When Your Hour Comes
Rod Frohman Third
Presbyterian Church
May 28, 2006
John 17
Perhaps one of the most disturbing television documentaries
that I have seen in a long time was depicted this past week
on public television, a documentary about sex trafficking from
the Ukraine to Turkey.
If any of you saw it, you recall that it depicted a diabolical
combination of those who literally bought and sold human flesh
by preying upon the vulnerabilities of poor women who were desperate
to do anything to solve their medical and economic crises.
Sadly, it is a long-existing, worldwide phenomenon. While I
was a pastor in Gary, Indiana in the late 1970’s I helped
to remove a 14-year-old girl from the prostitution ring in that
city and had her ferreted out to a safe location and the next
state. Just two years ago I was traveling to Bangkok Thailand,
I arrived exhausted at 2:00 a.m. in the morning at a hotel,
and the concierge offered me “a girl” as casually
as a beverage.
One of my former parishioners in Minneapolis, Nantawan Boonprasat
Lewis, a native of Thailand, and now a college professor in
Minneapolis, has written extensively about this growing trend
in world economy. It is she who first shared with me one of
the most infamous stories of the victimization of women in America
is the story of 16-year-old Ruth Schmidt who was raped in a
suburban Chicago Forest preserve. It was only until she became
an adult at age 30 she was able to talk about it. Some women
who have experienced this have never been able to talk about
it.
When the incident occurred Ruth reported… "I
knew what was happening to me. I began a prayer that would end
two hours later, a prayer that through the years has taught
me that there is no God the Father, that god is within me, a
prayer that lifted my spirit that night and allowed me to watch
from a distance what was happening to my body." Now,
as an adult, she reports, "I see differently, I hear
differently, I surely believe differently. I listen to music
differently. I make decisions on what I will and will not purchase
as a victim. I judge my work environment in light of my experience.
As a citizen I choose which way to vote differently. I have
learned that the messages society sends to women are that all
women can be raped. We live in a rape culture." (Christian
Century, January 6-13, 1993 p. 14-15) Ruth went on to graduate
from Grinnell College and now works in Madison, Wisconsin. But
the scars are still there.
Juxtaposed with the twisted world of female victimization is
the gospel text for today, commonly known as the “high
priestly prayer of Christ.” At first glance this prayer
seems to have nothing to do with the ugliness of the world or
any of us whose life is full of pain, heartache and disappointment.
The prayer seems to be a beautiful, but ethereal prayer, about
unity among Christians, a good topic for the ecumenical movement,
but hardly dealing with the real world.
Yet at a closer look, this prayer is the heart of the Christian
understanding of HOW Christ cares for us now. This prayer forms
the basis of the work of the risen and ascended Christ. It is
a pastoral prayer, a model for all pastoral prayers. It is a
lifting up of the concerns and burden of those who know that
their hour has come.
Jesus is praying. When do we pray? Some of us pray regularly.
Regularly or otherwise, whenever we are driven to prayer it
is usually in a crisis. “There are no atheists in foxholes,”
the saying goes. Why we wait for a crisis is a subject for another
day. But it is often our life situation that drives us to our
knees.
The situation that seems to lie behind this prayer of Christ
is the reality of his anticipated torture. The gospel editors
have shaped this prayer into the future perfect tense in which
Christ anticipates his finished suffering on the cross. (E.
Haenchen, John Vol. 1. p. 37)
“My hour is come,” prayed Jesus. “I knew
what was happening to me,” prayed Ruth Schmidt. It is
the prayer of many in the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay
this morning.
The crisis, which lies behind the prayer of Jesus, is a sense
of the overwhelming powers of the world and the helplessness
he feels in the face of his impending death. In this moment
of prayer is a sharp sense of poignancy when the whole world
is suspended between time and space. Time stands still. Jesus
prays. Ruth Schmidt prays. A frightened girl in Bangkok burns
incense before a statue of the Buddha before she is forced on
to the street. Their prayers become universal prayers, universal
moments in which the reality of the powers of the world are
most clearly perceived. A time when the pretense of benign life
is unmasked in all its rapacious reality, when the radically
hostile and evil nature of the world is seen for its potential
threat.
We all know these suspended moments. It is the moment when
we realize
• the disease is known to be fatal
• the loved one is, in fact, dead
• the marriage will not last
• the layoff notice has been given
• the new job is not working out
• the declaration of war is made on a day that lives in
infamy.
In these situations there is no doubt about the radical nature
of evil in the world. In these situations our experience becomes
Jesus’ experience.
Notice how “the world” seems to occupy Jesus’
prayer.
17:6 “I have made known your name to those whom you gave
me from the world.
17:9 “I am asking on their behalf, I am not asking on
behalf of the world.”
17:11 “And now I am no longer in the world,
but they are in the world.”
17:15 I am not asking you to remove them from the world
but to protect them from the evil one.”
