nearly five-hundred years later, Lutheran Christians who could not accept overthrowing God’s Word as the ultimate authority over the Church’s life, were accused of breaking the unity of the Church. 

But if our unity is rooted in anything other than the God we meet in Jesus and in His Word, the Bible, we don’t have unity or even the Church, only a collection of people who may or may not like each other. Unity apart from Jesus and His Word is not what Jesus is praying for here.

Outside the Church, Jesus prayer for unity is often used as an excuse for not being part of the Church at all. 

“All those denominations and all those arguments among Christians in churches,” some people say. “I don’t need it.” 

Actually, we do need the Church. The Church is the body of Christ, the family of God, the only entity charged by Jesus with proclaiming the good news of new life through faith in Jesus--the gospel--to the world. No Church: no Christians. No Church; no salvation. No Church; no eternal life. The Church alone carries the Word into the world. 

And nowhere in Scripture are we told that church members don’t or won’t or shouldn't argue. Imagine someone saying of a married couple, “So and so had an argument last week. They must not really be married.” People who care about each other do sometimes argue. And as I've said before, if two people agree on everything, at least one of them is irrelevant...or dead. 

“In your anger do not sin,” Ephesians 4:26 tells us. Anger and disagreement are not sins. They only become sins when we use our disagreements to dehumanize others.

Jesus’ prayer continues in verse 24 of our lesson: “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.” Jesus prays that you and I will be with Him so that we can see the glory He has had since before the universe came into being.

Back in Old Testament times, when God’s ancient people, the Israelites, were given God’s Law, they refused to come into God’s presence. They were afraid of God’s glory, His rightness, His perfect innocence. The people of God were sure that God’s holiness would break out and destroy them if they came near to Him. Jesus is the bridge Who allows sinners to see and come into the presence of the glory of God. “No one has ever seen God,” John writes early in his gospel, “but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.” (John 1:18) When we see Jesus, in His Word, in the sacraments, in the worship and fellowship of the Church, we see the glory of God. That’s a privilege Christ grants to His Church!

Jesus next prays for us in verses 25 and 26: “Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.” Here, Jesus asks that as He continues to reveal Himself and the Father to His people, that the love of God would fill us.

This love of God isn’t like the counterfeit stuff the world calls love. 

A friend of mine caused his parents no end of grief in his teenage years. He got involved in alcohol and drugs. His parents, godly people, tried everything. Nothing changed, except that he got worse. One night, he ODed and was taken to a hospital ER. When he came to, he looked up to see a family friend, a doctor and also a believer standing over him. “Joe,” the man said, “your parents have asked me to bring you into my home. I’m going to do that. But you will have to do everything I tell you to do. You will have to do counseling. You will have to work. And you will have to stay clean. Otherwise, neither your parents nor anyone else you know who cares about you can do anything to help you.” 

To some those words may seem harsh. But they were words of love, love from God. They were matched by actions, commitment, and sacrifice by the doctor who took my friend in. Joe got clean, came to believe in Jesus, and for more than thirty years now, has been a faithful pastor. Jesus prays that God’s tough, committed love for them will be seen in us so that others too can believe in Jesus and have life with God!

Earlier, I mentioned two misuses of the first petition of this section of Jesus’ high priestly prayer. But there’s a big misuse to which the whole prayer gets subjected. Well-meaning Christians look at it and think, “I’ve got to work at being united with other believers. I’ve got to work at being in Jesus so that I can see His glory. I’ve to work at being filled with Jesus’ love.” 

If you come away from worship today thinking that Jesus’ words are a work plan or a set of homework assignments for Christians wanting to be better people, it will only prove that you haven’t been paying attention. 

Our lesson doesn’t present a plan for personal improvement. Our lesson lets us listen in on Jesus’ pray for us. 

Jesus is praying that He will be seen in those who seek to follow Him.

Our call is to daily turn to Him in humility at the baptismal font, at the Communion table, and in His Word. As we turn to Jesus, it’s Jesus Who  goes to work, not us. 

