17:5 And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. 6 “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 7 Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. 8 For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. 9 I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. 10 All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. 11 And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.
– John 17:5-11
On this Maundy Thursday, a day named as such because of the mandate Jesus gave His disciples to “love one another as He has loved us,” we read from a section in John’s Gospel known as Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer. On the evening before He was to die on the cross for our sin, just as the High Priest would intercede before God on behalf of the people, Jesus was interceding for us as His Church.
Two things stand out in the opening verses of this chapter. The first is the fact that Jesus was praying for the glory He shared with His Father to be restored. From the beginning of time, Jesus, as the second person in the Trinity, was one with the Father, along with the unity they shared with the Holy Spirit. In their Triune nature, they were one with each other and they shared a glory that was theirs from before the world began. Now that He was about to finish His work on earth, by offering His life on the cross, Jesus prayed that the Father would be glorified through His death and that in His death, and subsequent resurrection, the glory that was His with the Father would be restored.
He also prayed for the protection of His people from the evil one and for them to experience the same kind of unity that He and His Father shared. He prayed for our unity in the Church. He prayed for our protection against the one whose sole purpose is to attack what belongs to Christ. In so doing, He prayed that our unity together, rooted in His teachings and work, in His life, death and resurrection, that we would be so united in Him and with each other, that nothing that the evil one might send our way would pull us apart from each other or from Him.
How fitting on this Maundy Thursday, a day in which we remember the mandate given to us, “to love one another as we have been loved by Him,” that Jesus would pray for our unity and our protection, and that our unity in Him would bind us together and, thereby, protect us throughout all of life.
Prayer: Lord Jesus, thank You for Your prayer, for interceding for us, that we might be one as You and the Father are one. Amen.
Lenten Response: Read Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer in John 17, and then pray that His prayer would be answered and lived out in your life.
Devotion written by the Rev. Daniel Selbo
Morning Psalms
Evening Psalms
Amalie Wilhelmina Sieveking, Renewer of Society, 1859; Frederick Denison Maurice, Priest, 1872 (April 1)
About the Commemoration
Two nineteenth-century social reformers may be remembered together on this day.
Amalie (Amelia) Sieveking, an early and vigorous worker for the emancipation of women, was born July 25,1794, in Hamburg, Germany, and was orphaned at an early age. Not long afterward, her brother, who had been her support, also died, and she found a home with relatives. She grew in her love of the Bible and in her desire to help the poor. Vincent de Paul (1576-1660) and the Sisters of Mercy he founded (see September 27) had attracted a good deal of interest among evangelical leaders for their devoted service and their organization. The sisters belonged to a motherhouse but went out to serve in hospitals and prisons, among the poor and the sick, and wherever they were needed. Their service was given in response to a specific human need. At the age of eighteen, Amalie Sieveking tried to create an evangelical sisterhood to work with the poor and needy but could not find support for her idea. With a few associates she began a school for young women and taught the poor on Sunday afternoons. In 1830 a cholera epidemic broke out in Hamburg, and, in the absence of trained nurses and her invitation to other women to join her being rejected, by herself she began caring for the victims of the epidemic. On December 13, 1831, the first cholera patient was admitted to the hospital, and Sieveking entered the hospital with her and remained there until the epidemic was ended.
In this work she encountered the deep poverty of large parts of the population and, as a result, in 1832 organized in Hamburg the Society for the Care of the Poor and the Sick This group of women volunteered their time for the work of social welfare and the organization became a model for similar groups in many cities of northern Germany. Pastor Theodor Fliedner twice attempted to enlist her service at his institutions, once as Mother Superior at Kaiserswerth and again for Bethany in Berlin, but she would not give up her work in Hamburg. Amalie Sieveking died April 1, 1859. She is commemorated on that date by the German Evangelical Calendar of Names (1962).