In this agonizing prayer the “world” comprises
the hidden jurisdiction of the Evil One. The “world”
is the paternity of perdition that is involved in Judas' betrayal
and in every betrayal of trust. The “world” is the
concatenation of invisible forces that bred hostility to Jesus
in the hearts of opponents, and which breeds hostility to all
acts of love, justice and compassion. The “world”
is what is operative in cowardly connivance when people wash
their hands of responsibility and allow forms of sociopathy
to go unchecked. Sometimes in this world the boundary between
good and evil is a very thin boundary. Indeed Jesus' prayer
has been called a “thin prepositional boundary”.
(Christian Century, January 6-13, 1993 p. 14-15) It
is the thin prepositional boundary of being in the world , but
not of it.
Jesus prays, “I am no longer in the
world but [my disciples] are in the world...
I speak these things in the world that they
may have my joy made complete in themselves...
The world has hated them because they do not belong to
the world... I am not asking you to take them out of
the world, but I am asking you to protect them from
the evil one.”
How exactly does one live on the thin prepositional boundary
of being in the world but not of it, especially when your hour
has come, when it is time to face the crisis? Jesus realizes
he will soon not be present with the disciples to guide them
along the narrow way of the prepositional boundary. He, like
a parent, must allow the children to work out their own faith
in fear and trembling. So he continues praying his prayer, “Father,
they belonged to you, you gave them to
me, They know that I came from you. All that
I have is yours, and all you have is mine, I have been glorified
in them, I passed your word on to
them. Keep them in your name. May they be one
in us as you are in me and
I am in you.
All this is to say that Jesus affirms that we live on the thin
prepositional boundary of this world by a relationship to God,
and not by any other way. Being in the world but not of it is
a constant battle for competing sovereignties, the sovereignty
of evil and the sovereignty of good.
Our reaction may be to declare, “Rod, that is a little
bit over the top, life is much more complicated than that. Life
is not black and white, good and evil.” Maybe most of
the time that is true, but when your hour is come -- when your
son comes home from the war in a box, when your love has been
betrayed, when despite all the research and medicine you are
still not able to conceive -- the choices are often “either/or”
and seldom “both/and.”
In 1845 James Russell Lowell wrote a famous poem to oppose
the War with Mexico which he recognized as a scheme to gain
more territory for the slave holding states thereby radically
altering the balance of power in the U.S. Congress. (Haeussler,
The Story of Our Hymns) We all recognize the famous
words:
“Once to every man and nation comes a moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil
side.”
Ruth Schmidt understood that she had a moment to decide as
she faced the crisis of her life, how to defend her soul against
one whom was going to violate her body. She began to pray. It
wasn't a conventional prayer, but a prayer nevertheless. Remember
she reported, I began a prayer that would end two hours
later, a prayer that through the years taught me that there
is no God the Father, that god is within me, a prayer that lifted
my spirit that night and allowed me to watch from a distance
what was happening to my body.
The power of evil was so strong for her that it wiped out the
traditional name of God the Father as having any meaning. She
could no longer call God by a male name when it was a man who
raped her. It was not a logical conclusion, but an understandable
conclusion formed on the thin prepositional boundary between
good and evil, of struggling very hard to be in
the world but not of it, of refusing to believe
that the God to whom she was praying would permit such evil.
So instead of giving into evil completely the traditional name
of God had to go, and another name had to be found.
Ruth understood very well that now, as in antiquity, the name
of someone holds the key to his or her identity. It didn't matter
that Jesus' name for God as “Father” was like “Daddy,”
an affectionate term denoting a warm and loving personal relationship
with God. Somehow Ruth trusted that God was with her and in
her, for why else would she have prayed? But “Father”
didn't work any more.
But Jesus prayed, “Holy Father, protect my disciples
in your name.” As we understand the identity of God to
be found in the name of God, and if we still seek to be protected
by God, there may be some among us who need a new name for God
in order to continue to trust God's protection. We may need
a new name for God in order to be protected from the evil one.
The evil one would like us to toss out the baby with the bath
water, to believe nothing, to trust nothing, to affirm nothing,
rather than to struggle for a new name for God. Indeed many
have simply opted for a comfortable secularity, Sunday morning
with the New York Times and an orange cappuccino rather
than struggling for a way to trust that God is alive in our
world today.
Indeed in the face of death, disease, layoffs, divorce, war,
hatred, and rape I can understand why one would just throw up
their hands and say, “I'm tired of trusting in a god that
is not present with me.“ New occasions teach new duties.
Time makes ancient good uncouth.”
This is precisely what Jesus understood to be the crisis for
his disciples with his impending torture and death. He knew
the betrayal of friends, the connivance of convenience, the
paternity of perdition that his disciples would face. So He
prayed, “I am not asking you to take them out of the world,
but to protect them from the evil one... I gave them your word...
Your word is truth.”
And that is the ultimate test isn't it, when our evil hour
has come, do we trust that we have somehow received the truth
of God through Jesus? Do we trust that we will find that truth
when it is needed? Do we trust that we will find a name for
God that speaks to us of shelter and nurture, of healing and
joy, of eternal life that comes from trusting that word of truth?
James Russell Lowell did when he penned these very modern words
161 years ago:
“Though the cause of evil prosper, Yet ‘tis
truth alone is strong.
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne.
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow, Keeping watch above God's own.”
Amen
