Prayed For

John 17:20-26

I didn’t really learn to pray for other people until I was in my twenties. 

Of course, I’d grown up praying with others in church, and I would occasionally ask God to help me if I was in trouble, or to help people I cared about get well.  But when I was leading a confirmation class, and found myself wanting to pray for that diverse group of 11-13 year olds  - well, it’s not as easy without easy specifics like healing an injury.  Praying for a whole person somehow seems to require a deeper commitment to trusting God.

And then I went to seminary, and spent a summer doing CPE; an immersion experience in hospital chaplaincy in which I suddenly I realized I was going to have to pray out loud for someone. In front of them.

I had no idea what I was doing.

But I remembered a lot of phrases from the Book of Common Prayer, some of which seemed appropriate, and I took a deep breath….

It turns out that you can talk to God about more or less anything, even in front of people, and if you mean it, prayers for finding missing glasses or for a better grade of hospital juice cups can be incredibly healing.

But in the end, the most important thing I’ve learned about prayer hasn’t been how to do it.

It’s been how to receive it.  How to be prayed for.

And I didn’t learn that until I was almost done with seminary.

I learned it from a child.  And from a community.

Every year, people who want to be ordained as priests in the Episcopal Church take a week-long set of comprehensive exams.  It’s a tough and risky week. You feel like your whole future is at stake. So at my seminary, we had a custom of having prayer buddies.  Someone who would pray for you, specifically, while you took exams.

I feel pretty comfortable with tests, so I thought I’d leave the prayer warriors for other students, so I asked a friend’s 9 year old daughter to pray for me.

I thought it would be fun.

Well, I woke up the morning of the first exam, and I had no idea why I felt so peaceful.  I spent the whole week in a baffling state of calm, humor, patience, and even comfort, despite hours bent over a keyboard.

You see, Morgan took praying for me much more seriously than I had imagined, and she made sure I knew I was prayed for.  She wrote me notes.  She invited me to dinner at her house, so I would not be alone. Most of all, she prayed as I had never expected, or thought I wanted.

And because she prayed in a way I hadn’t planned on, I began to realize that the prayers of the whole community were around me, supporting me on every side.  That I could lean into that support, almost float on it.  The sense of God’s compassion and care had never been so present, vital and holy in all my life.

Being prayed for changed me.

That’s not the only time it happened, of course, but that was when I learned to listen.

It multiplied my ability to trust – trust myself, God, and others.

It taught me hope – the heart-deep ability to believe in joy present and yet to come.

It grew my heart – I found space for love, for God, for myself, for friends and community, that I hadn’t planned to find.

Can you remember a time when that happened for you?

In the gospel story we heard today, Jesus is praying for his disciples.  It’s the last thing he’s able to do for them, before he goes to be glorified: to be killed and rise again, and return to be one with the Father.

He’s praying for the things that make us church. That make us brothers and sisters and children of God.

That we may be one.  United, in spite of – or maybe because of – our differences of opinion, experience, skin, speech or anything else. 

That we may be whole, and complete.

And love weaves in and out and through all this. Love for and from one another that’s inseparable from God’s love for us and our love for God.

Listen to Jesus pray for you:

Father, I pray for these who hear me, and also for those who will hear them.  Let them be united, like you and me, so that the world can see that you love them the way you love me.  Let them be one, whole, complete. Let them be loved, and know that they are loved, and share it with the world!  Amen.

What does it feel like, to know that Jesus prays for you?

That Jesus prays much more than that, for you?

If you’ve come here this morning, chances are pretty good that someone is praying for you.

It might be someone here. It might be a friend.  It might be your mother, or your child. It might be someone who saw you in the grocery store and doesn’t even know your name.

And for sure, Jesus is praying for you.

We pray together a lot here at Calvary.  We pray for people who are injured, sick, grieving, dying, celebrating, and changing. We pray for each other. We make and bless blankets that go out of here to be a touchable prayer - prayer that you can literally feel and wrap yourself in.

That’s essential. It’s the work of the church, of the Body of Christ.

But it’s also important – essential, for us to be disciples of Christ – to be prayed for.

Even – or especially – when we don’t think we need prayers.

We need to open our hearts and spirits to the presence of God in the prayers of others.  To listen, not the way we normally listen, but with an unfocused openness and trust; the kind that lets you be guided or supported or inspired when you weren’t looking for anything of the sort.

You can practice this right here.

You don’t have to be sick, or have something wrong.  You can practice being prayed for when things are great, and when you’re happy, or when you’re worried about someone else, or even if you’re just bored.

You can ask someone here to be your prayer buddy.

For a week, or a day, or much longer.

And you should.

Because if Jesus is praying for his disciples; if Jesus is praying for us, for you, then we have to be able to receive prayer.

So we have to practice being prayed for,

because it will, in the end - and sometimes right away - transform our lives, make love shine through us, and change the world.