Sermon
Easter 7 Acts.6-14; John 17.1-11
Catherine Gibson
‘This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” John 17.3
Jesus made very careful preparations for Holy Week; but the arrangement which had the most long-lasting, immediate, practical effect was his borrowing of an Upper Room in which to hold the Last Supper. For his eleven closest disciples, this became their home in Jerusalem for at least several weeks afterwards. And what a variety of events and emotions they experienced there! What memories that room must have held for them! - the supper itself, with the rich meanings Jesus had now given it; the example of humility and service he had shown them in washing their feet. It had been their hiding-place from danger, the scene of their despair after the events of Good Friday, of their bewilderment on Easter morning and the strange joy of that evening and subsequent meetings with Jesus. When they returned from the mountain-top where they saw Jesus taken from them, and knew that these post-resurrection meetings were now finished, it was to this room that they returned and devoted themselves to prayer, as they waited for the Holy Spirit.
In John’s Gospel, this Upper Room is the setting for the most intimate and extended teaching that we see Jesus giving his disciples anywhere in the Gospels. On the last night of his earthly life, he seeks to prepare them to carry on his work after he has left them. It is a section that makes readers feel that they are given a glimpse of the life of heaven. The climax is Jesus’ prayer to the Father, of which we heard the start in our Gospel reading.
When I first started to attend weekday Morning Prayer, many years ago, I was astonished and profoundly moved by the intercessions. As the priest prayed for members of the congregation, I realised that he carried us all on his heart each day before God; and that, in a similar way, I and my family must have been prayed for and sustained through difficult times. The disciples are now privileged to hear themselves prayed for by Jesus, and are included in the intimate relations within the Godhead!
Jesus says he has been authorised to give ‘eternal life’ to those who come to him: and by ‘eternal life’ he means to know God in a deeply personal way, and to know him in Jesus. In the Bible, ‘to know’ a person doesn’t simply mean acquaintance: it conveys the closest degree of intimacy and is indeed often used of sexual intercourse. Later in the chapter, he makes it clear that he is praying not only for the Eleven, but for all those in the future who will come to believe in him through their communicating of the Gospel, including ourselves.
The new way in which they will be able to know the Godhead intimately will be, of course, through the Holy Spirit. And the Spirit can’t be controlled or pinned down! He’s not at our beck and call! But we can put ourselves into situations in which we will be more accessible to him and readier to notice his promptings. This is what we are seeking to do in prayer.
Prayer should be two-way. We want to talk to God, but we also hope to hear him. It is often helpful to start a time of private prayer in the imagination: for instance, in entering imaginatively into an episode or passage from the Bible. This is because the imagination takes you out of analytical headspace into the realm of the heart. It is here that the Spirit can make himself known and speak to you and act upon you. I suggest that in these days between Ascension and Pentecost, you might like to start your dedicated times of private prayer by ascending in imagination to that Upper Room. Leave all the distracting thoughts at street-level as you climb the stairs. Enter that room which has seen so much. Perhaps relive one of those episodes. Allow yourself to be drawn into that closeness between the Father and the Son which also includes the Son’s prayer for you.
“This is eternal life: knowing the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent.”