He covers us in His grace and gives us faith in Him. 

He forgives our sins, gives us awe at His glory, fills us with His love and with Himself. 

God the Father has been answering this prayer from Jesus for believers for more than two-thousand years now. He’s answering it even now in you. 

You can trust in that. 

You can trust in Jesus. 

Amen  

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Intimacy with God (AUDIO)

Here.

Memorial Day 2019 Prayer

Yesterday, I was happy to share the invocation prayer as well as the benediction for the Centerville Memorial Day Service. Our guest speaker was Captain Matt Hebert, who commands the Naval Medical Research Unit at Wright Patterson Air Force Base here in our community. Music was provided by the  Centerville community band and community choir, as well as a bagpiper who played Amazing Grace. Local Scouts led us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Here's the invocation prayer I offered:

Gracious God and Father, we cherish the freedoms we enjoy in America. For more than 240 years, these freedoms have been, in large part, secured and established by the ultimate sacrifice paid by members of our armed forces: the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard. Today, we gather to remember and give thanks for these honored dead. But we also ask that You would empower us to honor them on more than Mondays in May. Grant that, with gratitude to the fallen, our entire lives will be lived as  grateful citizens who cherish, not only our freedoms, but also the example of service and sacrifice we honor today. In the name of Jesus Christ we pray. Amen

We also prayed for a member of the Honor Guard who fainted early in the program. Because the Honor Guard was composed of not only veterans, but first responders, the gentleman received quick medical attention.

Among the notable guests present was a 101-year-old veteran of the Army Air Force. Another World War II veteran made a point of introducing himself to me after the program, saying, "I'm a Lutheran too." He seemed proud that a representative of the Lutheran community was taking part in this commemoration of the fallen.

Last year's speaker, another World War II veteran and a retired Wright State University philosophy professor, sat behind me. A member of our congregation was a volunteer for the event and several of our members were there to honor, commemorate, and pray.

I always enjoy this event.

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Intimacy with the Almighty

[This message was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, earlier today.]

John 16:23-33
Sometimes, people tell me, “You have a pipeline to God. Could you please pray for me?” I usually tell them something like, “I’ll be happy to pray for you. But my pipeline isn’t necessarily better than yours.” 

For some, my response is mystifying and they tend to say their goodbyes quickly. But others ask me what I mean. I explain that I’m as imperfect and as much of a sinner as anyone else, that I’m not worthier of God’s attention to my prayers just because I’m a pastor, and that anyone can pray. Sometimes, the conversations go longer and deeper than that, but only rarely.

Human beings have an inborn terror of God. 

Adam and Eve enjoyed an intimate relationship with God until they fell into the sin of seeking to be gods themselves. When that happened, they hid from God. They were afraid that, because of the distance now between themselves and God, coming into His presence would bring the full condemnation of God’s Law crashing down on them.

Their feelings are understandable. 

Sinners, naked in their sin, living without repentance, forgiveness, or faith, have every reason to be terrified. Martin Luther said that when human beings are out of sync with God, even the rustling of a wind can terrify us, filling us with fear that it--or any other mysterious "omen"--may be bringing God’s judgment. 

For many people, the prospect of coming into God’s presence is a fearful thing. Yet, in the interest of “covering all their bases,” they will sometimes approach people they deem holier than themselves to use their “pipelines” on their behalf. And some people, thinking themselves pious, will appeal to "superheroes of the faith," especially dead ones, to pray to God the Father for them. 

But listen: God the Father, Who sent Jesus to die and to rise for us doesn’t want there to be any walls between Him and us. 

Jesus died to give us complete, intimate contact with our Father in heaven. 

Because of what Jesus has accomplished in the crucifixion and resurrection, it’s possible for us to go directly to God the Father without fear, not because we’re perfect, but because He is. That’s what today’s gospel lesson is about.

