Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers by Shane Claiborne

Author:Shane Claiborne [Claiborne, Shane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780830878208
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2009-10-16T00:00:00+00:00

5

Praying as a Peculiar Peopl

Jesus’ prayer for unity has convinced us that learning to love one another is perhaps our most important call. But Jesus goes on to say in John 17:9, “I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me.” Once again, Jesus’ words seem strange. Why isn’t he praying for the world? We were both raised in good Bible-belt churches, Shane in a Methodist church on the west side of the Appalachians and Jonathan in a Baptist church on the east side of the same range. (We’re still trying to figure out this eastside-westside battle that we’ve heard about since coming to the city, but that’s another story.)

In the churches where we grew up, we all memorized John 3:16 long before we went to school: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (kjv). That’s how much God loves the world—so much that Jesus died for it. So why doesn’t Jesus pray for the world in John 17?

Most of the saints who inspire us are people who have cared a lot about God’s good world. St. Francis preached to the birds, tamed a vicious wolf, visited with Muslims during the Crusades and sang a canticle to the sun. We have been transformed by God’s love through the “worldly” faith of saints like Francis, and we have seen with our own eyes the truth of his conviction. Iraqis and welfare moms, inmates and homeless folk have been our teachers. We have seen the Holy Spirit at work among anarchist punk kids and on military bases, in the marketplace and in the alley. We can say with the song- writer, “This is my Father’s world. / He shines in all that’s fair.”[1] But the longer we press on with the people of God, the more we’re learning to see why Jesus says to his Father, “I am not praying for the world.”

We have some friends who started a community about twenty years ago in a poor, immigrant neighborhood of San Francisco. At their InterVarsity chapter in college, they had read the over two thousand verses of Scripture about the poor and knew of God’s passionate love for the down-trodden and neglected. They wanted to share that love with refugees from Central America, so they moved in together, started a legal clinic in their garage and hosted a summer program for kids in their home. They taught English as a second language (ESL) courses and helped people find jobs. They poured themselves into service because they knew God loved the world and believed that was what they were supposed to be doing.

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