Untitled Sermon

How do you pray?

How do you pray when everything you know and care about is on the line? Or let me word it this way, how would you pray if you knew that within hours of completing your prayer, your world would be radically different? John 17 is that kind of prayer. A prayer offered to God on the cusp of world change. The cosmic balance is about to shift. A prayer offered up for you and me hours before the landscape of both the spiritual and physical world is forever changed.

Usually when we get to the point of praying a prayer where the response hangs in the balance- we are at our end. We have exhausted all other avenues for peace, answers, transformation or whatever it is we are looking for and we have turned our pleas to our Heavenly Father. We are usually exhausted, anxious, and desperate by this point. We are finally on our knees or lying with our faces to the ground praying as if life depended on the outcome.

Like us, there was a lot of emotion building up to and in this moment of Jesus’s prayer. There was much weight on Jesus’ heart as he prepared for something that was much different than the expectation. Let’s step back and look at what was happening prior to this final prayer.

Passover week- a week of celebration. A week where the city of Jerusalem’s population swelled up to six times its normal capacity. Picture people, tents, and merchant booths everywhere you look. Picture the temple and the people who will want to gather there. Jesus and the disciples enter the city gates in a throng of activity. There are people praising, weeping, pressing forward all because Jesus has come. There was hysteria all around. An undercurrent of electricity that was felt by all- something was different- something was going to happen. For some it was elation that the messiah had come, others it was fear because the messiah had come.

Throughout that week, Jesus healed people, cleansed the temple (which provoked people), cursed the fig tree…

Just before this prayer, after the last supper with his disciples, Jesus told the eleven what was to come and their path forward. (Expand a little)

The moment of prayer has arrived. This is first and only time we are privy to Jesus’ innermost heart, soul, and mind as he converses with the Father. His posture is worth noting. Jesus does not kneel, close his eyes, or bend to pray, instead he lifts his eyes heavenward (verse 1) - as if he is face to face with God.

· Praying for self looks different

· Glory

· Eternal life

· Glory- return to the Father

Read scripture passage as close to sermon.