Mount Calvary
Lutheran, Evangelical, Catholic
Church
Midweek Divine Service was held on Wednesday, May 21.
The bulletin for the service is available here.
The sermon text is available here and below:
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
The basis of our meditation this evening is the Gospel just read from John 17. Jesus said, Holy Father, keep them in Your name, which You have given Me, that they may be one, even as we are one… While I was with them, I kept them in Your name, which You have given me… And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.
This week I listened to a lecture by John Kleinig (my favorite Australian Lutheran theologian) on this chapter (See issuesetc.org). Being that the chapter is important, but not wholly familiar to us, I will proceed with an overview of the main points which will serve to connect to its peculiar message to us.
This chapter is known as the High Priestly Prayer. The entire chapter is one long prayer where the disciples eavesdrop on the conversation of Jesus with His Father. While there are many passages where Jesus is described as praying, and we do have several of them recorded, this is by far the longest prayer of Jesus that we have in our possession. It has been termed the High Priestly Prayer as it represents Jesus’ role as high priest to intercede for us and bring the gifts of His Father to us. It gives us a window as to what His mission is, and what He prays for even now at God’s right hand. As my children once found it a lovely game to overhear the conversation of my wife and I, then reporting the details to their siblings, tonight we listen in on the private communication of Jesus with His Father as John tells it to us.
First, let us see the chapter in its context. The prayer takes place in the Upper Room on the night of Jesus’ betrayal. It is the very last thing that took place before Jesus went to the Garden of Gethsemane. But more than merely relaying the order of events of the night, I mean to say to you that this prayer, as any prayer before a battle might be said by a soldier, readies Jesus for His mission. This prayer has an important function of Christ presenting Himself for service before His Heavenly Father. And so the prayer begins, “When Jesus had spoken these words, He lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come… that the Son may glorify you.” (John 17:1) After all the times that Jesus says that His hour has not come, now He says that it has. We are at the very cusp of history. This prayer is said before His passion, before His death and sacrifice for the world.
I first mentioned what comes after this prayer (the Passion), but you must also see what comes before it. There are three things that Jesus does in the Upper Room: the washing of the disciples’ feet, Jesus’ last discourse, (over three lengthy chapters), and then this prayer. I want you to see in this less as a statement of facts about the order of events, and more how they function, what these three things mean and do. Jesus sanctifies and consecrates Himself and His disciples through the three events of washing, preaching, and prayer. We should begin to see that this is what this chapter is aiming for, preparing His disciples.
John Kleinig links Jesus’ washing of the disciples’ feet to the ritual legislation in Exodus 30:17-21 (see also Exodus 30:30-32) where Moses was to install a bronze basin that in the courtyard of the tabernacle so that Aaron and his sons could wash their feet. That washing permitted them to travel into the holy place to offer sacrifices and to pray for the people as they burned incense before the Lord. In a similar way Jesus sanctifies these new priests, His disciples, through the washing of their feet to qualify them for their priestly service where they will be allowed to listen in to God the Father as priests with the Great High Priest, who will offer His life for the life of the world.
While the High Priestly Prayer may seem repetitive, its structure is in three parts. Jesus’ prayer is for Himself, for His disciples, then for all those who will believe in Him through His Word. Jesus’ prayer suggests something profound. You were in His prayers that night. More than stating a fact, it is that His prayer consecrated you as it did His disciples.
While much could be said about this prayer there are some general points that will give you the gist of it. They are these: Jesus stands in a direct receiving relationship with the Father. The Father gives, and the Son receives. Jesus as Son shares in the knowledge, love, joy and holiness and glory with the Father. Jesus’ journey to this earth and to His Passion is merely and only so that the same relationship He has with the Father can be bestowed on His disciples and to all those who believe in Him through their word, so that what Jesus is and has by reason of His status as Son, can be bestowed fully on them, that they can share in the status of sons, in all that the Father gives which they receive, and that this comes as a gift to them now.
If you hadn’t noticed it, there is an emphasis in this section on the name. I have given them your name. I have manifested your name to them. Keep them in your name. I kept them in your name which you have given me. The final verse and concluding and last petition is, “I made known to them your name and will continue to make it known, that the love which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” But all this begs the question, what is this name that Jesus makes known to them and reveals to them?
The name that Jesus wants them to know, that He has given and wants them to be kept in is none other than the name, Dad. There is no greater grouping of the word Father in this section than any other place in the entire New Testament. More than half of the references of the word Father appear in these chapters.
If you hadn’t noticed it, there is an emphasis in this section on the name. I have given them your name. I have manifested your name to them. Keep them in your name. I kept them in your name which you have given me. The final verse and concluding and last petition is, “I made known to them your name and will continue to make it known, that the love which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” But all this begs the question, what is this name that Jesus makes known to them and reveals to them?
The name that Jesus wants them to know, that He has given and wants them to be kept in is none other than the name, Dad. There is no greater grouping of the word Father in this section than any other place in the entire New Testament. More than half of the references of the word Father appear in these chapters.
We take for granted a simple thing. Only six people in the world can call me dad. If anyone else did, they would get a sideways glance. Only those who I am father to have the rights of being my children. Jesus came to reveal and make known that in and through Him, we are given the right of sons. We participate in the life that Jesus had with the Father. His Passion effects this gift for us.
As the order of the Upper Room narrative is washing, discourse, prayer, which leads then to His Passion, so also we notice that this is the same order to our Divine Service. We start with the washing, the ways we have sinned in life being cleansed and forgiven in Holy Absolution, a return to the purity of our Baptism. We proceed to the readings and sermon as Jesus speaks to us. We may take it for granted, but the prayers of the church play a very special role in our congregation, as important as that role that prayer was in the Upper Room. And then fourthly, the Passion of Jesus is recalled in the Words of Institution and partaken of in the gift of Holy Communion.
Yet we must see this basic point, a point I have been driving home all night. It is not merely to state an order, but specifically to ask and reflect on the function of these things, what Jesus aimed in the Upper Room to do by these actions. Through washing, through reading and listening, and through praying and passion you are consecrated by Jesus for holy service. You can go into the holy places with clean feet. You can overhear the speech of the Trinity and be granted a place at the table with Jesus. You are consecrated and sanctified to handle and eat holy things. Christ our High Priest operates so that we are sanctified for holy things and participate in the holy life of the triune God as sons and daughters of the Father, through our brother Jesus who made the good confession and sanctified us.
Jesus concluded this discourse by praying for you and speaking what He asks for from His Father.
“I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through the words [of the apostles]. That they all may be one, as you, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they may be One in Us…th glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they May be One even as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in One.”
This oneness is not a goal, an ideal, or a future thing, but is yours even now through the gift of Jesus consecration of You.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
