Episcopal Church of Our Savior

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The Rev. Ajung Sojwal To pray with God, Year C, Sunday May 20, 2007 John 17:20-26 When I was in General Theological Seminary, for one of our lectures we invited someone to talk about her involvement with the many homeless people in Boston. Her outreach to the poorest of the poor in the city was impressive and very admirable. At the end of the lecture, we were invited to ask her questions. One of the questions to her was on how and when she found time to pray. She answered that she really did not pray much, which I suspect will be the answer most of us will give if we are honest, but coming from someone who is so involved in ministry came as a shock to me. What is prayer, really? Jesus’ disciples too asked him to teach them how to pray. In all the Gospels, there are instances noted of Jesus withdrawing from the crowd, going up to the mountains or wherever he went, so he could pray. Prayer as a spiritual discipline is not unique to Christianity. At many Hindu and Buddhist holy sites in India, one will find what are known as prayer flags hung by pilgrims on rows and rows of thin ropes representing some prayer request or the other. In Jerusalem, on the Western Wall, people slip in tiny pieces of paper with prayers in the cracks on the wall. Prayer by nature is reaching out to a power that is greater than us. By praying we acknowledge that we are not in control of everything. So, prayer in many ways is something that reflects our deep vulnerability and a sense of hope for things to turn out the way we want them to. But, true prayer always is about communing with God, which implies a deeper state of mind in which new realms of interconnection between God and us open up. For Jesus, his prayers always reflected his deep desire to bring glory to God, and to do the will of the Father. So in many ways, Christian prayer is about sharing with God in His deep love for all of His creation. It is God’s desire and will to redeem us, to save us and to bring us all into His Holy presence of everlasting love. So, we may meet people who say that there is really no need to pray because God will extend His love to all anyway. But, we have missed the whole point of prayer if we look at it merely as a means of bringing before God our desires or even the desires and needs of others. The point of prayer is participation, it is becoming a part of God’s plan, or being a part of the inner circle with God, wherein we not only see God’s deep love, mercy and hope, but also realize His agony in seeing the depths of the world’s darkness. And being a part of that plan also has to do with the desire and will to be the channels of God’s love, healing and hope. The same sense of participation applies to God in our lives; God seeing, knowing and understanding our deepest needs and desires. In John Chapter seventeen we see the longest recorded prayer of Jesus in the Gospels, and today’s reading is the concluding words of that prayer. In it we become privy to the inner thoughts of Jesus’ mind and learn much of his relationship with the Father. In this prayer, Jesus prays essentially about three things. First, he prays for himself that he may be glorified, then he prays for the eleven apostles, that they may be protected and sanctified, and finally, he prays for the future believers who will believe in Him through his disciples, that they all may be unified. To be glorified in this context is the reference to Jesus’ redemptive death. When he prays for his disciples it is very much like our prayers for our dearest friends and family. And at the end when Jesus prays for the future community of believers, it is with great insight, concern and hope. “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one.” It is really quite something to read Jesus’ prayer for unity of all believers at such a time as this, given the fact that we, the Episcopal Church has been dealing rather fervently with the whole issue of unity for some time now. It is amazing just how timeless Jesus’ prayer is, and the sense of timelessness we get from this prayer is exactly what it means for our prayers to be a participation in God’s concerns and plans. God alone knows just how divisive the human mind can be, and the issue of unity has been there right from the inception of the Church. But the unity that Jesus is praying for is not an outward or organizational unity, nor is it a prayer for fellowship amongst believers, rather it is unity in the Father and in the Son. It is a unity that resembles and reflects the father being in Jesus and Jesus being in the Father. Jesus prayed, “As you, Father, 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. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” The theme of glory in Jesus’ prayer is a recurring one throughout this prayer in John, and as I mentioned earlier, glory in this context has to do with the cross. Michael Ramsey, former Archbishop of Canterbury writes, “…in John this prayer after the Supper is the decisive step of Jesus towards the completion of the journey to the Father which is his mission. The Cross is the event of glory, by it there is the revelation of eternal glory, and from it there comes the mission of the disciples, their consecration in the truth, their sharing in the unity of the Father and the Son and their coming to the glory of heaven.” The overarching concern of Jesus in his prayer is that his disciples and the world may know God the Father, and not only for the sake of knowing but that the world may understand the eternal love of God for His children, which God has shown in the sending of His only Son to be incarnate in this world of darkness. Jesus said, “I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” It is in Christ that we see the great love of God reaching out to reconcile the world to Himself (as Apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:19). And it is in the realization of that mysterious but deep love of God that we are led to fall on our knees and commune with God in our prayers. One of the most enduring imagery of Jesus in the Christian tradition is that of the intercessor, of which this particular prayer in John 17 is a prime example. Interceding in the English language alludes to pleading or to make petitions, but the Greek verb does not necessarily mean, “to plead.” What we have to understand here is that pleading implies the availability or non availability of mercy or graciousness, but Scripture says that God’s mercy and loving kindness is everlasting, not something that can be dispensed in small measures at appropriate times. The intercession of Jesus thus means his eternal presence with the Father as the one who died for us on the cross, as the one who overcame death and brought new life in us, as the one who lived as one of us in all our joys, burdens and sorrows, and finally as the one who is the focus of all our hopes. To pray to the Father through Jesus the intercessor is to come into God’s presence in awareness of the high cost and the preciousness of our redemption made possible through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. Since, praying is participating actively with God in His love and concern for all, we must make time to intentionally seek God’s will in our lives as well as in the lives and concerns of others. And to seek God’s will is to have faith in His eternal love and mercy, an understanding that He knows and desires that which is best for us. And the best for us is always to be in the center of God’s love and to be able to reflect that holy love. Jesus constantly affirms the love of the Father for and in him, and his desire for that same love to become a reality in the lives of his disciples. It is through prayer alone that we begin to understand the true meaning of unity, a unity that is based in God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. In praying we join in the constant prayer of Jesus before the Father, and it is the presence and the workings of the Holy Spirit that makes it possible for us to be participants in that constant prayer of Jesus for us. As we pray individually we invariably become part of the great community of God’s people in all places and in all ages. Like the timelessness of Jesus’ prayer, we too join with all the saints that prayed before us and will pray after us. It is a unity that reflects God and His eternal love rather than us, a unity that transforms any man-made structure or organization. Like Jesus, in prayer alone can we become vulnerable before God, just as God Himself exposes His mysterious vulnerability to us when we approach Him in prayer. Prayer should thus be the permanent setting for any Christian who desires to walk with God, not as an isolated spiritual exercise. Prayer is not something that we undertake to perfect it with enough practice, which I am afraid, is the current trend of looking at prayer. Prayer is our desire and the place to join God in His journey through the lives of His Children. It is a journey where God alone is the tour guide, it a journey where we have the opportunity to become intimate with God through Jesus. It is a journey that we can never prepare for except to have faith. And finally it is a journey that must start with us completely empty and naked, only then can we truly appreciate the full measure of God’s warm and fulfilling presence in our lives. Amen.