Take a look at the first part of John 16:23-33, please. This is a continuation of words Jesus spoke to His disciples just before He was arrested. Verse 23: “In that day [Jesus says] you will no longer ask me anything. Very truly I tell you, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete. Though I have been speaking figuratively, a time is coming when I will no longer use this kind of language but will tell you plainly about my Father. In that day you will ask in my name. I am not saying that I will ask the Father on your behalf. No, the Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. I came from the Father and entered the world; now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father.”

The “that day” to which Jesus refers is the day when He has been glorified, the day when He has accomplished His mission on this earth: Dying for our sins, rising to open up life to those who trust in Him, ascending to heaven. Once “that day” has come, Jesus is saying, the disciples, including you and me, will be able to go directly to the Father, ask for anything in His name, and receive it.

But what does it mean to ask in Jesus’ name? 

Is the invocation of Jesus’ name a magical incantation binding on God the Father? 

Is Jesus telling us to pray, like Janis Joplin, “Oh, Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?” 

No.

Listen: The baptized believer in Jesus is the beneficiary of what Jesus has accomplished for us on the cross and from the empty tomb. 

When Jesus gave up His life, the temple curtain that shielded people from being in the direct presence of God the Father was torn. That means that nobody needs to use someone else’s pipeline to connect with God. 

People baptized in the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are covered with Jesus, not with their sins. 

They’re a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). 

If you believe in Jesus, you are covered with Jesus, even on the days when you don’t feel like it. Christ is still the Lord Who died and rose for you and opened up a relationship with God for you no matter how happy, sad, elated, depressed, victorious, defeated, healthy, or unhealthy you may feel at any given time.

And when you are baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, not only do you have a connection with the Father made possible by Jesus for you, not only are you covered in Jesus’ identity so that when God looks at you, all He sees is Jesus, you also have God the Holy Spirit living in you! 

In John 14, Jesus promised that He would send an Advocate for believers in Him: “...the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.” (John 15:17) 

To pray in Jesus’ name then is to speak to the Father directly, covered with Jesus and filled with the Holy Spirit. 

Think of that! 

This is true whether the person doing the praying is an elderly saint in a nursing home or the two young Living Water disciples who are receiving Holy Communion for the first time this morning, Eve and Addison.

But, this gives rise to a nagging question: Has God given you everything you’ve ever asked Him for? 

Are there marriages you prayed for that ended anyway, children you prayed for who still made the wrong decisions, healings you asked for that didn’t come...even though you prayed for them all “in Jesus’ name”? 

All of us can point to prayers that weren’t answered the way we wanted them to be answered. 

Jesus had the same experience. In the garden of Gethsemane, you remember, He prayed to the Father that His cup of suffering would be removed from Him. Jesus didn’t want the agony of the cross He bore for you and me. But then He prayed, “...yet not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). 

And this tells us a lot about what it means to pray in Jesus’ name. It means to ask the Father to do His will in and through us, even when the answers God seems to give make no sense to us. (I say “seems to give” because it’s just possible that God’s final answer to our prayers is something we’ll never perceive or understand in this world!) 

To pray in Jesus’ name is to trustingly lay ourselves, our world, and the people and situations about which we pray before God. 

The apostle Paul says, “We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.” (Romans 8:26-27)

To pray in Jesus’ name is to cede control of our lives and all for whom we pray to our Father in heaven. 

Our words may be jumbled. 

We may not understand all involved in what we pray for. 

We may not know what God is going to do with our prayers or how He will deploy His power in the situations we pray about. 

But we can trust that God does and will answer rightly, even when, like Jesus briefly did on the cross, we may think that the Father has forsaken us. 

We can pray and we can live in the confidence of Jesus’ promise, made at the end of today’s gospel lesson: “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33) 

YES, HE HAS! 

Amen!


[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Wait. What?

[This was shared yesterday during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]

John 16:12-22

The two things that every human being has in common are birth and death. 

And what birth and death almost always have in common for us is pain. 

