A Prayer for Friends (May 21, 2023) John 17.1-11

Have you ever wondered about the Gospels? They are telling the story about Jesus, but telling it in their own way. It is like reading four different biographies of a person, say Abraham Lincoln, in which each biography focuses on one particular aspect of his life. It is the same with the Gospels. Matthew is trying to convince a Jewish audience of Jesus’ being the Messiah that they have been looking for for so long. Mark is forthright and crisp, telling a Roman audience what is happening. Luke reaches out to a Gentile audience that is full of oppressed and downtrodden people. Then we come to John. When I was in seminary we took quizzes base on the Gospels, Matthew and Mark on semester, Luke and John the second. When the time for the second quiz arrived some people were worried. “How could they tell which Gospel was which?” (we had to identify from which Gospel came a quote). My reply was this, “If it sounds like Matthew or Mark, then it is Luke. If it sounds like it is high philosophy, it is from John.”

John is a book that is telling us about Jesus being God. It is telling the world that the savior who came to the world was indeed God and he was eternal and one with the Father and Spirit. It has some of the best known passages in the Bible, John 3.16 being the most well known of all. And then there is the final discourse and what is known as the High Priestly Prayer.

The final discourse is similar to a seminar given for a masters degree. Jesus is spelling out for his disciples what they need to do to show the would who they are (love as Christ loved), what it means to be a servant, to not let their hearts be troubled because if he is going away, he will return for them, and finally about the coming Advocate. All this is to round out what Jesus was teaching them in the time that they were together in his ministry on earth.

And so we come to the High Priestly Prayer. It is called this because it is Jesus calling on the Father to help take care of those whom Jesus loves and who he is leaving in the world. It is an intercessory prayer for those who will be left behind after his death.