Test Driving Theology

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

I have a confession to make:  I am not good with remembering things. Birthdays, anniversaries, where I put my keys, and whether I turned off the coffee maker before I left the house. These things often escape me. 

But there is one category of things that I never forget. And that is when someone tells me they are praying for me.

Years ago, I was asked to speak to a group of about 300 ministry leaders at a conference…pastors, professors, and other church leaders.  I was young and eager, so I said “yes.” But I’d never been asked to do anything like this before.  And it was all…well, a bit intimidating.  

Just before I walked up on stage, I was standing there…going over what I was going to say…My heart rate and blood pressure were increasing.  

One of the musicians at the event…a man named Richard, someone I had met but didn’t know well, walked up to me and said, “Before you go up on stage, may I pray for you?”  I was startled.  “Sure?” I said.  And he put his hand on my shoulder, and he prayed.  He prayed for what I was going to say…he prayed for my purpose…he prayed for calm words that carried meaning for those who heard them.  Amen.  

Then he said, “I’ll be praying for you as you speak.” And I went up on stage.  I don’t really remember what I said.  But I do remember a sense of peace within me as I spoke.  And I remember looking out and seeing Richard sitting in the front row, watching me.  And when I briefly made eye contact with him, he smiled, and he nodded.  

“I’m praying for you.”  It just lands differently, doesn’t it? Someone can say “good luck” or “I’m thinking about you” or “hang in there,” and those are all good things to say. But when someone looks you in the eye and says, “I am praying for you,” something shifts. You carry that with you. It changes the weight of whatever you are walking through.

What we experience in those moments is not just a warm, fuzzy feeling. It is something real. Something holy. Something that connects us to a web of love and grace that is far bigger than we can see.

And our gospel reading today puts us right smack-dab in the middle of that web.

John 17 is, I believe, one of the most remarkable passages in all of scripture. Jesus is at the table with his disciples. The Last Supper has happened. The hour is late. His betrayal and arrest are just minutes away. And what does Jesus do? He prays. Not a short, tidy, before-the-meal kind of prayer. Jesus prays at length, with his whole heart, for his disciples. And then, in a moment that should take our breath away, he prays for us.  He prays for you…for me.

This is the moment the curtain gets pulled back. We get to listen in on what Jesus says to the Creator about us. And what we hear is not a performance. It is not a theological lecture. It is intercession. It is Jesus, going to bat for the people he loves.

He says, “Holy Father, protect them in your name, the name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”

Protect them. Keep them. Hold them.

Now, I want to pause for a moment because the timing of this prayer matters a lot. Jesus is not praying this from a position of comfort and safety. He is praying it on the night before he dies. Everything is about to fall apart. And in the middle of that, his first instinct is to pray…to pray for the people he loves.

I find that incredibly moving. And also, if I am honest, a little convicting. Because when things get hard for me, my first instinct is usually not to pray for other people. My first instinct is to stress-eat something and scroll through my phone. But Jesus, facing the cross, turns to the Father and says, “Watch over them. Keep them. They are yours.”

There is something else I want us to notice about this prayer, and it is a little bit of a theological puzzle that I think is worth sitting with for just a moment.

Jesus’ prayer in John 17 is an English teacher’s nightmare. The tenses are all over the place. He speaks of having already finished the work the Father gave him to do, even though the cross is still ahead of him. He speaks of glory that is both present and future. Past and future keep colliding in the same breath.

And I think what John is doing here is something quite intentional and quite beautiful. He is telling us that this prayer is not just for that room, on that night, for those twelve people sitting around that table. This prayer breaks out of its own moment. It reaches forward. Jesus prays, a little later in chapter 17, not just for the disciples present, but for all who would come to believe through their word.

That is us. We are in this prayer. Jesus is praying for you and me.  We have been in this prayer for two thousand years.

That matters.

I used to visit a woman from church named Charlotte…she had been a member at Trinity for over 60 years. She died probably 10 or 11 years ago.  When Charlotte became too frail to come to worship, I would bring communion to her at home. And every single time I’d visit, Charlotte would pull out this worn, handwritten list from the drawer in her kitchen. Pages of names. Church members, family, neighbors, and strangers she had read about in the newspaper.

Charlotte told me, “Every morning I pray for everyone on this list. It takes me about an hour. But I’ve got nothing else to do, and they’ve got nothing but need, so it works out just fine.”

I asked her, “Can I be on your list?”  She smiled at me and said, “Pastor Todd, you already are.”

I’ve thought about Charlotte and her list… a lot over the years. Some of the people on that list had no idea they were being prayed for every single morning by this woman in her small house with her cup of coffee and her handwritten pages. They were going about their lives, and Charlotte was lifting them up to God, one name at a time.

That is intercessory prayer. And it is one of the most quietly powerful things that human beings do.

Now multiply that by infinity because that is what Jesus is doing for us.

Paul’s letter to the Hebrews tells us that Jesus “always lives to make intercession” for us. Always. Not just on that night in the upper room. Not just in the moments when we are aware of it. Always. That means that right now, as you sit in this sanctuary, Jesus is praying for you, calling you by name, and holding you before the Father. Asking that you would be kept, protected, and held together.

I don’t know about you, but I need to hear that. Because there are days when I feel pretty far from held together. There are days when the world feels fragmented and frightening, and I am not sure I am doing any of this right. And into those days comes this extraordinary good news:

• I…am being prayed for. By name. By the Son of God. Right now.
• You…are being prayed for. By name. By the Son of God. Right now.

That is not a small thing. That is the whole ballgame.

And here is where it gets even better. Because this prayer of Jesus is not just about protection, it is about unity. “So that they may be one,” he prays, “as we are one.” He wants us connected the way he is connected to the Creator…to the Holy Spirit. That is an almost incomprehensible level of intimacy and belonging. He is praying us into relationship, not just with God, but with one another.

It means you are connected. You are connected regardless of politics, regardless of ethnicity or race, regardless of sexuality or identity, regardless of any legal status, or where you grew up. We are all connected.

Which means that when we pray for each other, we are participating in something that Jesus himself started. 

When you pray for someone by name, the way Charlotte did, and you bring them before God in the morning with your cup of coffee, you are joining a prayer that has been going on for two thousand years. You are adding your voice to Jesus’ voice. When you pray for someone, you are allowing God’s love to flow through you toward them. You become part of what God is doing in their life, whether they know it or not.  

I think we sometimes underestimate the power of praying for other people. We treat it as a kind of last resort. “Well, there’s nothing else I can do, so I’ll just pray.” As if prayer is the consolation prize when all the real options have run out. But prayer is not the last thing. It is the first thing. It is what holds everything else together.

Jesus did not pray for his disciples because he had run out of other options. He prayed for them because prayer was the most powerful thing he could do. Because bringing someone before God the Creator, calling them by name, asking that they be held and kept and made whole, that is not passive. That is the most active, most engaged, most loving thing one person can do for another.

So here is what I want you to know: Someone is praying for you. Maybe you know who it is. Maybe you have no idea. But the people of this congregation are holding one another up, every day, in ways that are mostly invisible and almost entirely holy. And at the center of all of that, undergirding all of those prayers, is the prayer of Jesus himself, still reaching forward across time, still calling your name, still asking God the Creator to hold you close.

You are prayed for. You are known. You are held.

And that, friends, is a gift of grace…a gift that brings life, and hope, and unity.  That, my friends…is the gift of Jesus.

And thanks be to God for that.

Amen.