Acts 1.15-17, 21-26, John 17.6-19
Seventh Sunday of Easter (Sunday after Ascension)
17 May 2015: Corton Denham, West Camel
13 May 2018: Clapham, Keasden, Austwick
‘Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.’
‘I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one.’
You may have had the same phone call I’ve been getting quite often of late. From a woman who sounds oddly like a recording, but who is very kindly expressing great concern that some time back I may have been sold the wrong sort of Payment Protection Insurance.
That I should be wrongly protected, or worse still unprotected, is unthinkable in this day and age. For our society is very keen on protection.
We spend a lot of time and money protecting our bodies these days - in the bathroom each morning we use Colgate Toothpaste for Complete Dental Protection, use Lifebuoy soap for hygiene protection, and when it comes to shampoos, there are ones for every sort of protection you can imagine: colour protection, split ends protection, heat protection, UV protection. You name it, you can buy whatever product you think you need to ensure that you leave the bathroom each morning fully protected against anything the world can throw at you. That is, until you reach the kitchen, where without the protection of Cif Power Cream those lurking germs will surface and attack you.
The advertisers keenly cultivate a paranoia for cleanliness to sell us these so-called protection products. But let’s not mock too much, for in itself protection is something essential to our well-being as people. To feel protected is to feel secure. It involves placing ourselves in the safe hands of another whose power to protect us we fully trust. Protection is a very good thing.
The world struggles to provide the sort of protection each of us really needs. Environmental protection programmes falter when they clash with big business interests. In a struggling economy governments have failed to protect people’s pensions. The Child Protection programme is based on excellent principles of safeguarding the most vulnerable children in society, yet those who want to exploit it continue to find loopholes. In today’s political environment many good people fear the effect on their lives of the potential loss of the protection given them by welfare and the NHS. No-one wants to be the subject of a protection racket, or to be in need of police protection, for the sense of vulnerability these things bring.
What sort of protection do we really need? Protection from all that brings us harm. Most of the examples from everyday life which I’ve mentioned relate to protecting us from external things - things which come from outside to attack us. But there are also those things which come from inside - those aspects of our inner life which bring us down, harm us, even destroy us as fully-functioning human beings. The church has long taught that we need protection from seven deadly sins: Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Apathy, Wrath, Envy, Pride, and Vainglory. It’s quite a list. When I look back on my behaviour at the end of most days I can tick off quite a few of these.
Such behaviour makes the world a vulnerable place for so many people - as the privileged ones among us do all we can to protect ourselves, our own interests, the rest are left unprotected. In our interconnectedness, sometimes when we act to protect our assets this very action might make someone else vulnerable: consider investors in fracking companies in relation to property-owners in potential fracking sites, for instance.
Throughout scripture we hear God calling for his people to protect the widows, the orphans, the incomers, against poverty and oppression, to protect the poorest against the loss of land, property and income. And because the seven deadly sins are sadly still active in our world, God is still entreating we, his people, to protect the widows, the orphans, the incomers, the poor, of our day.
‘Forasmuch as you do this to the least of these my children, you do it to me,’ said Jesus in Matthew 25.40. We know God through protecting the vulnerable; it is through protecting the vulnerable that we know God - this insight is at the heart of the gospel. [2]
Jesus prayed a long and complex prayer to his Father which John recorded (and I just read from). It was a prayer about the well-being of his disciples after he left them alone again on earth, after his Ascension. And key to that prayer was his request for their protection.
‘Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.’ - he said.
‘I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one.’ - he said.
Jesus knew that his disciples would be vulnerable without him - vulnerable to attacks from outside, from those who would want to put a stop to their fellowship and their missionary activities; and vulnerable to attacks from inside, from rivalry and competition between them, vulnerable to drifting away from following the message of his kingdom by seeking to protect themselves against each other. One of the first tasks which their community faced was replacing Judas, the one of the Twelve who had tragically misunderstood the mission of Jesus and his own contribution to it. In trying to protect Jesus’ mission Judas destroyed it.
Jesus wanted to be sure that when he left his disciples they would be protected from their vulnerability to such things. He prayed for their unity - ‘that they may be one, as we are one’, so that they might be strengthened practically and spiritually against external attacks, and hold together as people protected under God.
And he prayed for their protection from the evil one, so that they might resist the temptations which would rise from within them and potentially destroy their community.
As his disciples selected Matthias in the place of Judas, they hoped they would be protected against such things happening to them again.
How wonderful that Jesus’ instinct is to ask his Father to protect his people, just as his Father protects him, just as any good Father protects his children. How wonderful that Jesus wants his people to feel the security of being held in care by the Father. All the protection that the world offers us pales before having the protection of God in our lives, for which Jesus prays.
The prayer Jesus prayed might be our prayer too. Each morning we might wake and ask the Father for his protection on our lives, as we begin our day. I love the prayers of the ancient Celts, many of them collected a century ago by Alexander Carmichael and published in a book called the Carmina Gadelica - or the Song of the Gaels.[3] They are prayers of everyday people addressing God in everyday situations, many of them invoking God’s protection, for instance prayers farmers made in the fields for the protection of the cattle, prayers fishermen made at sea for the protection of their boat.
I think we can learn a great deal from these people about bringing prayers for protection into our daily lives, strengthening our relationship with God the Father, and with other people as we go through our day. Learning to pray in this way brings to the centre of our daily spiritual practice the vital question: will the protection I seek connect me more deeply with God and others, or will the protection I seek damage my relationships with them?
I encourage you to pray such protection prayers of your own, at the bedside, in the bathroom, the kitchen, the car. Prayers whilst doing early-morning chores, perhaps, asking God’s protection as you go, inspired by Jesus’ prayer to his Father, and by prayers like this, with which I close: The Blessing of the Kindling.
I will kindle my fire this morning
In presence of the holy angels of heaven,
Without malice, without jealousy, without envy,
Without fear, without terror of any one under the sun,
But the Holy Son of God to shield me.
Without malice, without jealousy, without envy,
Without fear, without terror of any one under the sun
But the Holy Son of God to shield me.
God, kindle Thou in my heart within
A flame of love to my neighbour,
To my foe, to my friend, to my kindred all,
To the brave, to the knave, to the thrall,
O Son of the loveliest Mary,
From the lowliest thing that liveth,
To the Name that is highest of all.
Amen.
Notes
[1] Altered version of a sermon first preached in Devon, 20 May 2012.
[2] This insight influenced by (though not directly quoting from) John M. Hull, Towards the Prophetic Church: A Study of Christian Mission, p.32-33
[3] Alexander Carmichael (compiler), Carmina Gadelica: Hymns and Incantations from the Gaelic; website containing texts here.
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