Frederick Denison Maurice, the son of a Unitarian minister, was born in 1805. He attended Cambridge University but as a nonconformist was excluded from receiving a degree. After several personal crises, he became an Anglican, went to Exeter College, Oxford, and was ordained in 1834. Two years later he became chaplain of Guy’s Hospital in London where he lectured regularly on moral philosophy and wrote the first and best-known of his many books, The Kingdom of Christ (1838). In this book, as in his other writings, he sought to apply the Christian faith to social and political life. His strong belief in the incarnation and the visible church led him to take up the cause of social reform. He and his friends were known as “Christian Socialists” and awakened the Church of England to concern for the material as well as the spiritual welfare of the working classes. In 1854 he founded and served as the first principal of the “Working Man’s College.” To the Church he preached richer fellowship; to the socialists he proclaimed the necessity of Christianity. The Christian Socialist Movement, he declared, “will commit us at once to the conflict we must engage in sooner or later with the unsocial Christians and the unchristian Socialists.” He died at Cambridge April 1, 1872. He is on the calendar in the American Book of Common Prayer.
Excerpts from New Book of Festivals & Commemorations: A Proposed Common Calendar of Saints by Philip H. Pfatteicher, copyright, 2008 by Fortress Press, an imprint of Augsburg Fortress.
See also: Amalie Sieveking; Frederick Denison Maurice
Reading
From The Kingdom of Christ by Frederick Denison Maurice
Our Lord came among men that he might bring them into a kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy, a kingdom grounded upon fellowship with a righteous and perfect Being….
For that men are not to gain a kingdom hereafter, but are put in possession of it now, and that through their chastisements and the oppositions of their evil nature they are to learn its character and enter into its privileges, is surely taught in every verse of St Peter; and that love has been manifested unto men, that they have been brought into fellowship with it, that by that fellowship they may rise to the fruition of it, and that this fellowship is for us as members of a family, so that he who loveth God must love his brother also, is affirmed again and again in express words of St John.
Frederick Denison Maurice, The Kingdom of Christ, vol. 2, ed. A. R. Vidler (London: SCM, 1958), 256-57.
Propers
Almighty God, you restored our human nature to heavenly glory through the perfect obedience of our Savior Jesus Christ: Keep alive in your Church, we pray, a passion for justice and truth; that, like your servants Frederick Denison Maurice and Amalie Sieveking, we may work and pray for the triumph of your Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
LFF alt.
Readings: Psalm 72:11-17 or 145:8-13; Ephesians 3:14-19; John 18:33-37
Hymn of the Day: “Father eternal, Ruler of creation” (H82 573, LBW 413)
Prayers: For all who are working for the renewal and unity of the church; For the gift to see Christ in other people; For all who apply the message of the Bible to national and civic life; For a renewed sense of compassion for the poor and infirm; For those who teach the underprivileged the way of God.
Preface: Baptism (BCP, LBW)
Color: White
This daily prayer and Bible reading guide, Devoted to Prayer (based on Acts 2:42), was conceived and prepared by the Rev. Andrew S. Ames Fuller, director of communications for the North American Lutheran Church (NALC). After a challenging year in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have been provided with a unique opportunity to revitalize the ancient practice of daily prayer and Scripture reading in our homes. While the Reading the Word of God three-year lectionary provided a much-needed and refreshing calendar for our congregations to engage in Scripture reading, this calendar includes a missing component of daily devotion: prayer. This guide is to provide the average layperson and pastor with the simple tools for sorting through the busyness of their lives and reclaiming an act of daily discipleship with their Lord. The daily readings follow the Lutheran Book of Worship two-year daily lectionary, which reflect the church calendar closely. The commemorations are adapted from Philip H. Pfatteicher’s New Book of Festivals and Commemorations, a proposed common calendar of the saints that builds from the Lutheran Book of Worship, but includes saints from many of those churches in ecumenical conversation with the NALC. The introductory portion is adapted from Christ Church (Plano)’s Pray Daily. Our hope is that this calendar and guide will provide new life for congregations learning and re-learning to pray in the midst of a difficult and changing world.