WHAT KIND OF PRAYERS DID JESUS PRAY?

Recently Jesus has been getting a lot of press. There have been headlines asking “What kind of car would Jesus drive?” (“not a gas-guzzling SRV,” say environmentalist advocates) and “What kind of stocks would Jesus buy?” (“not AOL Time Warner and Disney,” say the “family-life” proponents-- Time, May 19, 2003). Although the Evangelist John was not among those being quoted in recent press releases, he apparently sensed what readers needed to hear in writing the material used for this Seventh and Last Sunday of the Easter Season. One might caption his article “What kind of prayers would Jesus pray?” As with the first two articles, you could be surprised about John’s description of Jesus’ prayer life-- and specifically about his petitions for you and me! What John says about Jesus’ prayers will make you sit up and think a great deal more than current American “prayer talk” does.

American prayer life has acquired, to mix a metaphor, substantial superficiality. When someone experiences a problem, it’s common for people to say, especially in the parlance of folk piety, “we’ll be praying for ya’ll, hear?!” Whether such prayers ever take place or not cannot be answered with certainty. Even less likely is the prospect that all the prayers recently advertised for American soldiers on marques at every bank, hamburger stand and car dealership ever took place. Golfing buddies, dropping off a distraught member of the foursome at his house after a terrible game in which he missed the shot of a lifetime, cheer him on hilariously with “we’ll be praying for you!” The suggestion of prayer has become a pious way of expressing our care for a person, but often there isn’t much content attached to the concern.

In another era, Peter Marshall, who became famous in the two years he held the position of Chaplain to the United States Senate (1947-49), once told a touching story of his widowed, praying Scottish mother. Long after all the household chores were completed, Marshall said that there was one thing he knew about his mother with certainty. She knelt every night at her bedside and prayed for, among other things, him! There were few things in life, Marshall later wrote, which impacted him as powerfully as the fact that every night his mother went before the Lord in prayer for him. It is this kind of image that John is sharing in the lesson that has been saved for the last Sunday of the Festival Half of the Church Year. Those who chose this lesson for us wanted to be sure that long after we had been exposed to the account of the crucifixion and resurrection and the commissioning of the disciples, we get to hear Jesus praying about us and for us. Just as Peter Marshall never could forget that his mother took his needs to God in prayer every night, so we can’t help but be impressed with what John remembers hearing Jesus say about his followers in prayer. If you asked 300 people “What kind of prayers did Jesus pray?” you would probably not get John’s answers.

PUT THEIR FEET TO THE FIRE

John remembers Jesus’ praying that God would “not take them out of the world but preserve them from the evil one.” It is of course too easy to suggest that over the centuries, millions of those who went into monasteries missed Jesus’ intent here. Regardless of your religious tradition, it would be valuable to understand that the first Christians who took up monasticism in 4th Century deserts did so because after the Edict of Milan (313), at least according to Eusebius, tolerated Christianity, discipleship in the urban centers came to be too self-understood and “easy.” Many felt that those who lived in the cities had abandoned the battles with the evil one, succumbing too readily to temptation. They didn’t think of themselves as escaping the world.

It might be helpful to consider how such ease continues in our Christian accommodation to the evil one today. We exercise the option for escape not by heading to monasteries or weekend retreats or moving the family to a commune in West Texas, but by ignoring the realities of temptation or restructuring immorality. Some years ago, Denmark reported that it had reduced the number of criminal offences by a substantial percentage. The discerning reader quickly learned that the reduced crime rate had resulted from decriminalizing a number of offenses. Something similar is happening in the United States today. For example, parents increasingly seek to water down punishments for their children in high schools because such information may look bad on their records when they try to get into elite universities. U.S. News and World Report (May 26, 2003) reports that “the consequences of no consequences can be worse, however. To raise a trophy kid, the focus is often on grades, the SATS, the Ivies, rather than moral development. The trade off: No conscience, no sense of remorse, accountability or empathy.” Clearly, this is the very escape from the world in which no battle is done with the evil one.

There is a shabbiness to this new American immorality which stands exposed by John’s story of the cross and empty tomb. It was no cheap grace which allows Jesus to talk about having his joy completed in his followers. Facing head-on the complacent forces, the enormous odds, of those who call for status-quo, those who want the well-worn style of easy peace, overruled temptation and acquiescence to immorality, Jesus sets his face toward Jerusalem with its enormous “NO” to his invitation to accept alternative approaches to peace, integrity and justice. For the “joy that was set before him (Heb. 12:2), he endured the cross, despising the shame, and now is seated at the right hand of God.” It is this joy which Jesus has in mind for us as we claim his resurrection victory and make bold decisions over against the temptations of the evil one. We are in the world, although not of it, and we dare not ignore evil or pretend that choices are not real. With the joy set before us by the One who daily gives us strength and confidence, we willingly accept challenges in the most ordinary places at work, in human relationships, in school, at church. We are stunned that Jesus does not pray that we be given the means to escape challenges and temptation, but that our feet be put to the fire. We may be the “blessed meek,” but we are not allowed to be cowards. Disagreeing with the Nissan Maxima advertisement which says “The Meek Shall Inherit the Passenger Seat,” Christians are willing to take the driver’s seat! That’s what Jesus prays for!

