Another Way to Pray - Seventh Sunday of Easter
Author: Pastor Scott Schul
May 17, 2026
Let’s start today with what I hope
is an easy question. How did Jesus teach
us to pray? I think most people would
say Jesus taught us to pray when he gave us the Lord’s Prayer. In scripture it’s recorded twice, in Matthew
6 and Luke 11. The version of the Lord’s
Prayer we’re accustomed to using draws a little from each of those Biblical
versions.
All Christian traditions treasure
the Lord’s Prayer, but we Lutherans have a particularly close relationship to
it because we pray it in virtually every worship gathering we hold, and because
it’s a central component of Luther’s Catechisms, which are fundamental building
blocks of the way we Lutherans understand our faith. Indeed, if you are looking for a faithful and
effective way to pray, you cannot go wrong by praying our Lord’s Prayer. It’s part of my daily routine and I
commend it to you as well.
But did you know that the Lord’s
Prayer is not the only prayer instruction Jesus gave to his
followers? Jesus also taught us to pray in
the 17th chapter of John’s Gospel. It was a prayer Jesus embodied, meaning he didn’t only say the words; he lived them too. The
prayer has three main parts, but each year on the 7th Sunday of
Easter we only hear an isolated piece of the prayer… until today. I selected 11 key verses from the prayer’s
full 26-verse length so that this year, for the first time, we can contemplate each
of the prayer’s three main parts, just as Jesus intended.
This was a prayer offered up in a moment
of crisis by a man running out of earthly time. It’s part of a long series teachings, spread out over five chapters in
John’s Gospel that we call the “Farewell Discourse.” It’s the final time Jesus and his disciples were
together before Judas’s betrayal, Jesus’s arrest, the scattering of the other
apostles, and Jesus’s crucifixion. In
anticipation of all that drama and all that heartbreak, Jesus used his final
hours to try to give the disciples the insight and wisdom they would need to
not only survive his death, but to then persevere and lead the Church forward
following his resurrection and ascension into heaven. And so as part of all that, Jesus taught them another way to pray.
The pattern for this prayer is
really simple. You can easily see it in
the way I’ve laid out the Gospel lesson today. There are three paragraphs, each of which correspond to one of the three
primary parts of the prayer. Here is how
Jesus teaches us to pray. Part 1: Pray
for yourself. Part 2: Pray for those
closest to you. And Part 3: Pray for those you don’t know.
Now that we have the overall
pattern, let’s examine each part more closely, not just to understand the
Gospel lesson as history, but so that the way Jesus prays here
can help form and shape the way we pray. We begin with Part 1: Pray for yourself. This probably sounds obvious, and yet I know
there’s a sense among some people that to pray for yourself is selfish or
self-centered and not the sort of thing you should do. If you’ve ever struggled with that, then here
is your permission to let go of that concern and pray openly and honestly to
God for yourself, because that’s how Jesus begins his prayer here
in John 17.
But note that Jesus isn’t praying
for a new sports car or a fancy vacation. Jesus prays for God to glorify him. This means that Jesus is praying for God’s will to be done in his life,
so that he, Jesus, may achieve all God intended for him, all to the glory of
God and the blessing of those around him. For Jesus that was the salvation of all creation. How will you glorify God and bless
your neighbor? This is where you seek
God’s guidance. You might say, “God, thank
you for all you’ve given me. How can I
glorify you and be a blessing to the world? Show me, and give me the courage to do it.” Simple, right? Isn’t that a prayer worth praying?
Notice though that even though we’re
asking God to shape us in a way that blesses others, it ends up blessing
to us as well. We will always be
our most joyful when we’re living the kind of life Jesus intended for us
to live and created us to live. That’s what it means to have a meaningful life, a life of wholeness, a
life of purpose. It doesn’t mean that we
cannot or should not ask God for material things, like a warm home or a stable
job, but the focus is on becoming that person God always intended us to be, and
then trusting that if that happens, then all the other things will follow. So that’s Part 1: Pray for yourself.
Part 2 is very
similar. Pray for those closest to
you. Here in the prayer’s second
paragraph, Jesus prays for his disciples. Despite their flaws, he loves them dearly. He knows their unity will be ripped apart
when they realize one of their own betrayed Jesus. And then, in their own way, each of the
remaining disciples will also fail to fully stand by Jesus in his
greatest hour of need. Their faith in
Jesus and their faith in their own abilities will be tested to the limit. Jesus knows that the very people he has entrusted
to carry on his work of blessing and salvation will soon be hiding behind
locked doors, prisoners of fear and of their own failings.
So Jesus prays that God will
“protect them… so that they may be one, as we are one.” We too should pray for our friends and
family, that they may achieve the fullness of all God intends for them. And we should especially pray for their unity,
just like Jesus did. It’s so important! Our unity as human beings, as
a nation, as a local community, as Christ’s Church, and even as friends and
family is so tattered and fragmented these days. Yes, we may experience a taste of unity
when we’re cheering for the same sports team or lined up behind a certain
political cause. It’s not that those
things are unimportant. But they’re not the core of our lives together. We need to be bound by something bigger than our hobbies, our politics,
or our ambitions. We need to be bound by
our hearts, and that kind of unity comes only in Jesus. So in Part 2: Pray for those closest to you.
Part 3 is the
final two verses of today’s Gospel passage. Pray for those you don’t know. That may sound simple, but for most of us it doesn’t come
naturally. We’re usually so focused on
ourselves and our loved ones that we run out of time and our prayers run out of gas before we manage to pray for others we don’t know. But it’s important to Jesus that we do so,
because this is how we avoid becoming what Luther called “curved in” on
ourselves. Loving our neighbors means
praying for people we don’t know, people who aren’t like us, and even people we
don’t like. It’s really hard to hate
someone you’re praying for. If you’re
open to following Jesus’s example and praying in this manner, then a simple way
to begin is with your bulletin. Each
week we have a prayer list full of people in need of prayer, and many of them
you don’t know. Or grab a member
directory and pray for a page worth of names each week. Or as you drive or walk around town, pray for
the people you pass on the street or see in stores. See if that doesn’t change your attitude
about them, and about yourself.
One last thing: there’s a surprise hidden
in Part 3 of this prayer. You weren’t
yet born when Jesus prayed this prayer. Yet even then, when you were still one of God’s wishes, one of
God’s dreams, Jesus prayed for you. Out loud! In his own voice. Jesus prayed
for you. Anytime you feel down,
or worthless, or like you have no future, think about that. Jesus prayed for YOU. Because you mattered then to Jesus and
you matter now to him too.
Friends, we were made to pray. It’s as integral to us as our DNA. Praying shapes us, transforms us, and gives us life. It doesn’t have to be complicated. Jesus shows us how. (1) Pray for yourself. (2) Pray for those closest to you. And (3)
Pray for those you don’t know. Amen.
© 2026 Rev. Scott E. Schul, all rights reserved
Gospel
Text: John 17:1-6, 9-11, 20-21
1 After Jesus had spoken these words [to his
disciples], he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come;
glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, 2 since you
have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you
have given him. 3 And this is eternal life, that they may know
you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. 4 I
glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. 5 So
now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your
presence before the world existed.
6 “I have made your name known to those whom you gave
me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept
your word. 9 I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on
behalf of the world but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are
yours. 10 All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I have
been glorified in them. 11 And now I am no longer in the world,
but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in
your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.
20 “I ask not only on behalf of these but also on
behalf of those who believe in me through their word, 21 that
they may all be one.”
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