"Who Believes in You" - Tansfiguartion C

Saint John 17:20-26

Late May and early June are the seasons for graduations and commencements.

I have always loved the colors if not the excitement of a good college commencement.  The robes which often matched the school colors, the academic hoods to signify the degree, and the hats.  Of course the hats where  mortarboards, berets, and the occasional biretta on the clergy make for a spectacle worthy of opening day at Ascot or the Kentucky derby.

I have saved a card from my last commencement because it summed up the occasion perfectly.  “Graduation.”  it said.  “A time when really smart people dress up in really stupid outfits.”

Every commencement worthy of the name has to have a speaker.  A man or woman is required to get up and say something.  The something they say is usually some “out the door” advice to students who would rather be “out the door” than listening to advice. 

If you are at a really famous university chances are you will have a really famous speaker.  If you are at a smaller school you’ll probably hear from a major donor or a crony of one of the trustees.  In the latter case you probably won’t even know who it is.

I wonder how many students in the 2014 graduating class of the University of Texas at Austin knew who Admiral William H.  McCraven was.

He was profiled recently on CBS News Sunday Morning and even though the piece was about his retirement from the Navy after leading missions to Iran and Afghanistan and commanding the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound when I saw him I said to Lowell, “He’s the ‘make your bed’ guy!”

It still amazes the Admiral that a little commencement speech he made five years ago is what he is most remembered for.

Here is the part of the presentation that went viral.

Every morning in basic SEAL training, my instructors, who at the time were all Viet Nam veterans, would show up in my barracks room and the first thing they would inspect was your bed.

If you did it right, the corners would be square, the covers pulled tight, the pillow centered just under the headboard and the extra blanket folded neatly at the foot of the rack-rack—that’s Navy talk for bed.

It was a simple task—mundane at best. But every morning we were required to make our bed to perfection. It seemed a little ridiculous at the time, particularly in light of the fact that were aspiring to be real warriors, tough battle hardened SEALs—but the wisdom of this simple act has been proven to me many times over.

If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another.

By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter.

And if by chance your have had a miserable day you will come home to a bed that’s made - made by you - and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.1

 In today’s gospel we are listening to Jesus’ last minute instructions.  This may seem strange because we are seven Sundays into the Easter season and almost to the day of Pentecost but the instructions from Jesus that we read today come before the crucifixion.  The crowds of thousands are long gone and he is alone with his disciples in a private quarter of Jerusalem.  Immediately afterward in John’s gospel he heads to the garden site where he is arrested. \

He concludes his instructions with a prayer.  It is a powerful prayer for them and for us.  Listen carefully to the words again from another translation:  “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message...”2

That’s us.  That is you and me.  Jesus is praying for us.  Jesus is praying for this church.

What if we really believed that?  What if we really lived into the promise that Jesus is not only hoping the best but praying the best for us?  What if we remembered that, in his darkest hour, Jesus fell to his knees and prayed for us?

It makes a difference when a person prays for you and believes in you.

Here is how that might work from a Rick Reilly column on espn.com when he wrote about the “the oddest game in high school football history ...down in Grapevine, Texas. It was Grapevine Faith vs. Gainesville State School and everything about it was upside down.”

This all started when Faith's head coach, Kris Hogan, wanted to do something kind for the Gainesville team. Faith had never played Gainesville, but he already knew the score. After all, Faith was 7-2 going into the game, Gainesville 0-8 with 2 TDs all year. Faith has 70 kids, 11 coaches, the latest equipment and involved parents. Gainesville has a lot of kids with convictions for drugs, assault and robbery—many of whose families had disowned them—wearing seven-year-old shoulder pads and ancient helmets.

So Hogan had this idea. What if half of our fans—for one night only—cheered for the other team? He sent out an email asking the Faithful to do just that. "Here's the message I want you to send:" Hogan wrote. "You are just as valuable as any other person on planet Earth."

Some people were naturally confused. One Faith player walked into Hogan's office and asked, "Coach, why are we doing this?"

And Hogan said, "Imagine if you didn't have a home life. Imagine if everybody had pretty much given up on you. Now imagine what it would mean for hundreds of people to suddenly believe in you."

[So] when Gainesville came out to take the field, the Faith fans made a 40-yard spirit line for them to run through.  They even made a banner for players to crash through at the end. It said, "Go Tornadoes!" Which is also weird, because Faith is the Lions.

More than 200 Faith fans sat on the Gainesville side and kept cheering the Gainesville players on—by name. [T]he Gainesville Tornadoes were turning around on their bench to see something they never had before. Hundreds of fans. And actual cheerleaders!

"I thought maybe they were confused," said Alex, a Gainesville lineman (only first names are released by the prison). "They started yelling 'DEE-fense!' when their team had the ball. I said, 'What? Why they cheerin' for us?'"

As one might expect Grapevine Faith beat the Gainesville State Tornados by a whopping 33-14.

After the game, both teams gathered in the middle of the field to pray and that's when Isaiah surprised everybody by asking to lead. "We had no idea what the kid was going to say," remembers Coach Hogan. But Isaiah said this: "Lord, I don't know how this happened, so I don't know how to say thank You, but I never would've known there was so many people in the world that cared about us."3

People of God the good news for you this morning is that somebody cares about you.  Somebody is even praying for you. 

As you go about the everyday tasks of the day be they great or small someone cares about you.  When you face the greatest struggles of life somebody believes in you and is praying for you.

And that somebody is no less than Jesus Christ our Lord.

Thanks for listening.

________________

1.  William H. McRaven, "Find Courage to Change the World" (speech), June 17, 2014, accessed May 31, 2019, https://news.utexas.edu/2014/05/16/mcraven-urges-graduates-to-find-courage-to-change-the-world/.

2.  St. John 17:20.  (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]

3.  Rick Reilly, "Life of Reilly," ESPN, May 12, 2014, , accessed June 01, 2019, http://www.espn.com/espn/rickreilly/news/story?id=3789373.