The Power of Prayer - Communion (part eleven) ...

The time for communion was at an end.  There were only a few fleeting moments left before those intent to kill Him would arrive and end this conversation.  But as He lived, so would He end His talk with those around Him, in prayer to His Father.  When all else is at an end, prayer remains.  When there is nothing left to face but death itself, prayer remains.  When what we all want to avoid becomes the unavoidable, prayer remains.  The power of prayer is not found in overcoming our fate, the power of prayer is found in meeting our fate.  There are more important things in the universe than life and death.  Our existence is not merely defined by our short time in this sin-sick world.  He came to give us a real life beyond anything we could have imagined in this context.  And so while evil exists, and while our choice to embrace it lives within us, the natural results of evil must continue to exist as well.  Christ came to pay our cost.  He would allow His life to be ended, so that ours would not end in an earthly grave.  As He would rise and conquer death, so one day, He would call us out from death as well, that through the power of His love, we would arise from death – from the death of our souls that comes from the corruption of self, and from the death of our bodies that comes from the decay in the earth.  But to do this He must face His fate.  His torture and death were certain.  He would not pray to see His fate altered; instead He would pray to see His mission completed.  This is the power of prayer.

John records in chapter 17 of his gospel, the last prayer Jesus would offer before His horrific ordeal of taking on our punishment would begin.  John must have remembered vividly this prayer Christ would offer.  It must have made an enduring impression on him.  It meant something to him.  Later in his gospel, John would write, that Christ did many more things than could be contained in this book or any other.  John acknowledged in his own gospel, that it was not a complete record of the life and ministry of Christ.  Love is truly difficult to catalogue completely in the written word.  However, these words of Christ still lingered in the memory of John as he recounts the last moments of Christ here.  And so in verse one, John remembers Jesus saying … “These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee:”  To be glorified is to perform love in action for another.  The Glory the Lord has earned has not come from the power of His might, but from the power of His love.  The hour had now arrived where the ultimate definition of love would be witnessed by the universe itself.  To meet this test, Christ asks that both He and His Father remain certain in the pursuit of this love.

Jesus continues in verse 2 … “As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.”  Power over all flesh was not to be defined in the establishment of an earthly kingdom where due to His might, He could rule over the lives of men.  Instead power over all flesh was to be defined as His ability to change us from within by the power of His love, it was His ability to alter our desires, our thinking, and our behavior as we submit ourselves to His rule over us.  Eternal life would be the result of His power over the evil that lies within us.  Eternal life would be the gift that results from the transformation.  And lest any doubt the love of the Father, Christ expressly identifies that each of us were given over to Christ, at the will of the Father to have us saved.  We who find ourselves saved by the mercy and love of Christ, find ourselves given this gift not of our own accord, but by the will of the Father.  For it is the love of the Father that must free us to even make the choice to be saved.  If left in bondage of self, we would not be free enough to choose to break the chains of our addiction, instead it would overwhelm us.  But the power of love of the Father, breaks that chain enough for us to choose without undue influence, whether to submit to Christ and be saved, or not.

Jesus then defines what this gift really means in verse 3 … “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”  Life eternal is defined in our relationship with the only true God, and His Son who was sent to us.  It is not measured in the number of our years.  It is not measured in the total of the things we acquire.  It is not measured by our physical fitness, health, vigor, or what we refer to as the quality of life.  It is not even measured in the love we reflect to each other.  It is measured at the source.  It is measured in the context of our discovery of who the only true God is, and in the discovery of His Son Jesus Christ.  To have power, wealth, fame, and influence has nothing at all to do with what it means to have eternal life.  The wealth of heaven is not found in its abundance of precious gems, gold, diamonds, and purity of nature.  The wealth of heaven only has value in its gift to His creation.  Our lives, our bodies, our senses, our health, are only gifts to help us come to discover what it means to truly know eternal life – to truly know God.  An infinite number of years of existence denied the knowledge and presence of God, denied His company, is the definition of pain.  Death would be better, than to live in that kind of pain.  Hell, is the opposite of eternal life.  Hell is not comprised of torture by fire, it is comprised of torture by separation and choice from the only true God.  The last mercy of God is to bring those who choose that pain to the point of non-existence.  Only then can death, be no more.  Without a knowledge of God, and of His Son Jesus Christ, there can be no life eternal.  The knowledge is not theoretical, it is instead a living knowledge, an experiential knowledge of love itself.  This is His gift to us.