We may sometimes hear of women who give birth to children almost unaware of being in labor until right before delivery or of people who pass away peacefully in their beds after long, healthy lives. But we note stories of people like these as the exceptions. 

When we are born into this world and when we die out of this world, there is almost always pain.

In the end, the only thing that can make the pain of birth and death bearable for us is the belief in new life beyond the pain. 

That’s why, long before most of the world had ever heard of Jesus Christ, people created myths of heroes that conquered death by exploits, virtues, or deal-making. The problem with these comforting stories human beings told (and still tell) themselves is that they’re all untrue, happy talk for the fearful. 

None of us is virtuous enough, or adept enough at making deals, or courageous enough in the face of what we go through in our lives to earn, gain, or steal life beyond pain.

In our gospel lesson for this morning, John 16:12-22, Jesus acknowledges that birth and death bring pain. But He also points to the hope of new life beyond pain, a new life in eternity without pain, for those who follow Him. 

Let’s be clear though. Jesus’ words would be nothing more than another version of the happy lies we tell ourselves as human beings if it weren’t for one simple fact: Jesus, has immersed Himself into our humanity, including its pain and death, so that He can absorb all of our pain, all of our death, all of our sin into Himself.

Jesus does this so that, after dying condemned for our sins, God the Father could raise Him from the dead. 

It’s Jesus’ dying and rising that makes it possible for all who, by faith, absorb the death of Jesus into our own bodies and lives to be raised to new life beyond the pain of birth and death. That’s what Good Friday and Easter Sunday are about.

At the beginning of our lesson, we find Jesus preparing His disciples for the pain--the grief--they’re about to endure as He is taken from them and murdered. In fact, Jesus has been deluging the disciples with teaching that fills several chapters of John’s gospel. The disciples must have sensed from Jesus’ words, even if they didn’t fully understand them, that a crisis was about to hit. Jesus has been giving them instructions for how to face the crisis. Yet, they must have also wondered, “How can we possibly remember all of this?”

Jesus promises the disciples that He will send the Holy Spirit to His Church. When, Jesus says, “the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come” (John 16:13). It was the Holy Spirit Who would enable the disciples to remember what Jesus taught about the meaning of His death and resurrection for a human race dying in its sin. It was the Holy Spirit that empowered the disciples to remember and so teach us that the pain of life is not the last word over those who trust in Jesus. 

Their remembrances come to us in the Bible. The Bible then is the Holy Spirit-inspired Word from God, pointing us to new life through Jesus. And this Word has power! Hebrews 4:12 reminds us, “...the word of God is alive and active…” 

When we read or hear the Bible, we encounter the same powerful Word God spoke to bring the universe into being. And this same Word, when we stand under its authority, brings us new life.

Jesus next tells the disciples, “In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me.” (John 16:16) 

This incites a confused and almost comical conversation among the disciples that might best be summarized as, “Wait. What?” 

They don’t understand what Jesus is telling them. At that moment, they really can’t. 

We’ve all been there, haven’t we? We lose someone we love or a way of life we’ve valued and we wonder how we can go on. 

Jesus tells the disciples that soon they won’t see Him anymore. They’re confused. Then Jesus adds to their fog by telling them, that “after a little while,” they’re going to see Him again. 

When the pain of death comes to us, it’s as hard imagine being able to once again see our dead loved ones as it must have been for my mom to believe that anything good was going to result from thirty-six hours of labor only to give birth to a scrawny blue breech baby who had to be put in an incubator and couldn’t hold up his head for months after his birth. New life out of pain is often beyond our imagining.

It’s because of our failure to imagine that God can bring new life out of pain that Jesus says what He does next in our gospel lesson. “A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world.” (John 16:21) Jesus isn’t saying that moms develop amnesia about their labor pains. He is saying that that their suffering seems worth it for the joy of the new life they now hold in their arms.

As Jesus speaks here, He Himself is about about to deliver a new creation. He will labor on the cross so that when He rises, new resurrected life will come to Him. 

