One of the most humbling things for me here, later in active ministry, has been the harsh realization that some of my best loved, and to my mind most relevant, TV and movie sermon illustrations have become completely outdated – at least in terms of how many of us are able to remember them, much less relate to them. Alas, I’m afraid that on this, my last morning with you, my opening reference is probably among the forgotten of television – unless any among us remember one of the early ensemble cast dramas, 1981 to 1987’s “Hill Street Blues.”
A police drama in an unnamed major city (that I think was supposed to be Chicago), episodes of “Hill Street Blues” would open with a briefing from the sergeant for the incoming shift. At the end of the briefing, actor Michael Conrad’s Sgt. Esterhaus would lean over the podium and say to all the officers, “Hey – let’s be careful out there!”
Well, I’ve always felt pretty much the same way any time my children, and now my grandchildren, have been heading away from me off into the sunset; and so, starting back before the days of airport security, when we could still see people off at the gate, I developed the habit of “praying my children on their way,” so to speak. I’d start praying as soon as my boys headed down the jetway and then, if the particular airport was small enough that I could keep track of their plane, I’d stay and pray that plane into the air.
I mentioned this habit of mine in a sermon one time in my Florida parish, and I added that I was convinced that it’s the prayers of mothers that get planes up to cruising altitude and home again. I had several pilots in that congregation and after that sermon one of them came up to me and said, “Jeannie. It’s lift. It’s not prayers, it’s lift.”
Well, if that’s what the airlines think, no wonder they’re having problems!
Whatever the dynamics of flight – and I do admit that “lift” plays its part – I got then, and still continue to get, tremendous comfort from praying for my children and grandchildren when we’re apart. The prayer I say most often is on page 831 in the Prayer Book and it’s the prayer “For Those We Love.” This prayer reads: Almighty God, we entrust all who are dear to us to your neverfailing care and love for this life and the life to come, knowing that you are doing better things for them than we can desire or pray for, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
This prayer reassures me that even as adults, my kids aren’t out in the midst of life totally on their own. It reminds me that God loves my children and my grandchildren even more than I do, and this prayer confirms that no matter what life brings to them or to me, God will see us through it; and that with God, at the end of the day, all things shall be well.
In today’s Gospel passage, we have Jesus praying for those he loves, and from whom he’s about to be separated big time. What we hear today is the end of chapter 17, and, as I mentioned last week, it’s also the end of a section of John’s Gospel that’s referred to as Jesus’ Farewell Discourse. In chapter 13, John describes the Last Supper, with Jesus washing the disciples’ feet, and then Judas heading out into the night. Chapters 14 through 17 are the Farewell Discourse, Jesus’ last words to his disciples, his own version of “Hey – let’s be careful out there!”
Focusing in, this morning’s Chapter 17 itself is a specific unit within the Farewell Discourse because even though Jesus continues to summarize everything he wants the disciples to remember, in 17 he shifts gears and he begins to pray his own hopes and fears – and the lead phrase we hear today is “Jesus prayed for his disciples….”
As I said a moment ago, Jesus is about to be physically separated from the disciples just as many of us are physically separated from our children or our parents or other family members or friends. He’s facing separation from people he loves, and so he prays for them. He prays to God - in the disciples’ hearing, because he’s speaking out loud here; he prays to God that his disciples will be all right, that they’ll have the strength to get through the days and weeks to come. He prays that they’ll be open to receiving the comfort and the teaching of the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, and he prays to God that together they’ll all be one – him one with God, the disciples one with him and therefore also one with God through him, and all of them one together in the power of the Spirit; one in a unity not of doctrine, but “of heart and mission,…[a] unity of love and commitment.” (Focus on John curriculum, p. 133)
Through his prayer, Jesus shows his love for his disciples then, and he also shows his love for us today, because right off the bat he says, “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.” Those who will believe through the words of the disciples, those who do believe through these very same words, these “those” who are us. You and me and all those in every generation who have heard the Good News and who have turned to follow Jesus the Christ, Jesus prays for us all. Jesus prays for Tim; and he prays for Feppy; he prays for Larry, and for Kathy, and for Claudia; he prays for Peter, and for Barbara, and for Lydia, and for Patricia, and for Danny, and for Mary Jean, and for Kevin, and for Joan, and for you, and for me. He prays for the acolytes, Steve and Carrie Sue, by name, and for everyone in the choir by name. He prays for those who come here for meetings, and for those who come here for help. He prays for those who haven’t come through these doors yet, and he prays for each of us and he prays for all of us because as amazing and as incredible as it might seem, Jesus loves each one of us every bit as much as he did love and as he continues to love Simon Peter, and James, and John.
Being prayed for is a powerful thing; and to pray for is no less powerful. Billy Graham once called prayer “fellowship with God.” (LP, Prayer, 29) Others more recently have called it “the world’s greatest wireless connection.” What sorts of things happen when we pray for each other, when we exercise this fellowship and wireless connection and raise each other up into the presence of God through our prayers? For one thing, we participate in God’s own power, and through the power of the Spirit we become the flesh through which God touches other people. Take today’s reading from Acts, for example: through the prayers and the witness of Paul and Silas, God touches the other prisoners, and the jailer, and then the jailer’s whole family.
