May 12, 2024: On Praying

 Gospel: John 17: 6-19, and Acts 1: 15-17 & 21-26
             
In our gospel reading from John today, Jesus is about to be betrayed by Judas. This prayer to God the Father takes place near the end of the Last Supper. Shortly after this, he will head to the garden where Judas will betray him with a kiss and he will be arrested. 

Earlier at the supper, Jesus had been using those last moments together as teachable moments, instructing the disciples of the things we have discussed in the last few weeks: that the disciples, like vines, are extensions of Christ and must continue his work after he is gone and that to do this they must love and support one another. Here, in one of his last acts on earth, he prays for them while they are listening.

And that is the key - while they are listening. Jesus, like us, could say a prayer in his head and God would hear it, but he needed the disciples who still did not quite know what was about to happen, to be reminded of several things he taught them:

They know who God is and that all Jesus has done: teaching, healing, loving, forgiving, accepting, and even resurrecting, has come from God.

They know that Jesus, God in human form, is God’s son sent to earth by God.

They will have an advocate with them on earth in the form of the Holy Spirit. 

They know that knowing God is eternal life.

After the reminders, the true focus of Jesus’ prayer is asking God to protect them after he is gone just as he protected them while he was with them. He says, “I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”

Jesus is letting them know that God will be with them, protecting them, even after Jesus is gone. In praying for them, Jesus is also modeling prayer, showing them that while life will be difficult, and we know the disciples suffered for their beliefs, they were not alone and in bringing their requests to God in prayer, their burdens are lightened. 

I remember the first prayer I learned, I imagine many of you know it and it or some version of it may have been your first prayer as well. It goes like this: “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I shall die before I awake, I pray the Lord, my soul to take.”
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As I think about it, this seems a bit frightening to have a child pray before bed, each night thinking about the possibility of death. Yet it also normalizes death, which is after all, a part of life. In a conversation with Krista Tippet for her radio program “On Being”, author Kate Di Camillo who wrote The Tales of Despereaux and many other children’s books, spoke, among other things, about a letter she wrote to fellow children’s author Matt de La Pena in answer to his question “How honest should we be with our readers? Is it the job of the writer for the very young to tell the truth or preserve their innocence?” Her answer was, in part,

Dear Matt,

“… You asked how honest we, as writers of books for children, should be with our readers, whether it is our job to tell them the truth or preserve their innocence.
Here’s a question for you: Have you ever asked an auditorium full of kids if they know and love Charlotte’s Web? In my experience, almost all of the hands go up. And if you ask them how many of them cried when they read it, most of those hands unabashedly stay aloft.

“My childhood best friend read Charlotte’s Web over and over again as a kid. She would read the last page, turn the book over, and begin again. A few years ago, I asked her why.

“‘What was it that made you read and reread that book?’” I asked her. “‘Did you think that if you read it again, things would turn out differently, better? That Charlotte wouldn’t die?’

“‘No,’” she said. “‘It wasn’t that. I kept reading it not because I wanted it to turn out differently or thought that it would turn out differently, but because I knew for a fact that it wasn’t going to turn out differently. I knew that a terrible thing was going to happen, and I also knew that it was going to be okay somehow. I thought that I couldn’t bear it, but then when I read it again, it was all so beautiful. And I found out that I could bear it. That was what the story told me. That was what I needed to hear. That I could bear it somehow.’

“So that’s the question, I guess, for you and for me and for all of us trying to do this sacred task of telling stories for the young: How do we tell the truth and make that truth bearable?”

She then went on to share a story of speaking to a large audience of kids at a school and sharing some of her own hard truths like her Dad leaving the family when she was young. She notes, “During the Q&A, a boy asked me if I thought I would have been a writer if I hadn’t been sick all the time as a kid and if my father hadn’t left. And I said something along the lines of ‘I think there is a very good chance that I wouldn’t be standing in front of you today if those things hadn’t happened to me.’ Later, a girl raised her hand and said, ‘It turns out that in the end you were stronger than you thought you were.’

“When the kids left the auditorium, I stood at the door and talked with them as they walked past. One boy — skinny-legged and blond-haired — grabbed my hand and said, ‘I’m here in South Dakota and my dad is in California.’ He flung his free hand out in the direction of California. He said, ‘He’s there and I’m here with my mom. And I thought I might not be okay…’...“‘But you said today that you’re okay. And so I think that I will be okay, too.’”

By sharing her story, DiCamillo showed that young boy that it is possible to survive difficult situations. She was also emphasizing in her letter to de la Pena, that children are resilient and we cannot hide the truths of life for them. Wilbur has to go on without Charlotte, the disciples have to go on without Jesus, and all of that is possible. 

Jesus was showing the disciples that prayer allows us to live with the painful truths of life but to never give up hope. I am going to say that again: prayer allows us to live with the painful truths of life but to never give up hope. 

Hope for what? Hope that the situation will change, when it can. Hope that we will survive that challenge, whatever it is or hope that we can accept those things that we cannot change, which we learn from experience, as DiCamillo did and shared, that we can. 

Prayer is also communication beyond ourselves allowing us to connect with God, those whom we pray for and, ultimately, all of God’s creation. Prayer gives us a chance to put a pause on life, if only for a moment, to take a breath from our pain, challenges or suffering and to regroup. 

And God is in that pause. God is the gentle reassurance that lets your heart rate slow down. God lets you see a beautiful flower blooming or to enjoy the sound of the rain or a river flowing or to remember the laughter of a loved one who is gone, even through our pain.

 God is the earth that you just noticed is still holding you up despite the feeling, at times, that the world is crashing down around you. In the pause we can take the time to remember that we are the vine, connected to the trunk of Christ and he is helping us to remain standing. 

The act of praying itself, beyond any immediate answer, brings solace and support. It is doing something when we really have no idea what to do. At the same time, it is a kind of letting go, giving a bit of the burden to God who reminds us in Matthew 11:30 “For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Consider that in dealing with life’s challenges, we are yoked to God, like oxen. That means the burden is equally shared as we pull through life and we can even metaphorically look over at God pulling with us. At times like this, I picture God looking me in the eye and saying, “You’ve got this!” giving me the strength to get through whatever the situation is. 

Jesus’ prayer for his disciples worked. It took them a little while after he died and was resurrected but they found the pause, prayed through it and chose Matthias to replace Judas so they could move forward after the pain of loss and continue God’s work on earth. 

Jesus prayed for the protection of his disciples, and indeed, for all of us. We need protection, at times, from pain, worry and despair for ourselves, for the many hurting people on this planet and for the planet itself. It would be so easy to be lost in the pain, but we need to remember to pause in prayer, to remember that we are not alone, to seek hope and solace in the stories of others, as that little boy in South Dakota did. Prayer does indeed allow us to live with life’s painful truths while maintaining hope in this world and beyond. Let God share some of the burden with you, breathe deeply and feel how much lighter that shared burden is. Amen.

Pastor Michelle Fountain

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