And like a mother delivering a child, Jesus doesn’t labor on the cross for Himself. Since Jesus was sinless and eternal, He didn’t need to endure the pain of death and birth to have life. He already had life to the full, perfect, sinless, eternal life.

Jesus labored for us. “For the joy set before him [Jesus] endured the cross, scorning its shame...” (Hebrews 12:2) 

And what was the joy set before Jesus? 

Jesus’ joy, the thing that made Him willing to suffer pain, cross and death, was you! 

The reward He sought was you, with Him, eternally safe and secure from the sin and death and separation from God into which we are born in this life. 

Jesus’ joy is to give new birth to you, beyond the pain of this fallen world. 

Jesus says that “no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again” (John 3:3). Jesus, in the words of the Christmas hymn, was “born to give us second birth.” He died for that end as well. That’s how important you are to Jesus. He simply refuses to imagine spending eternity without you!

The new birth that Jesus brings is a free gift. We can’t earn, acquire, or steal it for ourselves. 

But to take hold of it will cost us our lives. The new life that Jesus secures for us can’t be ours if we insist on holding onto our pretenses of being in control in this life. We must let go of the myths of our self-sufficiency, goodness, or power. That’s painful; but it’s the way of following Jesus. “Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy,” Jesus tells us in John 16:22.

So, how does Jesus’ life, death, and resurrected life become embodied in us so that we are part of His new creation? 

Not by anything we do! Jesus says in John 3:5: “...no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.” 

Our new life begins when God acts to save us in Holy Baptism. 

In Baptism, He drowns our old selves and the Holy Spirit infuses us with the resurrection life that Jesus, like a mother who endures labor, has suffered to give to us. 

The apostle Peter says that the water of the flood in which God saved Noah and his family “symbolizes baptism that now saves you also..It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ…” (1 Peter 3:21) Baptism is how God brings us into His new creation.

“Wait. What?” you might be saying right now. “Isn’t there something we need to do do? Don’t we at least have to believe?” 

Yes and no. We do have to believe. Jesus says, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” (Mark 16:16) And, “whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16) Yes, we must believe. We must have faith.

But faith isn’t something we do. Faith is something we don’t do. Faith is something God, acting through Jesus Christ, does to us. 

I’m not saying that we won’t do things because we have faith. But we mustn’t confuse faith, childlike trust in God, with what we do because we already have received the gift of faith. 

We can’t manufacture faith in Jesus. 

Faith isn’t “positive thinking.” 

It’s not trying to psych ourselves into buying something as true, repeating in the style of the cowardly lion in The Wizard of Oz, “I do believe in Jesus. I do believe in Jesus.”

Faith is the creation of the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit Who comes to us in our baptisms. 

The same Spirit Jesus promises will help us to remember the promise of new life amid the pains of this life. 

Faith happens when the Word of God--preached, taught, and embodied in Holy Baptism and Holy Communion--demolishes our desire to be gods unto ourselves and opens us to trust in Christ alone for life, when we can say of ourselves and Jesus what John the Baptist said, “He must increase, but I must increase.” (John 3:30) 

Faith is foreign to our inborn sinful natures. That's why the Bible tells us, “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.” (1 Corinthians 12:3) Faith is God's work in us!

Only faith created in us by God the Holy Spirit comprehends that Jesus bore the pain of death and agony to win new life for us. 

When we live in Spirit-powered faith in Jesus, we endure the pain of being separated from all our favorite sins--from gossip to covetousness, from adultery to worshiping ourselves and other false gods, from materialism to prejudice. 

But, born anew in Christ’s new kingdom, the Holy Spirit works to make us over in Jesus’ image, setting us free to live in the freedom of being God’s emancipated children, not yet all God that is going to make of us, but no longer slaves to sin, death, and fear, disciples of Christ with nothing to prove, everything to celebrate, and a Lord we want to spend today and all eternity glorifying! Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]