Powerful things happen through the prayers of faithful people, and I’d be willing to bet that any number of us here can tell about things in our own lives or in the lives of people we know that support this statement: powerful things happen. Powerful things, and amazing things happen when we pray.
The Rev. Ann Hallstein tells this story from her time as a chaplain at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York City: “I was called to the Emergency Room, where a resident told me an eight-year-old boy had been brought in by his mother in a taxicab, shot in the head by her boyfriend or former boyfriend. The boy had no chance of surviving, but the team was working on him, while his mother and aunt sat nearby in a tiny closet of a room. When I opened the door to join them, fear pounding in my heart, I saw two tiny girls – not women, girls – teenagers of indeterminate age, clinging to each other, as vulnerable and alone as I had ever seen anyone look. They were in shock, obviously. I introduced myself, sat down, and had no idea of what to do next: any words I could think of seemed not only insufficient, but profane. What could anyone possibly say to comfort a child whose own child was lying in the next partition, dying of a gunshot wound to the head?
“While I fumbled and tried to react in some appropriate way, the door was thrown open and a large woman, about 6’2” tall, stepped in, filling the room with her presence. She grabbed the two sisters up by crooking her massive arms around their necks and pulling them to her, calling them her babies. (She was, I should add here, their neighbor, simply their neighbor.) And then, in a commanding voice full of authority, she ordered Jesus to come into the room ‘right this minute, come in here, Jesus, my babies need you, and they need you now, I don’t mean later, I don’t mean in ten minutes, I mean NOW! Get down here! Come into this room and comfort these babies! Jesus, Jesus, get in here now, there’s nothing anyone can do but you.’
Hallstein goes on, “As I looked on with wonder and great admiration, I felt the energy in the room change; calm came over all of us, and the mother stopped crying and moaning. Their neighbor continued to hold them in her viselike elbows, rocking them both back and forth. I stood up, put my arms around them all, and joined in the rocking. We swayed there in one mass for 10 or 20 minutes, I suppose – I had no sense of time, nor of place: all I felt was the love of this woman, and the love of God that she had so forcefully, and so effectively, called into the room. She soon left, but the palpable sense of love and comfort remained long after the few minutes of her presence.
“Prayer? You bet – the most immediate, most effective and most powerful I’ve seen. I could tell that what fueled her, what ‘made it happen’ was that she was fully present, totally open and full of both love and faith. She was there, she summoned God there, and it was her presence that invoked the healing needed at that moment. Everything was not ‘all right’ – there was not a happy ending – the boy died that night. But God had been called and had been with the suffering mother and aunt, and they felt it, and were able to function, and to survive that horrifying scene.” (LP, Prayer, 38-39)
Both Pastor Hallstein and the neighbor were very aware that the power needed in this situation, the power invoked by the neighbor, was not their power, but the very power of God, present and available in the unity Jesus prays for, a “unity in love” shared between Jesus and God, between Jesus and us, and therefore between God and us. Love in common, shared through prayer in common, common prayer: prayer that is offered together.
In Mark’s Gospel, we hear of a time when that togetherness, that unity in love, is very important:
Mark writes, “When [Jesus] returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. So many gathered around that there was no longer room for them, not even in front of the door; and he was speaking the word to them. Then some people came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. And when they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; and after having dug through it, they let down the mat on which the paralytic lay. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’” (Mk. 2:1-5)
Sooner or later, most of us have a time in our lives when, for whatever reason, we find we can’t pray. Whether we’re bound by anger or grief or fear or doubt, bound by illness or despair or whatever, there can be times when we have no words and no heart for God. No less than the man in Mark, we are paralyzed, locked inside ourselves spiritually, unable to move. This is when the prayers of others, the prayers of our community, the “together” prayers, carry us to God.
Just as the friends of the paralytic carry him not only to the house where Jesus is, but up to the roof of that house, so our friends and our community lift us up; and just as the paralytic’s friends dig open the roof and lower him to Jesus’ very feet, so our friends and our community carry us in prayer wherever we need to go. When we ourselves can’t take a step towards God, our friends in their prayers lay us at the feet of our Lord for healing. And when our friends can’t take a step towards God, we in our prayers lay them at the feet of, and in the hands of, the Lord.
Powerful things happen when we pray for each other. Hearts and doors are opened, hope is in the very air we breathe, and we become both spiritually and emotionally invested in each other. We care about each other; we place our lives in each other’s hands. Is there someone you don’t like, someone who’s really a problem for you? Pray for them sincerely – every day. Pray that God’s will may be done in their lives. And if you can’t pray for them sincerely, pray for them anyway – and ask God to help your prayer become sincere.
Powerful things happen when Jesus prays for us, and for those who will believe, and for those who have come to believe. Through him we are included in the relationship and the love that he shares with the Father. Through him we are invited to eat at God’s table as co-equals with him, children in God’s family. Through him, we are graced to see ourselves and each other with God’s love, through God’s eyes.
Jesus prayed for his disciples. Jesus prays, present tense, for each of us. And on this, my last Sunday with you as you, the people of St. Matthias, embark on your next exciting chapter as a parish, I pray for us all together as well.
Until we meet again, let’s be careful out there.
Amen.