The Rev. Ajung Sojwal

To pray with God, Year C, Sunday May 20, 2007
John 17:20-26

When I was in General Theological Seminary, for one of our lectures we invited someone to talk about her involvement with the many homeless people in Boston. Her outreach to the poorest of the poor in the city was impressive and very admirable. At the end of the lecture, we were invited to ask her questions. One of the questions to her was on how and when she found time to pray. She answered that she really did not pray much, which I suspect will be the answer most of us will give if we are honest, but coming from someone who is so involved in ministry came as a shock to me.

What is prayer, really? Jesus’ disciples too asked him to teach them how to pray. In all the Gospels, there are instances noted of Jesus withdrawing from the crowd, going up to the mountains or wherever he went, so he could pray. Prayer as a spiritual discipline is not unique to Christianity. At many Hindu and Buddhist holy sites in India, one will find what are known as prayer flags hung by pilgrims on rows and rows of thin ropes representing some prayer request or the other. In Jerusalem, on the Western Wall, people slip in tiny pieces of paper with prayers in the cracks on the wall. Prayer by nature is reaching out to a power that is greater than us. By praying we acknowledge that we are not in control of everything. So, prayer in many ways is something that reflects our deep vulnerability and a sense of hope for things to turn out the way we want them to. But, true prayer always is about communing with God, which implies a deeper state of mind in which new realms of interconnection between God and us open up.

For Jesus, his prayers always reflected his deep desire to bring glory to God, and to do the will of the Father. So in many ways, Christian prayer is about sharing with God in His deep love for all of His creation. It is God’s desire and will to redeem us, to save us and to bring us all into His Holy presence of everlasting love. So, we may meet people who say that there is really no need to pray because God will extend His love to all anyway. But, we have missed the whole point of prayer if we look at it merely as a means of bringing before God our desires or even the desires and needs of others. The point of prayer is participation, it is becoming a part of God’s plan, or being a part of the inner circle with God, wherein we not only see God’s deep love, mercy and hope, but also realize His agony in seeing the depths of the world’s darkness. And being a part of that plan also has to do with the desire and will to be the channels of God’s love, healing and hope. The same sense of participation applies to God in our lives; God seeing, knowing and understanding our deepest needs and desires.