LET THEM SEE ME AND YOU TOGETHER

Another of Jesus’ petitions is equally surprising because it demonstrates more insight about us that we have about ourselves. The history of Christianity is a story of divisions, but nowhere in the world has the diversity of religion become as rich as in America. Politically and ideologically, one can attribute this to the First Amendment with its non-establishment clause. Once it became clear that government would not be allowed to legislate religious matters, movements sprang up to express every spiritual insight that can be named. Additionally, however, the diversity in America emerged from a “can do” pragmatism which finds new solutions for ever dilemma. Christian Science (with its mind over matter Gnosticism) and Seventh Day Adventism (with its sabbatarianism, and vegetarianism) are examples of “American” religions which arose to address loopholes in spirituality for which there were no existing theories. I teach a course in the History of American Denominationalism and it is a challenge to decide whether the rich and confusing Christian diversity that emerged on American soil is a triumph for freedom or a tragedy for the unity of Christianity.

Jesus prayer that “we might all be one just as I and the Father are one” is poignant and challenging in this regard. Would it be better if we had only a State church (and, thus, a semblance of unity, but perhaps not as much vitality) or is there a means for Christians to celebrate unity in the midst of existing diversity? On the one hand, it is clear that many religious groups that were formed by immigrants for the purpose of maintaining language and ethnic heritage remained isolated minorities. As “Americanization” united such groups over the centuries, mergers took place to remove distinctions. Lutherans, for example, who once had 150 synods, now have only three. Episcopalians, Presbyterians, United Church of Christ and some Lutherans have “fellowship agreements” allowing them to recognize the validity of one another’s ministries. Gradually, a growing consensus is apparent—although sometimes splinter groups continue to form at the edges of the mainline groups, defying any movement toward unity. It would seem that the real issue, if one takes John’s overall vision of Jesus into account, is not that organizational and structural unity is of such importance. In a nation of immigrants in which Christians are divided. because of obvious and enormous cultural and ethnic heritages, it seems more important that we learn to appreciate our ties as disciples with the Master who prays for us. How interesting that Jesus asks us to observe him and his Father together, in their oneness.

Christians have historically put more emphasis on maintaining clarity and purity in teaching, leading to endless disputes about who had the greater clarity. It is worth remembering that Christianity grew phenomenally in the first century because pagans were astonished at how much Christians loved one another-- and that it declined precipitously in the seventh century when it was too severely divided to resist the simplicity of Islam. Jesus knows us too well, and he prays that we see him and his Father in their oneness and imitate it, not argue about it, split hairs about it, prove that we’re right. We’ve done enough of that. That’s what Jesus prays for.

HELP THEM FIND THE SECRET PATH

Lastly Jesus prays that his followers might see themselves “called out, set apart, holy.” “Sanctify them in your truth,” he prays. It is a wonderful insight, and an important one to enunciate clearly. Some have perceived this “sanctification” to mean moral uprightness and, unfortunately, when taken to extremes, sanctimoniousness. We all know about Holy Joe and Pious Sarah. They can only lead us to pharisaism. Additionally, we should remember another problematic interpretation from those involved in the radical Reformation of the 16th Century. They understood the New Testament Greek hagiazein to require a departure from society, relinquishing the structures of government and established church to form a consecrated people who were defined by their separateness. Many communal groups that came to the United States in the 1700s had such intentions. The Amana Colonies in Iowa and the Amish in Pennsylvania, even the Quakers, represent such interests still today. However, Jesus’ first petition in this prayer seems to speak against such separateness. His prayer is not that we leave the world but that within it we become the joyful, peculiar, unique, set apart, consecrated, holy people. This is not a call for arrogance, but for vision. Those who know that God sends them into the world with a task keep their focus on the One who loves them and empowers them. In their relationship with him they find their way through the morass of choices, too many of which have dead ends.

In D.H. Lawrence’s play David, Jesse, David’s father, explains to his son, Eliab, why the spiritual solution to confusion and dead ends is better than the military solution:

My son, the heart of man cannot wander among the years like a wild ass in the
wilderness, running hither and thither. The heart at last stands still crying:
‘Whither, Whither?’ Like a lost foal whinnying for his dam, the heart cries and
knickers for God, and will not be comforted. Then comes the prophet with the
other vision in his eyes, and the inner hearing in his ears, and he uncovers the
secret path of the Lord, Who is at the middlemost place of all. And when the heart
is in the way of God, it runs softly and joyously, without weariness.

Lawrence makes a valiant plea for the role of the Other, the Alternative, the Transcendent, the Different One who calls us outside of and beyond ourselves to discover what we cannot find on our own. It is in and through this Other, through God himself that we are enabled to discover the secret path, the right choice among the false ones, that is the truth.

Jesus’ petitions are powerful and personal. He doesn’t give us a “high five” and promise, as he disappears, “I’ll be praying for ya’ll, hear?!” He who broke the barriers of death and established life’s continuous future goes the whole length of the road with us, praying that faithful followers will be able to keep their feet to the fire, lay claim to a unity more powerful than mere cries for distinctness of beliefs and nimbly traverse the wilderness of life on the secret paths of God. Here is Jesus concerned about our future, our daily walk. It is an image left for the last Sunday of the Church Year when we now leave behind us all the great acts of God in Christ celebrated at Christmas, Epiphany, Lent and Easter and walk the long road with all its choices and decisions. It is future fraught with danger, yet filled with opportunity. It is excitement worthy of adventurers in the driver’s seat of life. How exciting to know that Jesus has foreseen every turn in the road and is praying for us!

Dr. Dr. David Zersen, President Emeritus
Concordia University at Austin
Austin, Texas
dzersen@aol.com