Parting prayers can be powerful experiences. I remember my father laying his hand on my shoulder and praying for me before I left home in California to travel across the country to Princeton Seminary where I would prepare for a lifetime of ministry. I cannot recall my father’s words, but I remember his hand, shaky from Parkinson’s, on my shoulder and the heartfelt nature of his prayer.
It should come as no wonder that John, one of Jesus’ closest disciples, remembered his Master’s parting prayer before he went to the cross. John not only remembered this prayer he must have prayed the words himself over the ensuing years of his life. That is, perhaps, the explanation for the reference to “Jesus Christ” in Jesus’ own prayer, a statement that seems misplaced on the lips of Jesus himself. So, what we have in John 17 is the essence of the final prayer of Jesus, what some have called his high priestly prayer, though it was a prayer made on earth, not in heaven. As we embark on this study, we need to remember that we are treading on holy ground.
Listen for God’s word to you from John 17:1-5…
After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.
As we look at this passage, let us ask and try to answer several important questions…
First, why does Jesus pray this prayer at this time?
I think Jesus prayed this prayer at this time because he knew he was on his way to the cross. With his death in view, he is concerned that his Father receive glory through his death (more on that in a moment) and he is concerned for his disciples whom he is leaving behind. Thus, most of what we know as Jesus’ high priestly prayer is concerned with others.
I wonder: how many of us are motivated to pray by our concern for the glory of God and the welfare of others? How many of us could pray in this fashion knowing that our death was imminent?
I suspect that if our lives are punctuated with prayer, then we will die as we live—soaked in prayer—referring the concerns of our hearts to our heavenly Father.
William Carey was, perhaps, the great missionary pioneer to India. When he was on his deathbed, a young man named Alexander Duff, who greatly admired Carey, visited him. After a long conversation, Carey asked Duff to pray with him. Following the prayer, when Duff turned to leave, he heard Carey’s feeble voice calling him back.
“Mr. Duff,” said Carey, “you have been speaking about ‘Dr. Carey, Dr. Carey.’ When I am gone, say nothing about Dr. Carey. Speak about Dr. Carey’s Savior.”[1]
I believe that if our lives have been bathed in prayer then our attitude will be the same as William Carey.
Second, we must ask: where did Jesus pray this prayer?
Jesus’ invitation at the end of chapter 14, “Rise, let us be on our way,” suggests that he and his disciples left the Upper Room at that point, and that the words of chapters 15 and 16 were spoken during their walk from the Upper Room to the Garden of Gethsemane. However, the beginning of chapter 18 suggests that Jesus and his disciples had not yet entered the Garden when he spoke this prayer. We do not know with certainty precisely where Jesus was when he prayed this prayer. What we do know is that the words of this prayer complement the prayer in the Garden with which we are familiar from the Synoptic Gospels, and this prayer augments our knowledge of what Jesus prayed on the last night before his death. Certainly, what we have in the Synoptic Gospels does not reveal all that Jesus prayed on that night. John gives us a fuller picture.
We can learn from this that Jesus had both a set aside place to pray (Luke tells us that “he came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives) and prayer was part of the warp and woof of Jesus’ day, moment by moment.
I received spiritual direction from a Catholic priest for four years. Every time we met Father Mario would ask me: How is your prayer life? I would usually answer by telling him about my “set aside” times for prayer. However, after meeting for a few months I finally realized that Father Mario meant something different by the phrase “prayer life” than what I meant. By that term he meant my whole life punctuated with prayer.
I believe we need to set aside special times and places for prayer as Jesus did. But we also need to see that these designated times and places can become the launch pad for prayer throughout our daily lives.
Third, we need to ask: for whom did Jesus pray?
As we analyze John 17, we see that in verses 1 to 5 Jesus prayed for himself. In verses 6 through 19, Jesus prayed for his disciples. Then, in verses 20 through 26, Jesus prayed for all those who would come to faith through the witness of his disciples. That last group includes you and me. Jesus prayed and continues to pray for us. I find that every encouraging.
I also find it encouraging that Jesus prayed for himself. Often, we tend to think it is wrong to pray for ourselves. We have come to believe, perhaps, that all our prayers should be other-directed. However, Jesus’ example teaches us that this is not the case. If we do not pray for ourselves, our worries about our own life often lurk beneath our prayers for others and hinder our focus.
It’s like the saying, “You cannot truly love others unless you love yourself first.” I believe that is true. It is also true that, “You cannot truly pray for others unless you pray for yourself first.”
C. S. Lewis says,
It is no use to ask God with facetious earnestness for A when our whole mind is in reality filled with the desire for B. We must lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us.
Even an intimate human friend is ill-used if we talk to him about one thing while our mind is really on another, and even a human friend will soon become aware when we are doing so…
If we lay all the cards on the table, God will help us to moderate the excesses. But the pressure of things we are trying to keep out of our mind is a hopeless distraction. As someone said, “No noise is so emphatic as one you are trying not to listen to.”[2]
Fourth, we must ask what may seem a very basic question: to whom did Jesus pray?
