Sunday, May 28, 2017 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Jesus Prays for Us

Shannon J. Kershner
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 68:1–10, 32–35
John 17:1–11

What if we imagined that the resurrection of Jesus was just the beginning and not the conclusion of the Gospel? That the promises of the resurrection are, in part, ours to fulfill? How would a life of discipleship, of witness, of love, between Pentecost and Advent, be different . . . ?

Karoline Lewis, www.workingpreacher.org

A friend of mine, a Presbyterian clergywoman, tells a story about an encounter she had when she was pregnant with her second child. My friend, Agnes, was standing in front of the fruit display at the DeKalb County Farmers’ Market in Decatur, Georgia, the town in which she served as pastor. As she stood there, trying to decide between apples and pears, a woman spoke to her. “Is this your first child?” the woman inquired. “No,” Agnes replied. “I have a little boy who is almost two.” The woman stared at her for a moment. And then she said, not with a smile but with a very grave expression, “How can you dare to bring children into this cruel and terrible world?” Agnes turned her attention back to the apples and pears, but the question lingered and stung.

I understand why that question lingered and stung, don’t you? In these days I experience moments during which I allow myself to acknowledge my own grave concerns about the kind of world my adolescent children inhabit. It is a world in which a terrorist purposefully chooses to target those attending a pop concert in Manchester. It is a world in which Egyptian Coptic Christians are murdered on their way to a monastery for prayer.

It is a world in which a teenage kid gets shot at 2:45 p.m. in front of Pastor Wayne Gordon’s Lawndale Community Church here in Chicago. Yet his death does not even make the news because it is now expected that young men of color on our South and West sides are going to get shot. Why report such a routine event? our world asks. I remarked to Pastor Gordon, whose son and family are members of this congregation, that if that had happened out in front of our church, the story would have been the lead story and on the front page. But that is another sermon.

In short, though her remark was highly inappropriate, I understand why that woman said what she said to Agnes. When we only look at the chaos swirling around, only feel the very live currents of anger and fear constantly electrifying our atmosphere, only focus on the never-ending cycle of violence and on our culture of apathy and greed even making its way into legislation, we can see the woman’s point. In my conversation with Pastor Gordon, another faith leader in Chicago reported that when he recently asked one of our South Side Chicago children what he wanted to be when he grew up, the child responded “Alive.” It does indeed appear to be a cruel and terrible world.

And yet just as that assessment begins to overtake our minds, just as that reality of brokenness starts to shape our vision, just as the fear creeps in to hold court in our hearts, we read Jesus’ words to us today. Actually, that’s wrong. Jesus’ words in this Gospel passage were not spoken to us. Jesus’ words were directed to God, the one he called Father. We are bystanders in today’s passage. All we are to do is listen as Jesus prays for us.

I’m going to repeat what I just said: In this text, Jesus is praying for us. And later in the prayer, we also hear Jesus praying for this world. But not only that, remember the context for the prayer in the first place. Right before he prays, Jesus watches Judas leave the upper room, knowing full well Judas was about to betray Jesus to the authorities. Then, immediately after Jesus prays, he and the disciples go to the Garden where he is arrested and later crucified. That is our context for this prayer: it is a prayer spoken between the events of betrayal and death.

OK, we might think, Jesus must be praying that we all get what we deserve, then. His prayer must be one of despair, because, after all, the disciples were proving to be quite disappointing. Even as they stood at the cusp of when he would die, the disciples still did not comprehend the different character of his call and ministry. So yes, Jesus would do well to pray for those frustrating and ignorant disciples. He could take that tone that perhaps you have heard before, that “I’ll pray for you” tone of arrogance and judgment.

But when we overhear what Jesus says, not just in the part I read today but looking at the whole of the prayer, we do not hear a prayer of despair or revenge. Instead we hear words of love. “They are yours and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. . . . Watch over them in your name, the name you gave me, that they will be one just as we are one. . . . Then the world will know that you have sent me and that you have loved them just as you loved me.” We also hear Jesus entrusting our future not to us, not to the church, not to the world, not to our government, but only to God. In the words of his prayer, Jesus gives us back to the one from whom we came. “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.”

Today, living in the middle of what too often feels like a cruel and terrible world, are you able to hear the hope embedded in Jesus’ prayer? First of all, Jesus wants us to know how deeply we are loved. He wants us to know that we are as loved by our Triune God as Jesus is loved by the one he calls Father. And second, because of that tremendous holy love, Jesus is affirming that in the end our future as a people and as people does not wholly depend on what we do or don’t do. Jesus’ prayer reminds us that the church’s future, the world’s future, our children’s future, is not dependent upon us. Our future rests in God’s hands, not our own. That affirmation is at the heart of Jesus’ prayer for us.

In our Reformed theological tradition we call that affirmation “the sovereignty of God,” and it is the heartbeat of our hope. A Presbyterian elder once expressed this theological affirmation to me when she told me why she had said yes to serving on Session: “God is going to do what God is going to do as God heals the world, whether or not I said yes to the call to serve as an elder,” she said. “But I decided that I wanted nothing more than to be an active part of that healing and justice work which God is doing. That is why I said yes.” That sounds to me like someone who knows that Jesus is praying for her, because she feels the freedom to get involved in God’s work in the world. She knows that God is God and she is not. She knows it is not all up to her. She is not going to be the one to bring in the kingdom, the full reign of God, but she still has an important part to play in the unfolding of God’s reign.

