John 17:6-19 · Jesus Prays for His Disciples
Praying To The Congregation
John 17:6-19
Sermon
by Thomas Long
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According to legend, a certain West Coast radio evangelist would customarily close his broadcasts by praying over the air, "O God, we ask that today you would touch the hearts of those in 'Radioland' to support this worldwide ministry. We pray that you would move them mightily to send offerings of love, and to send them to Post Office Box 345, Pasadena, California."

Though he was particularly crass about it, this minister was actually committing a fairly common mistake in worship leadership -- praying to the congregation. This liturgical faux pas occurs whenever a worship leader loses sight of the fact that the true audience of prayer is God and not the congregation overhearing and joining in the prayer. Prayers may be poetic, but they are not poetry recitals for an audience; they may be sung or danced, but they are not performances for the crowd; they may be filled with the grit and anguish of the world, but they are not addressed to the world. Prayer is communication to and with God. Prayers are properly spoken to God, and God alone.

This seems obvious, of course, but many worship leaders periodically lose their grip on this truth with the unfortunate result that congregations, bowing their heads reverently to participate in prayer, suddenly discover that they are really the targets of it. "Lord," intones the minister, "We pray today that those present would know, indeed would truly know in their souls, that ...," followed by a didactic reprise of the three points of the just-preached sermon. Or, perhaps, the prayer leader will solemnly state, "God, in a troubled time such as our age, many have fallen into the woeful habit of ...," usually followed by a stern scold of the congregation for poor worship attendance, stingy giving, lax parental discipline, or whatever else seems to be peeving the minister these days.

Not long ago in a seminary chapel service, the worship leader prayed, "O God our comfort, heal the wounds of those suffering in war-torn Bosnia, formerly Yugoslavia." To be sure, the maps in the back of the Bible are out of date. Even so, God probably did not need the geography lesson. The truth be known, this worship leader was no doubt fearful that those overhearing this prayer, behind on the news, would have missed the renaming of Yugoslavia, thus, we are given yet another example of the classic liturgical error -- praying to the congregation.

Praying to the congregation is a liturgical violation all right, but before we give students a failing grade in worship for this transgression, we need to deal with the fact that Jesus himself seems to be a repeat offender. Especially in the Gospel of John, Jesus' prayers to God sound suspiciously like sermons to his disciples. In fact, on one occasion, the author of John makes the comment that a certain prayer of Jesus was intended as a teaching device. In other words, Jesus, it seems, intentionally prayed to the congregation (John 12:32-33).

Indeed, on another occasion, Jesus himself actually confesses to the crime. Looking heavenward, Jesus prays (presumably in a loud voice), "Father, I thank you for having heard me." Then, he adds under his breath, "I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me" (John 11:41-42). Prayer words spoken "for the sake of the crowd"? This is a clear-cut case of praying to the congregation.

But before we pull Jesus over and ticket him for a liturgical infraction, we need to make two key observations. First, when Jesus prays to the congregation, he is following in a long biblical tradition. Many of the psalms, for example, move fluidly back and forth between pleas to God and appeals to fellow worshippers. Moses, when he prayed his great prayer to the heavens (Deuteronomy 32-33), could not seem to keep it quite straight whether he was speaking to God or speaking to Israel. Or again, Paul, in some of his letters, moves like a weaver's shuttle between doxology and discourse, between prayer and persuasion. Jesus' prayers stand, then, among the great company of biblical prayers, for the Bible itself seems to blur the line between praying to God and praying to the congregation.1

The second observation we need to make is to note a crucial distinction between two different types of praying to the congregation. Most praying to the congregation -- the adverse kind -- occurs when the one praying forgets about God, loses sight of the true character of prayer, and merely uses prayer language to mask a teachy lecture, a commercial for a church program, or a self-serving emotional pitch.

The second type, the kind that we find in the Bible and in the prayer life of Jesus, is altogether different. Here, the one praying never loses sight of God, never breaks free of the primary bond with God, and is, therefore, always aware that prayer takes place in the context of communion with God. Indeed, it is precisely because prayer is communion -- human beings in intimate relationship with God -- that the language of prayer takes the form of a conversation, communication moving in two directions at the same time.

Because prayer occurs in relationship to God, it is a profound expression of ourselves and our needs to God, but it is also a profound revelation of God to us. In prayer, we say things we need to say, but we also see and know things --about God and about ourselves -- that we could not see or know apart from the illumination of the Spirit in the intimacy of prayer's communion.

