Sermon for Jesus’ Prayer for the Disciples – John 17:6-19

Happy Mother’s Day! Ever notice how Mother’s Day has become a sacred holiday? It’s almost on the scale of Christmas and Easter. In a lot of congregations today there are going to be special services where all the mothers get a rose. Choirs will sing sentimental songs. We love to have the kids take first communion on mother’s day. There’ll be a special lunch afterward. And if we DON’T make a big deal we’re going to hear about it. Now, I don’t begrudge any of this. I appreciate the reminder to call my mom and let her know I’m thinking about her. “You never call!” She’s not perfect but she has given a lot for me, and I need the reminder. But life is also complicated, and we know that every holiday has baggage. We lose our mothers. We become estranged from our mothers. We want to be mothers but can’t, for a whole host of reasons. We feel like bad mothers. When some of us hear “mother’s day”, it digs up these feelings of loss or regret that we manage to avoid thinking about most of the time. So, maybe we should make it a question. Happy mother’s day?

It feels odd to start out talking about mother’s day like this. But for some reason I keep thinking about something that happened last year. In Zionsville I served as assisting minister on mother’s day and I had written the intercessions. I don’t remember what I wrote, but a couple weeks later a friend of a friend of a friend took me aside to tell me that one of our female members really appreciated how I apparently prayed for all those who have mothered and cared for others, because she couldn’t have her own children, but it finally affirmed for her all the ways that she cares for her friends and her employees. It taught me 2 very important things. One, words mean a LOT, and you don’t know what people are going to hear when you speak. That’s sobering. Two, words are so powerful that we don’t know what God will do through them.

So, all of this is what kept running through my mind with our gospel reading for today. This is just a tiny part of the whole story of the last supper in the gospel of John. Four whole chapters! (13-17). Like usual Jesus has a lot to say. But hear how the whole saga starts – Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. Doesn’t that tear you up a little, to think of Jesus bearing that kind of self-sacrificial love? The first thing Jesus does? Wash the disciples’ feet, which they don’t want any part of, because what kid wants a bath? No point in explaining. “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” In this same way, he’s going to feed them the heavenly food of his body and blood. They don’t understand how desperately they need it, and what kid wants the stuff that truly nourishes? Right there, you can sense that Jesus has actually stopped teaching or preaching. It’s not enough anymore. Jesus is finally mothering the disciples. That’s not how we normally think of Jesus. But it radically changes the way we read the story. Here’s why.

Right before our reading, Jesus warns his disciples that the hour has come for them to be scattered, leaving him all alone. It’s the timeless coming of age that we all know. And he warns them of the persecution and prejudice and hatred they will all face, because everyone will know who they come from. But he knows the disciples can’t understand. Peter swears he’ll never deny Jesus. Kids will be kids. So Jesus mothers them again. He looks up to heaven and right in front of them, out loud, he prays this prayer to the Father because the only thing he can finally do is to commend them to God, just as he will commend his own body on the cross to the Father. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now, Jesus isn’t saying the disciples are obedient. No, they’re flawed. They misunderstand Jesus all the time. They’re proud. They compete for Jesus’ praise. They even try to send away those desperate for Jesus’ healing, like a bunch of gatekeepers, and we lie if we say we don’t see that or experience it every day of our lives. If Jesus wasn’t right there, so help them. But when Jesus says “word”, he doesn’t mean rules or scriptures. He means himself, the living word of God. The only right thing they could possibly do is to stick with Jesus, but they couldn’t even manage that on their own. Peter steps out of the boat into the water, and sinks, and who had to reach out and grab him? Because if Peter could have walked on water, God help us all. Always Peter, full of big promises and bold words. Always trying to prove what a fabulous disciple he is. Just like we do. You start to wonder why Jesus ever bothered with preaching or teaching in the first place. Just get to the mothering. Just do it to us already.

But then Jesus’ prayer becomes so sad that I almost can’t bear it. “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.” Jesus loved them to the end, and that end was imminent. It must have killed him to pray that, to know he was departing, to know he was leaving the disciples in a deadly world. This is the Jesus who asks that the cup be taken away from him. Who asks God why have you forsaken me? Who knows that love in the end means letting go, because love isn’t ownership. We know the disciples don’t really understand what he’s praying, but we do. We all love someone suffering from addiction or self-neglect. We all love someone suffering from abuse or injustice. It might even be us, and if we could have ended it yesterday God knows we would have. This is when the only thing we have left is to stand with the disciples and see the cross with Jesus crucified and dead, his final solution to everything, and ask why all this death?

But Jesus isn’t done praying, thank God. But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. Jesus knows that this is not the end of the story, and it was never just a story. When the women go to the tomb after three days, all they find is the stone rolled away and the tomb empty. Jesus is raised, just as he always promised, because what we need to know more than anything else in the world is that we have put our trust in the God of all creation, the God who brings life out of death. The God who breathes God’s own divine life into us and makes us to live in defiance of all this death. Brothers and sisters, that’s what it means to be a creator. You create. That’s the only thing you want to do. But even this is not enough for God. God wants more. So God sends the beloved son to live and move with us, just to see us and forgive us as we really are, to touch us and make us to feel the power of God’s own real presence. And then we will know the peace that passes all understanding.

Of course, that’s the whole point of faith, and we need a whole lot of it to be able to stand up against the storm raging right now in each of our lives. So Jesus keeps on praying, just to make sure we receive that faith. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth. Now, this faith works in two ways. Most of all, it gives us hope, and hope is power. Even while we suffer, or the ones we love suffer, we know this is not the last word. If God can turn death to life, then you cam be sure God will transform that suffering into the experience, strength, and hope that we impart to others in their suffering. We’re not alone, and they’re not alone, and that means our survival together. But faith works in another way that we don’t ususally think about. When others lack in faith, we keep faith for them just so that there will be faith in the world. That’s why it’s so crucial that Jesus says he speaks these things in the world. When we fall down, there will be faith kept warm and waiting for us at the bottom of everything, and we will be reconciled to God.

And that’s why we can all mother other people and let go. We still try to fix problems, and sometimes it works by the grace of God. But when it seems to fail, and it can be spectacular, know that we’re not the only mothers in the world. The Spirit will make sure others notice and step in to do what we can’t, when we least expect. There will always be some who think we’re just taking an easy way out, but we do not belong to the world, precisely for the sake of the world, and that will be enough for today. Happy Mother’s Day to all of you who Jesus mothers. Thanks be to God.