“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, ² since you have given him authority over all people^] to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. ³ And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. ⁴ I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. ⁵ So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.⁶ “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. ⁷ Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; ⁸ for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. ⁹ I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. ¹⁰ All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. ¹¹ And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.” John 17:1-11

The first thing we note, here, in Jesus’ high priestly prayer, is that Jesus did not pray that his disciples should be taken out of this world. He never prayed that they might find escape; he prayed that they might find a way to be one—in that place—in that time—for all time. The kind of Christianity which buries itself in a monastery or a convent would not have seemed like a religion to Jesus at all. The kind of Christianity which finds its essence in prayer and meditation withdrawn from the world, would have seemed to him a sadly truncated version of the faith he died to bring. He insisted that it was in the rough and tumble of life that all people should seek to live out a life of faith with the Father.

Of course there is need of prayer and meditation and quiet times, when we shut the door upon the world to be alone with G-d. We all need to find those times to be quiet and listen to G-d. But this is not an end: it is a means to the end. And to the end, we are to demonstrate the Christian life in the ordinary work of the world. Christianity was never meant to withdraw us from life – it is to equip up to bear up in this life. It does not offer us release from problems, but a way to solve them. It does not offer us a life in which troubles are escaped and evaded, but a life in which troubles are faced and conquered. However much it may be true that the Christian is not of the world, it remains true that it is within the world that the Christian lives. We must not seek to abandon the world, but always desire to live in it, and to win others for G-d.

Pastor Dave