Listen to the Heart

Listen to the Heart

John 17:20-26

There is a story told of a ship that was sinking in the middle of a storm. The captain called out to the crew of 20, and asked, “Does anyone here know how to pray?”

One crew member stepped forward and said, “Yes, sir, I know how to pray.” The captain breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s good news. You pray while the rest of us put on life jackets. We’re one short.”

That is how a lot of people approach prayer. They treat prayer as if it were little more than a “get out of trouble free” card for people who believe hard enough. Boat sinking but not enough life jackets? Say a little prayer. Pop quiz coming but not enough studying? Say a little prayer. Caught speeding but can’t afford the ticket? Say a little prayer. We want to believe that if we just have enough faith, then our prayer will be answered.

Of course, most of us have a little nagging feeling that we don’t have enough faith. The proof of which is that we don’t always get what we pray for. So, the reason for this must be that we do not have enough faith. When we find ourselves in these situations, we may think the answer is we must have someone with more faith do the praying for us. And we define “more faith” as either having special worthiness, or special knowledge, or special access to the divine secrets. There is another story told that illustrates this belief.

The village priest was a holy man, so each time the people were in trouble they had recourse to him. He would then withdraw to a special place in the forest and say a special prayer. God would always hear his prayer and the village would be helped.

When he died and the people were in trouble they had recourse to his successor, who was not a holy man but who knew the secret of the special place in the forest and the special prayer. So this priest prayed, “Lord, you know I am not a holy man. But surely you are not going to hold that against my people. So listen to my prayer and come to our assistance.” And God would hear his prayer and the village would be helped.

When he died and the people were in trouble they had recourse to his successor, who knew the special prayer but not the place in the forest. So this priest prayed, “What do you care for places, Lord? Is not every place made holy by your presence? So listen to my prayer and come to our assistance.” And once again God would hear his prayer and the village would be helped.

Now he too died, and when the people were in trouble they had recourse to his successor, who did not know the special prayer or the special place in the forest. So this priest prayed, “It isn’t the formula that you value, Lord, but the cry of the heart in distress. So listen to my prayer and come to our assistance.” And once again God would hear his prayer and the village would be helped.

After this man died, when the people were in trouble they had recourse to his successor. Now this priest has more use for money than for prayer. So he would say to God, “What sort of God are you, that while you are perfectly capable of solving problems that you yourself have caused, you still refuse to lift a finger until you have us cringe and beg and plead? Well, you can do as you please with the people.” Then he would go right back to whatever business he had in hand. And, once again, God would hear his prayer and the village would be helped.

The point of this story is simple. Prayer is less about our worthiness, or our ability to turn a phrase, or our knowledge of prayer practices, and it is more about our relationship with God. And more to the point, it is all about God’s relationship with us. The people were helped, not because of the priest, but because God loves us.

The way we pray can say a lot about our relationship with God. I started my doctoral work because I saw far too many people in the church who either didn’t or couldn’t pray. I was tempted for a while to study how specific expressions in prayer could reveal our relationship with God. I thought it would be a short-hand way to analyze where someone was on their faith journey so that I could provide appropriate spiritual direction to get them to the next level. But things are rarely identical for every relationship, and if we try to force people into taking identical steps, it quickly could become the religious version of being “politically correct.”

So, instead I worked on what a relationship with God means; or, to put it into Wesleyan terms, what it means to go on to perfection in love. And that, it turns out, is a better way to understand how prayer reveals our relationship with God, and God’s relationship with us.

In our reading for today, Jesus is praying for us. The language we have in John’s gospel indicates that it has been through what I like to call a “stained glass filter.” That’s when we want something to sound holy through the use of intricately linked words and phrases so that they have an aura of mystery about them. But at the core of this prayer there is a very simple expression. This expression sums up the relationship Jesus has with God, and the relationship Jesus wants us to have with each other through God: “I in them, and you in me.”

Jesus prayed for our unity in God’s love and grace. Just as God and Jesus are one, so Jesus prayed we would be one. “I in them, and you in me.” When people look at us, Jesus prayed, they should see the love and grace of God. “I in them, and you in me.” When people look for God, Jesus prayed, they should see God in us. “I in them, and you in me.”

That is the relationship God had with Jesus. That is the relationship we can have with God. In this relationship, we should always be able to sing “We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord, and we pray that all unity may one day be restored.” As another hymn says, our prayer should be “Make us one, Lord, make us one. Holy Spirit, make us one. Let your love show so the world will know we are one in you.”