Jesus prays on in verse 4 … “I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. [verse 5] And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.”  The acts of love Jesus performed throughout His ministry were always attributed to the love and will of the Father.  In so doing, Jesus has “glorified” the Father.  Now He asks the Father to show Him the love that they have always had.  His humanity needs the comfort and assurance of the love that predates our existence, and predates creation itself.  For what He must face, Christ wishes to be grounded in the love of His Father, sure in the knowledge of that love.  He now must risk permanent separation from the source of that Love.  It is possible that having been stained the with weight of our evil, He may not be able to return to the side of His Father.  He cannot see past the sacrifice He must make to see us redeemed.  But He must proceed, for the nature of the love within Him, cannot simply walk away and see us all left to the fate we had chosen.  So though the outcome may be at risk, He presses on nestled in the love of His Father.

Now, Jesus turns His attention, to those who are closest to Him.  Having made the decision to go forward with His mission of the revelation of the so-great-love of His Father God, those who stand near Him will face the extreme wrath and determination of evil.  So Jesus begins to pray for His companions, He continues in verse 6 … “I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word. [verse 7] Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee.”  Jesus “manifested” the name of God to His disciples.  He “showed” them the love of God in action.  He made known the motives of the Father to save and redeem.  The work of Christ was not to condemn, but to offer us freedom from condemnation, freedom from the slavery of self that we embrace.  He points out again, that these disciples “belonged” to the Father and were given to Christ from out of the world.  They accepted the testimony of Christ, the word of Christ, of who the Father was, and who the Messiah was, and how we would see our salvation received.

Jesus continues in verse 8 … “For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.”  Our reception of the word of God comes from the belief in Jesus Christ.  It was only Jesus who rightly interpreted scripture to the disciples.  He did this, by living the law, by living the love, by showing what the point of the Bible stories was supposed to be – our redemption when we trust and rely on God instead of ourselves.  Every Old Testament story is rightly interpreted only through the lens of Jesus Christ.  When we see God in person, we see love in person, we see redemption in person, and we see an escape from the evil we are bound to when we give ourselves over to the person of God in the form of Jesus Christ.  It is impossible to accept the word of God, and deny the divinity of the savior the entire book is aimed at.  It is impossible to know God the Father, and then deny that His Son was our vehicle for redemption.  It is this distinction of submission, this distinction of trusting in something greater than our own ideas and wisdom, that leads us to see the perfection He alone can create within us.  Without submission to Jesus Christ, the word of God cannot rightly be interpreted.

Jesus then accepts His disciples, and us, as the gifts given to Him by His Father as He continues in verse 9 … “I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine. [verse 10] And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them.”  We belong to the God who accepts us as His gifts.  He claims ownership of us, and draws a distinction between those who submit to His ownership, and the remainder of the world who refuses to trust in anyone but themselves.  This distinction is not defined by denomination, or proclamation, but only in depths of a personal relationship between you and Christ.  Only you and Christ know the extent to which you will submit your will, your decisions, and your desires over to Him.  Membership in a given church does not equate to personal submission to Christ.  A theoretical knowledge of scripture or acceptance of the idea that a God exists, is not the same thing as you living day to day, placing everything about your life in hand of Christ.  Your parents cannot do this for you.  Your spouse cannot attribute this to you.  To be owned by Christ, you alone must give yourself over to His ownership, and trust in where and how He leads you.  The distinction of those who are His, and the world, happens even within Christianity, as there are many who refuse to submit whether in or out of the church.

to be continued …