“What Jesus Prays When We Can’t”

Readings: Acts 1:6-14 (Jesus’ companions at prayer after his departure), Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35 (Sing to God, who rides upon the clouds), 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11 (God will sustain and restore those who suffer)

Gospel Reading | John 17:1-11 (NRSVue)

After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.

“I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you, for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you, and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I have been glorified in them. 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.

Grace and peace to you from God our Creator, and from our Lord Jesus Christ, who prays for us still. Amen.

So here we are. Stuck.

Liturgically, I mean. We’re on the Sunday no one quite knows what to do with.

This past Thursday was the Feast Day of the Ascension, the high holy day that observes when was Jesus lifted up, gone into a cloud, and gone from sight.

Next Sunday is Pentecost. The Sunday that we celebrate the Spirit, the fire, the wind, the church bursting into being.

And this Sunday? This Sunday we are in between. The disciples are in an upper room, “constantly devoting themselves to prayer,” the book of Acts tells us, which is a polite way of saying they had no idea what to do next.

And I have to confess, I love this Sunday. I love it because it’s honest. I love it because most of my actual life, and I suspect most of yours, happens here, in the in-between. Not on Easter morning when the stone has just rolled away. Not on Pentecost when the Spirit lands on your head like a bird made of fire. Most of life is lived in the in between. Most of life is the upper room. Most of life is waiting, trying to figure out what to do next.

And right now — in this particular year, in this particular country, in this particular moment — I don’t have to tell you that the waiting feels heavy. You know. I know. We have been carrying it together for a long time now. There is an uncertainty about what to do next. A reality that the life we once knew will never return and yet an anxiety about what’s coming. There’s this type of grief and yet anticipation present.

We too, are in the upper room.

And here is what I want you to notice about the gospel today. Jesus prays for those people. Jesus prays for the in-between people. Jesus prays for the upper-room people. Jesus prays for the people who do not yet know what’s coming.

This passage is part of what we call the High Priestly Prayer. It’s John 17, the longest prayer of Jesus recorded anywhere in the gospels. And the wild, interesting, thing about it, the thing I want you to hold this week, is when Jesus prays it.

He prays it the night before he dies. Before the betrayal. Before the trial. Before the cross. Jesus is about to lose everything, and what he does is pray for his friends. Not pray with them. Pray for them. Out loud. Where they can hear it.

Have you ever heard someone praying for you? Not “I’ll keep you in my prayers” — that’s lovely, that’s fine, but I mean have you ever been in the room when someone you love laid your name down before God? It is one of the most disorienting experiences a person can have. Because you realize, maybe for the first time, I am being carried. I am not the one holding everything up. I am being held.

That is what the disciples get to overhear. And it’s what we get to overhear too.

Listen to what he asks for. He doesn’t ask that they be made comfortable. He doesn’t ask that the road be made smooth. He doesn’t ask that the empire fall by Tuesday or that the powerful suddenly see the light. He asks, very specifically, two things. Protect them. And make them one.

Protect them. Make them one.

I want us to sit with that, because it is not what I would have asked for if I were Jesus the night before I died. I would have asked for vindication. I would have asked for an angel army. I would have asked God to please, for once, make the wicked answer for what they’ve done.

But Jesus asks God to protect his friends and to hold them together. Because Jesus knows what we are slow to learn — that the most dangerous thing that can happen to people under pressure is that they come apart. From each other. From themselves. From the love that made them.

Have you noticed that? How fear scatters us? How exhaustion isolates us? How the steady drumbeat of bad news convinces us, slowly, that we are alone, that no one else feels what we feel, that we should just turn inward, lock the door, ration our care?

That is the disintegration Jesus is praying against. Holy Father, protect them in your name, so that they may be one.

This is, I think, what church is for. Not for getting our doctrine perfectly aligned. Not for being right. Not even, primarily, for feeling good on a Sunday morning, though I hope you do. Church is for being held together when the world is trying to pull us apart. Church is the upper room. Church is the place where we wait, and pray, and refuse, refuse, to let the empire convince us we are alone.

Notice in Acts who is in that upper room. Peter, who denied Jesus three times. The other disciples, who fled. Mary, his mother, whose heart had been pierced through. Certain women, whose names Luke doesn’t even bother to record, who had been there all along anyway. His brothers, who at one point in the gospels thought he was out of his mind. That’s the church. People who have failed and grieved and not understood and shown up anyway. People who, on the worst days of their lives, just kept devoting themselves to prayer because they did not know what else to do.

And here is the gospel news today: while they are waiting, Jesus is praying. Before the Spirit ever falls at Pentecost, Jesus is already praying. The prayer was prayed before they ever sat down in that room. The prayer is being prayed for you, right now, in this room.

Because that’s the other thing, and I want to be careful with this, because John’s gospel is layered like onion paper, but Jesus doesn’t stop praying. The book of Hebrews tells us he “ever lives to make intercession.” Right now. In this moment. As you sit in this pew tired and uncertain and grieving and faithful all at once, Jesus is praying for you. Protect her. Protect him. Protect them. Hold them together. Don’t let them lose each other. Don’t let them lose themselves.

You do not have to generate your own hope this morning. You do not have to manufacture your own peace. You do not have to summon up enough faith to make the Spirit come. The disciples didn’t. They just waited. They just stayed. They just kept showing up to each other. And the Spirit came anyway.

So here is what I want to leave you with, on this strange in-between Sunday.

When you cannot pray — and there will be days you cannot pray — Jesus is praying for you.

When you cannot see what’s next — and so much of this season feels like that — Jesus is praying for you.

When you are tempted to scatter, to isolate, to convince yourself that staying together with these particular weird stubborn faithful people is too much trouble — Jesus is praying that you be made one.

We are an upper-room people right now. That’s okay. The upper room is not the end of the story. The upper room is the room the Spirit comes to.

Stay. Wait. Pray. Hold each other.

And know that you are being held.

Amen.