That’s what Jesus wanted. That’s what Jesus prayed for. That is what Jesus lived, and died, and rose again for. “I in them, and you in me.” If we don’t get anything else right about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, we should get this – we are to be one.

And yet, even a gentle reading of our history shows that people who call themselves Christian are not a united people. Even a cursory examination reveals that, in the name of Christ, we have all too often chosen slavery over freedom, hostility over hospitality, exclusion over evangelism, maintenance over mission, polemic over prayer, and conviction over conversation.

We have been all too willing to call each other heretic, sure that we alone are pure in our thinking and that all others are wrong. We have been too eager to claim that our experience of God is the true divine revelation, and that all other experiences are demonic. We have been much too ready to value schism over unity, choosing to let others go their own way while we in our pride know that we go on in God’s way.

And this is not just a matter of how denominations take opposing sides. I have witnessed members of the same congregation refusing to talk with each other or to even consider forgiveness and reconciliation. It was usually because of some perceived slight, or because someone took a different position than they did on an issue. They then raise this difference to ultimate importance, ultimate sin, which demands that they not be united.

And that is just how Christians treat each other. From outside the church, is it any wonder that the world has trouble seeing “I in them, and you in me”?

So what are we holding onto that is so important that it keeps us from being “one with Christ, one with each other, and one in ministry to all the world,” as we pray every Sunday before we partake in the sacrament? What is it that we want that is so important that we actively defy what Jesus wants?

John Wesley considered this question. He noted that while there are consistent rules for Christian reasoning, it is inevitable that we will at times come to the wrong conclusions about what we think God is calling us to do in our faith. It is inevitable because none of us has absolutely complete knowledge about any particular situation or context, despite our assertions to the contrary. And when we are absolutely sure that we know all that we need to know, we elevate our answer to “ultimate truth” or “the mind of God.” The reality, however, is that our answer may only be the best answer we can come up with at this time, given our human limitations. We fail to see this because we choose pride in ourselves over humility before God. We choose unanimity in our cause over unity in the Body of Christ. We choose conflict with each other over confidence in the Holy Spirit.

There is a way to deal with whatever arises when our different answers are in conflict. It was proposed by John Wesley in his pamphlet, “The Character of a Methodist.” He wrote, “But from real Christians, of whatsoever denomination they be, we earnestly desire not to be distinguished at all, not from any who sincerely follow after what they know they have not yet attained.” By this he means all who are going on to perfection in love with God and each other.

Wesley continued by quoting Jesus at Matthew 12:50 –“Whosoeverdoes the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.” Wesley then wrote, “And I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, that we be in no wise divided among ourselves. Is thy heart right, as my heart is with thine? I ask no farther question. If it be, give me thy hand. For opinions, or terms, let us not destroy the work of God. Dost thou love and serve God? It is enough. I give thee the right hand of fellowship.”

Wesley goes on, adding,“(L)et us strive together for the faith of the Gospel; walking worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called; with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace; remembering, there is one body, and one Spirit, even as we are called with one hope of our calling; ‘one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.’”

The last part of that was from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, but it was all just a long way of saying “I in them, and you in me.” At the heart of our faith is the heart of Jesus, and it is in this that we find our true unity. A unity based on anything more, anything less, or anything else, does not come from God.

Of course, we can become so concerned with the appearance of unity that we allow any and all beliefs among the people – evenif they have no basis in scripture or our Christian tradition. Wesley reminds us that a truly “catholic spirit” is entirely distinct from the “speculative latitudinarianism” that is indifferent to where we worship, and what we believe, and how we are discipled. That is the $10 way to say that we are not free as disciples to leave when someone disagrees with us. We are not free to believe whatever we want. We are not free to pick and choose which teachings of Jesus we will follow – not if we want to be called disciples of Jesus Christ. And not if we will have the unity of “I in them, and you in me.”

Our unity is to have only one basis – the love and grace of God, revealed in Jesus Christ, and enabledin us through the Holy Spirit. It is then that the prayer of Jesus will be fulfilled: “I in them, and you in me.” This is the blessed tie that binds us together into the one Body of Christ! This is the unity we must seek. This is the unity we must show to the world!

Some believe that the church is sinking in the midst of a cultural storm, and that it is every person for themselves. But if that crew had been united, the 20 life jackets would have easily kept all 21 crew members afloat. We do not save ourselves when we cut others loose to face the world alone. We are all saved in the unity of God’s love for us in Jesus Christ. So, let us stand and sing together in one voice UM Hymnal 557 “Blest Be The Tie That Binds.”