Take, for example, the phrase from the Lord's Prayer, "Give us this day our daily bread." This is, to be sure, a petition addressed to God; we are speaking these words to God, asking for something from God. But as we speak these words to God, God also speaks through them to us. As we say to God "Give us this day our daily bread," the Spirit enables the tide of communication to flow in the other direction, too, guiding our imaginations into the everyday world of bread and nourishment. We cannot pray these words over and over again without imagining the rich grain slowly growing in the field, the heavy turning of the millstone grinding out the flour, the hands that deftly knead the dough, the loaves rising in the warm oven, the joy of table fellowship and, most of all, the hidden hand of Providence that bestows all of these things as good gifts. As we pray in the Spirit, then, we are being taught by the Spirit. As we reach out to God, God reaches out to us, and undergirding all prayer is communion with God.

It is precisely this communion, this intimacy, with God that is the theme of Jesus' prayer in today's text. John 17 is very clearly a prayer to God -- Jesus looks up at heaven and addresses his words to God -- but it is also a stunning example of the best kind of praying to the congregation. Every word of Jesus' prayer flows toward God, and, likewise, every word is intended to be overheard by the church and is expressly aimed at teaching the faithful. What it teaches is that Jesus Christ has made it possible for us, too, to be in intimate relationship with God. Because the obedient Son remained in faithful and unbroken communion with the Father, those who belong to the Son may share this closeness. "And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God .... All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them" (John 17:3, 10).

In this regard, this prayer, like the Lord's Prayer, is a model prayer -- a prayer about prayer. All prayers, whether they are prayers pleading for a season of world peace or prayers begging for a moment of inner peace, are really prayers yearning for God to embrace us. We pray for food and health and justice and forgiveness and protection -- and truly these are our needs -- but beneath it all we are really praying for God to be with us, for God to hold us close, for God never to forget us or to abandon us to ourselves. Therefore, however much we may speak of our prayers being answered, the truth is that prayers are the answer since, in our praying, we are given what we most deeply need -- communion with God.

In her book, The Preaching Life, Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor tells of her experience, early in her ministry, planning adult education for a local church. Whenever she would poll the adults in the congregation about what sort of educational experiences they would prefer, the answer would always come back the same: they wanted Bible study. So, taking this at face value, Taylor would arrange for Bible studies of the finest sort. She would contract with professors at a nearby theological seminary to come and teach serious Bible classes. She would publicize these classes widely. However, people stayed away in droves.

Finally, it dawned on her that, when people asked for Bible study, what they really wanted was not information about the Bible; what they wanted was an experience of God. Asking for Bible study was the only way they knew to ask for what they really wanted -- intimacy with God. So, she began a different kind of Bible study, one that turned out to be much more successful. She writes:

I laid off the seminary professors and offered a class on biblical meditation instead. The plan was simple: every week we locked the door, took off our shoes, closed our eyes and listened to a [Bible] story ... We shot down reality in front of our eyes. We hung "Gone fishin' " signs on our eyelids and let our imaginations take us places we had never been.2

The places they had never been, of course, the places they wanted desperately to go, were the places where God was. It was intimacy with God they sought -- that we seek.

In a scene from Shadowlands, a film based on the life of C.S. Lewis, Lewis has returned to Oxford from London, where he has just been married to Joy Gresham, an American woman, in a private Episcopal ceremony performed at her hospital bedside. She is dying from cancer, and, through the struggle with her illness, she and Lewis have been discovering the depth of their love for each other. As Lewis arrives at the college where he teaches, he is met by Harry Harrington, an Episcopal priest, who asks what news there is. Lewis hesitates; then, deciding to speak of the marriage and not the cancer, he says, "Ah, good news, I think, Harry. Yes, good news."

Harrington, not aware of the marriage and thinking that Lewis is referring to Joy's medical situation, replies, "I know how hard you've been praying .... Now, God is answering your prayer."

"That's not why I pray, Harry," Lewis responds. "I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God; it changes me."3

It doesn't change God; it changes me. Prayer is not a message scribbled on a note, jammed into a bottle and tossed into the sea in hopes that it will wash up someday on God's shoreline. Prayer is communion with God. We speak to God, but God touches, embraces, shapes and changes us. Whether we pray for rain or pray for sunshine, our prayer is answered, because in the act of praying we receive the gift we really seek -- intimacy with God.


1. The discussion of the biblical examples of mixing prayers to God with addresses to the hearers is informed by Fred B. Craddock, John (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982), p. 122.

2. Barbara Brown Taylor, The Preaching Life (Cambridge and Boston: Cowley Publications, 1993), p. 47.

3. From the movie Shadowlands, copyright 1993, Savoy Pictures, Inc.

CSS Publishing Company, WHISPERING THE LYRICS, by Thomas Long