John 17.1-11 Christ’s prayer for his disciples

Today’s pericope is titled “Christ’s prayer for his disciples.”

Christ’s wish for his disciples is that they be protected so that they might be one with each other as Christ is one with the Father. Christ wanted the disciples to have the same relationship with each other as Christ has with God. Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Christ wasn’t joking. He wasn’t exaggerating. It is exactly as he meant it.

Christ has paid the price for your salvation, all you have to do now is follow 2 commandments. Love God. Love your neighbor. The disciples were one another’s neighbors. Christ wanted them to have the same love for each other as Christ has for God.

This then begs the question: How do we have the same love for each other as Christ has for God’s fellow disciples?

Easy, Christ gave us the answer in this prayer for us. He spelled out how he lived a life that showed his love for God. First, Jesus glorified the earth by finishing the work that God gave him to do. Second, he made God’s name known to those whom God gave him, using the words God gave to him.

God expects us to work. God expects us to finish that work. God will assign us work that is within the capabilities of our human form to complete. God will not force us to do that work, nor will God force us to complete that work. It is always our choice whether or not we choose to live a fulfilled life by doing that which we were designed to do, or we choose to forge our own path, engaging in work that is not necessarily ideal for us to do.

I tell my clients this anecdote. You can wash your clothes in the dishwasher, but don’t blame the dishwasher when they don’t come out as clean as you’d like. Dishwashers are indeed designed for washing things, dish-shaped things. Plates, cups, silverware, bowls, dishes. To put anything else in the dishwasher and expect the same results is a trial-and-error process on your part. Yes, dishwashers do wash things besides dishes quite well. Baseball caps are a bizarre example of this. But if you put a sweater in there, the results are often less than desirable.

Jesus Christ showed his love for God by finishing the work that God gave him to do. Not by finishing everyone else’s work but by doing what HE was given to do using the tools he was given.

Dishwashers wash dishes. Washing machines wash clothes. You would no more put your dishes in the washing machine than you would put your clothes in your dishwasher. Both are designed for cleaning but not for cleaning the same things. It is easy for us to get confused in life and only half understand what work God has given us specifically to do. Just because we fall into the category of cleaning doesn’t mean if is our work to clean everything in the world. We clean that which we are given by God.

The second way Jesus showed his love to God was by making God’s name known to those whom he had been given. Are you sensing a theme here yet? We do the work we are given to do, we spread the word to those whom we have been given to spread it to. God’s the one in charge here. We get into trouble when we try to take over everything, everyone, and do all things instead of focusing on what we’ve been given to do. Jesus had twelve disciples to work with, not twenty, not one, twelve.

Jesus spoke to many whom God sent to him. When God sent him someone, such as the Samaritan woman at the well, the woman who pulled at his robe and needed healing, blind Bartimaeus, Jesus worked with those whom God gave him to work with. He didn’t physically heal everyone in the world, just those whom God sent to be healed. He didn’t speak to everyone in the world, just those whom God sent to him to hear.

Jesus was given words when he needed words. I’ve been preaching for awhile now and I have been a therapist for slightly longer. In this time I have learned that while I learn, research, pray, and discern in advance. I don’t get the words that I am meant to say until God gives me the words. Sometimes I get the words in advance and I rejoice because I like to plan things but sometimes, I am not given the words I need until in the moment as they are emerging from my mouth.

I cannot force the message to come and as you who read my sermons every week have seen lately, sometimes, I don’t have any. And then sometimes, like this week, I am writing them in advance. I give the words to you when I receive them. Sometimes they change. Sometimes I get more words than I anticipate and my sermons are very long, sometimes they are short, sometimes I post more than one message a week. Just as God gave words to Jesus to give to those who are sent, so too do I give words to those who are sent to read them. Some weeks that may be one, other weeks it is over one hundred. That is not for me to decide. That’s up to God to call them and them to listen to that call.

Jesus gave all glory to the Father when he shared the words God had given him. He did not take credit upon himself but acknowledged when he was doing what God had asked him to do.

There’s a distinct difference when I write a sermon versus when I give the words to you that God has given to me. When I write a sermon it has a tendency to become quite opinionated and contain an overabundance of the letter “I.” When God gives me words, they flow easily and comfortably. They tell a story of a lesson I have learned, a peace I have been given, and in some glorious moments of divine intervention, I write or preach a message that feels as if it just appeared out of nowhere, and I remember little of what I said or wrote until I go back over it.

Jesus’ prayer for his disciples was that they become one as Jesus and God become one. This can only happen if each disciples carries out the work that God gave them to carry out and speaks the words that God gave them to speak to those whom God gives them to speak to. When we try to do the work that God gave other disciples to do or speak to those whom God gave to someone else to speak or use the words that gave God to someone else, we fail to function as one. We cause rifts by overstepping our boundaries and pushing others out of the way.

We are one body made of different parts. While I can pick up objects with my toes, I am not really as adept at it as I am with my fingers. Just because I can do something does not mean I should. When things are not going the way we feel like they should be, often it is because we are misusing the tool not because the tool is broken. We are most productive when we do the work we were designed for whom we were sent to do it.

Taking over someone else’s work creates jealousy and resentment, definitely not the unity as one that Jesus had in mind for us. Jesus was glorified in doing the work he was given to do just as we are glorified in doing the work we are given to do. When we spend our days doing things God did not give us to do, saying things God has not given us to say, we are not glorified. When we glorify ourselves, we end up tearing apart our relationship with other disciples when we prevent them from doing what they were given to do or say.

“And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”

We are in the world and under God’s protection when we are where we are supposed to be, doing what we have been given to do.

“And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”

Eternal life is in knowing the only true God who can be known by knowing Jesus Christ, the one whom the only true God has sent. Salvation is found in finishing the work that we have been given to do: being one as Jesus Christ is one with God.