The answer is at the same time simple, yet profound. Jesus prayed to the Father. The Greek word is pater, but the Aramaic word is Abba. We have talked about this word before. It is the most intimate word that a child would use to refer to his or her human father. It is akin to our English word “Daddy”.
The Gospels record twenty-one prayers of Jesus. On almost every occasion, Jesus addressed God as Father. The only exception is when Jesus cried out on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And in that instance, Jesus was quoting Psalm 22.
Bruce Milne has written,
There is no real precedent for the use of this word in addressing the Godhead, whether in Old Testament prayers, or in the extensive liturgies that have come down to us from first century Judaism, or at Qumran.
To Jesus’ predecessors and to his contemporaries, his use of the word “Abba” to address God would have seemed overly familiar, perhaps blasphemous. However, Jesus used this term constantly and thus it is a testimony to the sense of intimacy he felt with God as his Father.
We must also remember that Jesus invites us to enter into this same intimacy. He teaches us to pray, “Our Father…” And consequently, Paul says, “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!”
I wonder: do we feel this same sense of intimacy with God that Jesus intuitively felt at almost every point in his life?
Many years ago, when I was going through a difficult time in my life, I suddenly had a picture come into my mind one day while I was praying the Lord’s Prayer. It was as if the Lord stopped me after I prayed the first two words: “Our Father”. The Lord reminded me of the way in which I would often carry my youngest son, Josh, in my arms at that stage in his life. He was five years old at the time, and if I carried him, he always wanted me to carry him in such a way that he could look into my face.
Thus, on that particular day many years ago, when I was having a difficult time making it through each day, the Lord reminded me that the way I carried Josh would be the way he carried me through the day.
When we pray, “Our Father”, I believe we should picture ourselves just so: as young children being carried through the day by our heavenly Father, carried in such a way that moment by moment we can gaze into his face from a very close proximity.
A fifth question we must ask is: when did Jesus pray this prayer?
Jesus prays, “Father, the time has come.” Throughout this Gospel, there has been reference to Jesus’ time or “hour”. In John 2, Jesus tells his mother, “My hour is not yet come.” In John 7 and 8, John tells us that the authorities sought to arrest Jesus, but no one laid a hand on him because “his hour had not yet come”. Then, in John 12, Jesus begins to say that “the hour has come”.
What is this “hour” Jesus is talking about? It is the hour of his glory (John 12:23). However, he is also tempted to ask the Father: “Save me from this hour.” (John 12:27) Jesus knows it is the hour of his departure from this world (John 13:1). It is the hour, the time, when his death is drawing near.
People often die as they live. If we live lives punctuated by prayer, even our death will be wrapped in prayer. It was so for Jesus.
Here is the key question: will we die well? It all depends upon how we live.
One of my favorite spiritual writers, Henri Nouwen says:
We will all die one day. That is one of the few things we can be sure of. But will we die well? That is less certain. Dying well means dying for others, making our lives fruitful for those we leave behind. The big question, therefore, is not “What can I still do in the years I have left to live?” but “How can I prepare myself for my death so that my life can continue to bear fruit in the generations that will follow me?”
Jesus died well because through dying he sent his Spirit of Love to his friends, who with that Holy Spirit could live better lives. Can we also send the Spirit of Love to our friends when we leave them? Or are we too worried about what we can still do? Dying can become our greatest gift if we prepare ourselves to die well.
One of the best ways we can prepare to die well is by making our lives now, lives filled with prayer. Then, when we come to our death, even if we cannot physically pray, Jesus will be praying for us.
This leads me to pose the final question: for what did Jesus pray?
Jesus prayed for glory. And what is glory? It is something shared between Father and Son. Glory is something that Jesus has brought to the Father on earth by finishing the work the Father gave him to do. Jesus prays that the Father will give him glory in heaven, not just on earth. He prays that the Father will give him the glory they shared before the world began.
Wow! What a prayer! This prayer reveals to us the deepest intimacy between God the Father and God the Son: an intimacy that has been going on for all eternity.
Another word for glory is honor or praise. The Greek word is “doxa” from which we get our word “doxology” which means “a word of praise”. This should not be new to us since we sing the Doxology often in worship: “Praise God from whom all blessings flow…” What Jesus wants most of all is: that he will honor and praise God the Father in his life and in his death, and that God the Father will honor and praise him as well—that the Father will be pleased with him.
Though it may not seem like it at times, this is really our highest purpose in life. The Westminster Shorter Catechism asks, “What is the chief end of human beings?” And the answer is: “The chief end of human beings is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.”
If we miss this, we miss all. If we achieve this and have nothing else, we will still have missed nothing…
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