January
23, 2005, 10.30am
John
17:20-26
The
story’s
told of a boy who was drawing. His teacher asked what he was drawing.
“I’m
drawing a
picture of Jesus, miss”, he replied.
“But,
Johnny,
we don’t know what Jesus looked like”
Johnny
paused
for a moment, perked up, and said, “But they will when
I’ve finished”
We
laugh at
that story because we’d all like to know, but know we
can’t. There’s an
attraction to the figure of Jesus. Yet surely this desire to know the
human
face of Jesus evades the fact that the most important
‘face’ of Jesus to know
is his ‘divine’ face.
Our
reading
this morning from John chapter 17 forms part of his ‘High
Priestly Prayer’.
Jesus prays for himself, then for his disciples and finally, in that
part we
just heard, his prayer is for
those who believe in
me through their
message. It’s a
prayer for believers through all the ages: it’s a prayer
for you and me if we believe in him as Lord and Saviour. Verse 21 says I have given them
that glory which you gave
This
morning my
desire is that that prayer would speak to each of us; that prayer which
speaks
of love and glory. It speaks of the love that the Father has for the
Son; that
which we can’t begin to understand or to comprehend in all
its magnitude.
There’s a unity and a fullness in the Godhead which is the
unity of divine
love, so that Jesus could speak of being one with the Father and of
doing
nothing except what he saw the Father doing. There’s surely a
prodigality in
that love, and a fire which blazes at the centre of the being of God. I
use the
word ‘prodigality’ because I believe that the
parable of the Prodigal Son is
actually about the ‘Prodigal Father’, and which
throws light on the love of the
Father for the Son. We see Jesus coming to this world, laying aside his
divine
nature, being made sin for us, being one with us as he bore all our
dirt and
degradation on the Cross, and then returning to the courts of heaven,
and in
this prayer, Jesus surely looks forward to that as he says to the
Father I
am coming to you now. (v13)
If I may
put it that way, surely the Father embraced the Son when he returned.
Then
in verse
23 the prayer is that (we) may be
brought to complete unity, to let the world know…that you
have loved them even
as you love me. So, part of
this prayer of the Lord Jesus Christ for us, is
that we should know that God loves us, the Father loves us even as
he loves his Son. It’s
a love which Jesus has for his whole church, and for
each one of us that
we may know it.
And let’s just note on this day when we pray for unity and
celebrate unity that
it is not
out prime goal. The Father
desire our unity so that the world may know his love for us.
A
bride looks
radiant on her wedding day. I’ve known (and I’m
sure you have) known the
plainest of ‘Janes’ look radiantly beautiful on
their wedding day. Why?
Well- a
bride knows
that she is loved; that she is counted as someone very special by
someone who
has responded to her with all his being. She prepares herself in beauty
for him
and is beautiful as she comes to meet him at the wedding. There is a
joy in
that radiance: a sad and plain bride would seem a contradiction in
terms.
I
can’t help
but see this as something special which God has planted in the human
heart-
that it might speak to us of how we are to see God’s love.
The New Testament
speaks in two places of the love of Christ for his church, and thereby,
surely,
of his love for each individual member, as that of a husband for his
bride.
And
this human love is but a pale reflection.
In that famous passage (read at many weddings) from 1 Corinthians
chapter 13,
Paul says now we see but a poor
reflection, as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Paul,
when h
spoke of a mirror, wouldn’t have thought of our modern
mirrors, but of a sheet
of (not too flat and probably tarnished) sheet of metal, which would
have given
a very distorted reflection. The prayer of Jesus is that we may have
some
knowledge of its reality.
Jesus
then goes
on to pray In verse 26: that the
love
which you have for me may be in them.
Jesus wants us to know the love which
the Father (and he) has for us, but, and this is probably even more
amazing-
his prayer is that he wants the love he has for the Father to be in us
too! So
that we may love God and love Jesus in that way. The Lord Jesus Christ
is
wanting us to develop a passionate desire and love for him, and a
prodigal
desire for God.
Such
ways of thinking aren’t, of course, very
English!! We’re more comfortable with a cold, almost
expressionless love. So-
it’s almost wrong to have this sort of love for God!
It’s wrong to bring our
emotion in! But, then, surely we can expect God’s Word to
give us some sort of
idea; some sort of idea of the sort of feeling which is right and
proper to
have for God. Well, the Bible doesn’t let us down:
As the deer pants for the streams of
water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, even
the
living God. Where can I go and meet with God
(Psa
42:1-2)
Or
then, Psalm
27-
One thing I ask of the Lord, this is
what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of
my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord, and to seek him in his temple.
‘One
thing I
ask’ says the psalmist. And here we see a passion for God.
Jesus is simply
praying that we might have that passionate love, that prodigal love
that exists
between the Father and the Son; that it might be in us.
Or,
turn to the Song of Songs. Again this
love which God desires; which Jesus desires is mirrored dimly in the
love of a
man for a woman.
My lover is mine and I am his. I
delight to sit in the shade, and his fruit is sweet to my taste. He has
taken
me to the banquet hall, and his banner over me is love.
The
Lord’s
desire is for an abandon and a passion in our love for him, and we
impoverish
our relation and intimacy with him, because we feel we must rule out
all
emotion, and so we rule out time to spend; quality time to spend with
Jesus.
Finally,
Jesus
prays for believers to come to true unity, rooted and grounded in that
love,
and it’s a unity which is not worked for but grows out of the
soil of that
love. So, the third part of Jesus’ prayer is that that love
may be seen in the
church too, as he prays that all
of them
may be one, Father, just as
you are in me
and I am in you. May they also
be in
us so that the world may believe.
How
little that love is actually seen in the church!
It would, of course, be quite easy to get into a guilt-trip here.
That’s not
what we’re meant to do. We are just meant to see that Jesus
is praying, that it
is his desire that that love and one-ness should be in the church. We
might ask
ourselves: Well, how can this be? How can this be, how can we know the
love the
Father has for us; how can we have that passionate love for Jesus; how
can we
show that selfsame love in the church?
The
answer’s there for us in John chapters 14
to 16. ‘Abide in him. Let the Holy Spirit come’ God
promises to pour his love
in by the Holy Spirit. (Rom 5:5). That love, then, can only come as we
open
ourselves to the flow of the Holy Spirit; as we allow ourselves to be
filled.
Only then can we know and experience that love. Only then can we grow
in
passionate love for the Lord Jesus Christ. Only then will his love be
seen
amongst us.
Why
then is
Jesus wanting this? Not just for our own indulgence, not just for a
spiritual
emotional sauna.
First
he wants
his glory to be in the church. V22. I
have given them the glory that you gave me.
His desire is that his glory be
in the church. Father, I want
those
you
have given me…to see my glory.
And also that the world may believe. Jesus’ one specific prayer for all believers seems to be that through them the world may believe. If we read the words carefully, we shall see that Jesus does not directly pray that we should be one that the world may believe. NO! He prays May they be in us so that the world may believe. So often we try and manufacture a unity between the churches. So, may I emphasise: The world will believe when it sees the unity of the church with her Lord. That is the heart and the desire and the burden of the Lord Jesus Christ.