As someone who knows she is loved by God, someone who knows Jesus prays for her, she carries a responsibility to be a part of God’s building the beloved community. Yes, she sometimes sees a cruel and terrible world, but she also sees the divine love and the stubborn holy promise that surround it, that hold it up, that are at work behind the scenes and off the front page. She knows that Jesus prays for her and for this world, and that knowledge gave her the immense courage to say yes.

I have already referenced a public conversation of which I was a part this week with Pastor Gordon and other colleagues. Fuller Seminary brought together six of us for a “story table” event on the interaction between faith and fear. Now in order to help you imagine the diversity gathered, I will tell you the participants’ race, gender identity, and where they serve: The other participants were Pastor Wayne Gordon, a white man who serves as pastor of the Lawndale Community Church; Dr. Reggie Williams, an African American man who is a professor of Christian ethics at McCormick Seminary; Pastor Sandra Van Opstal, a Latina woman who serves a Pentecostal church in the Humboldt Park neighborhood; Dr. Marshall Hatch, an African American man who serves as the pastor of New Mount Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church in West Garfield; Dr. Mark Labberton, a white man who serves as the President of Fuller Seminary in California; and me. In this event, we were asked to tell personal stories about the interactions between faith and fear and then talk with each other about our stories.

Given the diversity sitting around the table and given our current cultural milieu, our conversation ended up primarily centering on stories about race and injustice, fear and faith and how those categories are experienced in very real ways by those around the table. Near the end of the program, Dr. Labberton opened it up to folks in the audience. He asked if any of them had any stories or questions related to this interplay between fear and faith, between the strong fearful feeling that we live in what too often seems to be a cruel and terrible world and yet a world we also believe God created good and holds in the palm of God’s hand and will redeem into pure shalom for all. Fear and faith.

A young woman stood up and began by letting us know she is a teacher on the South Side. She then stated that most of her students don’t think about the tension between faith and fear because fear has killed their faith. Fear has sucked out all the possibility of what their lives could be. They don’t see the value of their lives or of anyone else’s. When fear is the only state of being that you know, then faith, or imagining possibilities or even trusting you will have a future, no longer has any power in you. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” “Alive,” the child responded. The teacher’s honesty was both appreciated and sobering.

But that reality for some in our larger Chicago community, for some of our very own church members and participants in the worshiping life of this congregation, is why Jesus’ prayer is vital to hear. For Jesus is not just praying for us, for us to be sure of God’s love for us and for this world; for us to know that no matter how we feel on any given day, God’s love and shalom will win in the end. No, Jesus is also praying for all those kids whose faith is being stamped out by the poverty, by the violence, by the feelings of nobodiness that too often surround them for a whole host of reasons—any of them systemic. Jesus prays for them. He prays that they might feel as deeply loved by God the Creator as Jesus feels. And he prays that they might know they are as much a part of each other, as much a part of us, as much a part of God’s larger story as Jesus is a part of God’s own heart. He prays they might know they reside in the palm of God’s hand.

So the question with which I have been wrestling this weekend is how can we become a part of that proclamation? How can we more intentionally become a living, breathing embodiment of Jesus’ prayer for ourselves and for those whose faith is getting actively shoved around by the power of fear? Is there a way for us to join in with these strong faith leaders who have been doing this kind of love and justice work for decades, for us to support their ministries of compassion and peace? I ask this knowing that in some ways we are already active in this kind of Jesus prayer work through our Meals Ministry program, through the Shower Ministry, through the varieties of outreach work of Chicago Lights, through the grants that our World Mission and Social Justice committee disperses, through our participation in the interfaith anti-racism group, just to name a few. Furthermore, many of your staff—both Fourth Church staff and Chicago Lights staff—just went through anti-racism training as another first step towards deeper justice, and I am looking into that for our board leadership next.

I suppose the truth is that I just don’t want us to get settled. I just don’t want us to become too comfortable. For Jesus is praying for us, and I am not just talking about those of us in this sanctuary today. I pray that knowing that Jesus is praying for all of us might create some holy dissatisfaction in us as a congregation, in us as disciples, with the way things are; with the way things continue to be; with the fact that a woman feels so hopeless about the state of the world that she would ask that question of my pregnant friend; with the fact that fear is holding court in far too many people’s lives. I want us to let the knowledge that Jesus is praying for us push us into continuously being on the lookout for concrete ways we can embody Jesus’ prayer for ourselves, for others, for our world.

Believe me, I wish I had more answers for you today than that—maybe some signup sheets or projects you could immediately volunteer for, but I don’t. William Sloane Coffin once said the preacher’s job is to proclaim God’s promise that justice will roll down like the mighty waters, but it is up to the people in the congregation to figure out the irrigation system. I am counting on all of us figuring out that irrigation system together. Our city is counting on us to be a part of figuring out that irrigation system. I do trust, though, with everything I am, that God is beginning to show us our next part to play in God’s healing of our world, of our city, of our own hearts. Why do I trust that? Jesus prays for us.

That means that when the world says fear, we say “Go out into this world in peace and have courage.” And when our world says all is lost, we say “Hold on to what is good.” And when our world says the only response to violence is violence, we say “Return no person evil for evil.” And when our world shouts hate and acts out of greed, we say “Strengthen the fainthearted and support the weak.” And when our world prizes apathy and cynicism, we say “Help the suffering.” And when our world decides that only some people count enough to be a lead story in the aftermath of tragedy, we say “Honor all people.” Why? Because Christ prays for us. That’s why. So may the day come soon when that truth finally wins over anything terrible or cruel and all people can imagine the future God hopes for them. Amen.