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High Priestly Prayer

             “I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified. (John 17:13-19)

 

            One of the things that bother me when someone is praying is when they decide to make an announcement within the prayer. “Oh, and, Father, please bless the meeting we’re having next Tuesday at 9 a.m. at the Something-or-Other Assembly Hall, at which we’ll be discussing….” In today’s passage, Jesus does something that, at first glance, might be said to be similar. It’s almost a case of “Let me tell them what they’ve probably missed as I talk to You, just in case they missed it.”

            Almost. Except Jesus isn’t inserting something He forgot to mention or do.  What He is praying to the Father is also a lesson to the disciples in how to pray and an encouragement to them about how they should see what was happening. As one of my friends would say, He was reframing the situation and demonstrating with His prayer how they should pray both for themselves and those who come after them.

             In comparative private, He prayed that the cup that He was about to drink be taken from Him, but He accepted the Father’s adamance on the topic. In public, He prayed not that He or His disciples be given an easy life, free of illness, injury, and inconvenience. He prayed that His disciples would be protected the world. He acknowledged that the world would hate them because it hated Him, but that’s not the protection He seeks for them. Instead, He prays that they would be protected from the evil one.

            The second thing He prays for them is that they would be sanctified – that they would be separated from what was evil and united with that which is good. Again, if we think merely in terms of doing good things and not doing bad things, we’re missing the key because the biggest bad thing that we can do is to not be united with Him. Sanctification is, then, more about being in a relationship with Christ than about not smoking, drinking, gambling, swearing, etc. 

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