Easter 7 (C) + Dream it Be it + 6.2.19

M. Campbell-Langdell

All Santos, Oxnard

(Acts 16:16-34; Ps. 97; Revelation 22:12-14,16-17,20-21; John 17:20-26)

Genesis finished school this week, so I took the opportunity at her last school bus drop-off at the marina to take a very brief run. I ran around and saw the calm waters and a couple of gulls and just enjoyed the morning near the water. One driveway I passed had a car and its license plate said “Thx Jim” and I thought that was interesting. Did Jim buy the owner the car? Or was Jim the person who allowed the owner to buy the car by helping him earn the money to buy the car, or perhaps even the nice house on the marina? And then, in my corny way, I thought, why not “Thx God?” perhaps the license plate was taken. Because isn’t it true that every blessing comes down from our God? In my experience, those who have “worked hard” for what they have attained lose track of that pretty quickly.

Today’s gospel is a beautiful and poignant one. Here we meet not the resurrected Jesus of much of Easter season but instead Jesus the man, facing his mortality. And he is praying. Over the three years of the lectionary cycle we hear three parts of this prayer. And this year’s prayer is the one for us – for those who will believe. I imagine Jesus here not as the bold, almost scary God-man who appears later to infuse the disciples with his Holy Spirit breath, but instead as the man who knows he will die. He knows he will rise again but at this particular moment, he is not feeling it. He is just feeling a need to cling to God in prayer. To intercede, not for his own well-being, but for ours and for the sake of his disciples and all believers. He prays fervently that we will be at unity with one another. So that we can accomplish even more with his Spirit’s help than he has even been able to accomplish on earth. A tall order!

Somehow, reflecting on this passage drew me to a scene in the current film “All is True” about playwright and poet William Shakespeare’s retirement. In the film, Shakespeare’s Globe theatre burns in London and he returns home to Stratford-upon-Avon and finally seems to begin to fully grieve the son he lost years before. But in a telling scene he shares a different story with the priest of the local parish. He shows him his pocket-knife, one bought for his son, who in the film he thought also wrote poetry, to trim his quills. When his son died, he went on to use that pocket-knife to trim his own quills. And he imagined that it was not him writing but his son writing. And that it was not his son who had died but him, and his son was writing and remembering his father. And this, William Shakespeare says in the film, is how he had the strength and energy to persevere through writing all the plays he composed following the death of his son.[1]

How like Jesus and us. In this passage Jesus prays for us, and in so doing he prays for all we will be, all we will accomplish through his Spirit working in us. He prays that we will believe and seek God’s guidance and that his Spirit will do great things through us in his name. In that sense, anything that we do will be not our work alone but Jesus working in us.
We may not all be Shakespeare, but I wonder, what is that dream budding in your heart that might be part of Jesus’ prayer for you? Is there anything that you have hoped to accomplish that you haven’t felt equipped to do, either due to time, money or any other impediment? We know that we cannot do great things on our own, but with God’s help we can accomplish amazing things. Amazing things can happen in Christian community, too. I am inspired by the fundraiser to help Angelia yesterday because every drop in the bucket helps her get home and be on the path to healing.

Meditate on Jesus’ words this week, and think about what might be stirring in you. Is there a project you have been putting off? Is there something that, even if you were to only put an hour to it a week, you might begin to accomplish? If the chains of your life were broken as were Paul’s and Silas’ in today’s Acts passage, what might you do? Because we know that God has created us for good things, for big things. And Jesus’ prayer is that we would fully enjoy life and fully live out our gifts. Find the thing, pray with Jesus, and then make it happen. If it never comes to pass, at least you will have begun! And that’s all God asks of us, to begin the journey to living out the fullness of what God has prepared for us! Jesus’ Spirit, working in us, will do the rest!
Amen.

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[1] “All is True,” 2019 (by Kenneth Branagh).