Abstract
Today’s Gospel (John 17:6-19) is part of Jesus’ prayer for the disciples before the crucifixion. The disciples are those whom God has given to Jesus, and Jesus asks the Father to protect them from the evil one: “Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you have given me (17:11).
Jesus is praying for the disciples, but it is also a prayer for all of us who come after.
We too are to be protected by God from all the evil that could befall us. We too will be saved from destruction.
But how can this be?
Despite this prayer, tragedy strikes. Accidents happen. In a flash our lives can be devastated.
Late last year, in the Great Southern region of Western Australia, controlled burns, aimed at reducing inflammable undergrowth before the worst of the summer heat, got out of control when the wind unexpectedly changed direction, and over forty homes were destroyed in the space of eight hours. What was supposed to prevent bushfire devastation actually caused it. Despite our best intentions, disaster struck.
So what exactly is this protection the Evangelist is talking about? And what does it protect us from?
Protection for the disciples certainly wasn’t uppermost in Luke’s mind when he had Jesus telling the seventy disciples, “I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves” (Luke 10:3).
In this account the disciples were sent off with no protection. They were told to carry no weapons for their safety, no money, no food, no sandals, only one cloak. No purse or pack. Travel was to be barefoot. And they would most likely be torn limb from limb, as lambs are devoured by wolves.
Yet we have Jesus praying that God will protect his disciples from evil, keep them together, and save them from destruction.
How can this be? If this is protection, it’s an odd sort of protection. It seems to protect us from nothing.
For an answer, we need to think differently.
It’s tempting for us to think of God’s protection as direct, preventative intervention. God will protect me by intervening to prevent tragedy, illness, or trouble. God will protect me by ensuring nothing happens that would cause me or my loved ones any sorrow or distress. God will intervene to stop disaster occurring, and to make sure only good things happen.
But this can’t be the way it works.
This sort of protection could only be the protection of a capricious God, sometimes heeding our requests, sometimes not. Saving some, and not others. Preventing some bushfires, allowing others to go on unchecked.
But if this is not what is meant by God’s protection, what is?
Can it be something, not imposed on us, but implanted in us?
In this season of Easter, we celebrate the risen Christ.
And Christians have always believed that the risen Christ is not simply identical with the risen Jesus of history. We believe the historical phenomenon of the resurrection claims a present reality within us. The transformative power of the resurrection is not something that exists only in the past. It’s not a one-off event to which our response is simply to believe or be broken.
The resurrection is at work within us now – individually and corporately. And it takes shape in us as an uninhibited recognition and loving response to God’s intention in the creation of the world.
Can we say, then, that this alignment with God - this susceptibility to his love, and experience of his love as the ultimate ground of our being - is the reality of the resurrection at work in us, transforming us?
So the force of the resurrection for us is not just an intellectual attempt to reconstruct and sign off on the events of the first Easter. It concerns our active involvement in discerning and bringing to fruition his risen presence within us.
And it is this risen presence at work in us which is the protection of which the Evangelist speaks.
The world in which we live is not controlled by God. Our protection is not to be found in divine manipulation of the events and circumstances which impinge upon us.
Our protection is the risen Christ present within us.
So even though this God will not intervene to prevent suffering or tragedy or death, or even direct the wind that steers the bushfires, his presence within us is protection enough to ensure that even the worst circumstances with which we have to deal will never destroy the value and meaning of our lives, nor will they diminish our capacity to love and to receive love.
To this God, who instills in us the protection of his risen and glorified Son, be all praise, glory, honour and thanksgiving, now and for ever. Amen.