In John Chapter seventeen we see the longest recorded prayer of Jesus in the Gospels, and today’s reading is the concluding words of that prayer. In it we become privy to the inner thoughts of Jesus’ mind and learn much of his relationship with the Father. In this prayer, Jesus prays essentially about three things. First, he prays for himself that he may be glorified, then he prays for the eleven apostles, that they may be protected and sanctified, and finally, he prays for the future believers who will believe in Him through his disciples, that they all may be unified. To be glorified in this context is the reference to Jesus’ redemptive death. When he prays for his disciples it is very much like our prayers for our dearest friends and family. And at the end when Jesus prays for the future community of believers, it is with great insight, concern and hope.

“I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one.”

It is really quite something to read Jesus’ prayer for unity of all believers at such a time as this, given the fact that we, the Episcopal Church has been dealing rather fervently with the whole issue of unity for some time now. It is amazing just how timeless Jesus’ prayer is, and the sense of timelessness we get from this prayer is exactly what it means for our prayers to be a participation in God’s concerns and plans. God alone knows just how divisive the human mind can be, and the issue of unity has been there right from the inception of the Church. But the unity that Jesus is praying for is not an outward or organizational unity, nor is it a prayer for fellowship amongst believers, rather it is unity in the Father and in the Son. It is a unity that resembles and reflects the father being in Jesus and Jesus being in the Father. Jesus prayed, “As you, Father, 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. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

The theme of glory in Jesus’ prayer is a recurring one throughout this prayer in John, and as I mentioned earlier, glory in this context has to do with the cross. Michael Ramsey, former Archbishop of Canterbury writes, “…in John this prayer after the Supper is the decisive step of Jesus towards the completion of the journey to the Father which is his mission. The Cross is the event of glory, by it there is the revelation of eternal glory, and from it there comes the mission of the disciples, their consecration in the truth, their sharing in the unity of the Father and the Son and their coming to the glory of heaven.”

The overarching concern of Jesus in his prayer is that his disciples and the world may know God the Father, and not only for the sake of knowing but that the world may understand the eternal love of God for His children, which God has shown in the sending of His only Son to be incarnate in this world of darkness. Jesus said, “I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” It is in Christ that we see the great love of God reaching out to reconcile the world to Himself (as Apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:19). And it is in the realization of that mysterious but deep love of God that we are led to fall on our knees and commune with God in our prayers.

One of the most enduring imagery of Jesus in the Christian tradition is that of the intercessor, of which this particular prayer in John 17 is a prime example. Interceding in the English language alludes to pleading or to make petitions, but the Greek verb does not necessarily mean, “to plead.” What we have to understand here is that pleading implies the availability or non availability of mercy or graciousness, but Scripture says that God’s mercy and loving kindness is everlasting, not something that can be dispensed in small measures at appropriate times. The intercession of Jesus thus means his eternal presence with the Father as the one who died for us on the cross, as the one who overcame death and brought new life in us, as the one who lived as one of us in all our joys, burdens and sorrows, and finally as the one who is the focus of all our hopes. To pray to the Father through Jesus the intercessor is to come into God’s presence in awareness of the high cost and the preciousness of our redemption made possible through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.

Since, praying is participating actively with God in His love and concern for all, we must make time to intentionally seek God’s will in our lives as well as in the lives and concerns of others. And to seek God’s will is to have faith in His eternal love and mercy, an understanding that He knows and desires that which is best for us. And the best for us is always to be in the center of God’s love and to be able to reflect that holy love. Jesus constantly affirms the love of the Father for and in him, and his desire for that same love to become a reality in the lives of his disciples.

It is through prayer alone that we begin to understand the true meaning of unity, a unity that is based in God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. In praying we join in the constant prayer of Jesus before the Father, and it is the presence and the workings of the Holy Spirit that makes it possible for us to be participants in that constant prayer of Jesus for us. As we pray individually we invariably become part of the great community of God’s people in all places and in all ages. Like the timelessness of Jesus’ prayer, we too join with all the saints that prayed before us and will pray after us. It is a unity that reflects God and His eternal love rather than us, a unity that transforms any man-made structure or organization. Like Jesus, in prayer alone can we become vulnerable before God, just as God Himself exposes His mysterious vulnerability to us when we approach Him in prayer. Prayer should thus be the permanent setting for any Christian who desires to walk with God, not as an isolated spiritual exercise. Prayer is not something that we undertake to perfect it with enough practice, which I am afraid, is the current trend of looking at prayer. Prayer is our desire and the place to join God in His journey through the lives of His Children. It is a journey where God alone is the tour guide, it a journey where we have the opportunity to become intimate with God through Jesus. It is a journey that we can never prepare for except to have faith. And finally it is a journey that must start with us completely empty and naked, only then can we truly appreciate the full measure of God’s warm and fulfilling presence in our lives. Amen.