Little
five-year-old Suzie tells her mother she wants a baby brother or sister. Her mother tells her if she prays every night
for two months God will send her a sibling.
Suzie pours herself into the project, praying feverously every night for
a month. Then she begins to have her
doubts. She checks with all her classmates
and discovers none of them got a brother or a sister through prayer. So Suzie stops praying. A month later her mother goes into the
hospital and gives birth to twins. When
Suzie visits her and meets her new siblings her mother says, “Now aren’t you
glad you prayed every night.” Suzie
replies, “Aren’t you glad I stopped praying when I did!”
This
morning’s gospel reading is a small portion of what is known as Jesus’ “High
Priestly Prayer” which he offers at the conclusion of the Last Supper. What we read focuses on Jesus’ concerns for
his disciples. When the prayer
concludes, Jesus leads them across the Kidron Valley to the Garden of
Gethsemane where Judas betrays him. One
biblical scholar says the prayer is typical of John’s writings, “the wording
spirals around, seemingly repeating itself.”
It is like a fabric, he says, “woven with repeating words and themes.”
One
theme is the world. The disciples have been chosen from the world, they are in the world, and they are hated by the world where the evil one is at work. Jesus sends his followers into the world and prays they will be
protected.
A second recurring word in the prayer is given.
It occurs nine times in this portion of the text. The Father gives the disciples to the
Son. The Son gives his word to them and
gives them his name to protect them. Two
other themes are the Word and Truth.
Knowing the Word and the Truth sanctifies
the disciples and makes them holy.
Well, if world, given, Word, Truth, and sanctify still feel like heady ideas and
the prayer seems abstract to you, don’t worry, you are not alone. Let me try to help us by approaching it from
a different direction. Let’s imagine it is
the prayer of a devout mother for her daughter.
“I have made your
name known to this child whom you gave me.”
As parents,
grandparents, aunts and uncles, we know what is to attempt to pass on the faith
to our children. We do our best, but
often the fruit of our efforts is not seen for years.
“She was yours,
and you gave her to me, and she has kept your word. Now she knows that everything you have given
me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to her, and she
has received them.”
We think of our
children as gifts from God. We
understand they are a sacred trust requiring and deserving our absolute best as
we seek to form and prepare them.
“I am asking on her
behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of this child you
gave me, because she is yours. What is
mine is yours, and yours is mine; and I have been glorified in her.”
When we raise a child in the faith we do not parent in isolation, but in partnership with God. All that we are and all that we have works with a Mystery from beyond to mold a unique and special human being.
“And now I am no
longer in the world, but she is in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect her in your name that
you have given me, so that she may be one, as we are one. While I was with her, I protected her in your
name that you have given me. I guarded her.”
I have a vivid
memory of taking my oldest daughter to daycare for the first time. In those early years either her mother or I
was with her all the time. It was our
job to watch her and care for her and protect her. Leaving the center I realized for the next
eight hours neither her mother nor I would fill that role. Our daughter was now “in the world”, or at
least a world without us. I recall
wishing the daycare had a one-way window so I could sit undetected and watch my
daughter be herself as she engaged the world.
One of the toughest tasks of parenting is learning how to let go.
“I am coming to
you, and I speak these things in the world so that she may have my joy made
complete in herself.”
There are many things we want to pass on to our
children: an inheritance, an education, certain values. Surely one of the most important things we
seek to develop in our children is a sense of joy. The writer Sharon Draper notes, “Perfect
happiness is a beautiful sunset, the giggle of a grandchild, the first
snowfall. It’s the little things that
make happy moments, not the grand events.”
“Joy,” she says, “comes in sips, not gulps.” What an incredible delight it is to watch our
children delight in the small things.
Any child can be over the moon at Disney World, at least until the end
of the day, but what we hope to cultivate is a child who is thrilled by the
wonder in her own back yard.
“I have given her
your word, and the world has hated her because she does not belong to the
world, just as I do not belong to the world.
I am not asking you to take her out of the world, but I ask you to
protect her from the evil one. She does
not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.”
The world hates
her. That sounds awfully harsh, but I
think it is true. Today’s standards of
womanhood are cruel and exacting. Even
beautiful models look at their body or their facial features and see something
not to like. The measure of masculinity
is becoming more and more difficult to achieve.
The world grounds our identity in how we look, what we do, and what we
have. The Christian faith grounds our
identity in God’s love for us. Each one
of us is precious and valuable beyond all measure. We are God’s children. It is this value we acknowledge and affirm
through baptism. Above and beyond all
else, we belong to God. It is not a message
you will hear in a Madison Ave. ad campaign, but it is the truth we embrace.
“Sanctify her in
the truth; your word is truth. As you
have sent me into the world, so I have sent her into the world. And for her sake I sanctify myself, so that she
also may be sanctified in truth.”
As I said
earlier, we do our best to pass along the faith that is within us. It is not easy because often our faith eludes
the words necessary to describe it.
Faith, like motherhood, is something we live better than we describe. Most of our mothers never sat us down and
taught us the 10 Commandments of being a good parent. Still, we learned what to do from what our
parents did well and hopefully we learned from their mistakes what not to do…
just as we pray will happen for our children, grandchildren, and nephews and
nieces.
So this morning
we hear Jesus’s High Priestly Prayer for us and after scratching our heads at
first we find in it many of the same thoughts and concerns we have for our
children. We give thanks for how Jesus
has raised us up to be who we are. We
ask for his guidance and protection and we seek to live the life we have seen in
him.
