One Prayer
One Prayer
Of the nine-hour “prayer festival” taking place on the Mall today, I remind you that when Jesus’s first disciples asked him how to pray, it didn’t take nine hours. On the other hand, if we actually started to unpack the meaning of each word and phrase in our Lord’s Prayer, we might have been here for nine hours. Indeed, the entire 17th chapter of John’s Gospel, of which we heard only the first 11 of 26 verses is, as we heard Jesus say, his prayer to God his “Father.” And while John doesn’t include the more pithy version that we crib from Matthew, this 17th chapter is Jesus’s own majestic meditation on that prayer. And we who have been allowed to eavesdrop on this prayerful conversion between Father and Son can learn from it how to pray as one.
“Glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you.” Even God’s Only Begotten, the Word who is with God and is God, prays that the name of the One who sent him may be “hallowed,” always spoken in reverence of the One God who is the sole Creator of our life and of all that we are and have, Would that all who consider themselves “self-made” would give credit where credit is due.
“I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do.” Jesus worked to proclaim the kingdom of God hiding in plain sight, in seeds, trees, weeds, and everyday interactions where grace infiltrated. And he accepted the will of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that nothing should separate God from humanity, not even death. That’s part of what it means to pray, “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven.”
“[F]or the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them.” This is the same Jesus who said to the Tempter, “a human lives not on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” To ask today for the bread that we need daily is to remind ourselves that through the Only Begotten, our sole Creator gives us all the bread that we need each day, physical and spiritual.
“I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me.” The small community of Jesus’s disciples were met with opposition, resentment, displaced guilt, and persecution from the moment that Jesus left the tomb empty. And even in that first generation of witnesses to Jesus’s resurrection, there were temptations to conflict within the family. So Jesus does pray first for those whom the Spirit has blown together into one family. The world outside that upper room, our upper room, must wait for us to pray that we might be saved from trials and temptations, either by avoidance or endurance. We must pray for the forgiveness of our sins, and forgive each other.
“Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.” You’ve heard me quote the general mission statement of the Church from our catechism, “to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.” To pursue that mission with any chance of success, we must pursue that unity with each other, and restore it where it is at least chipped.
But Good News for the Church and the World. The prayer that our Lord has taught us, he prayed to the One who sent him just before his arrest, conviction, and execution. Now raised and ascended, he still prays that same prayer for us and with us. And praying as one, God will answer our unified prayer.
May 17th, 2026
7th Sunday of Easter
The Rev. David Kendrick