The Sánchez Archives SEVENTH SUNDAY OF EASTER YEAR A

By
Patricia Datchuck Sánchez

WHERE IS YOUR UPPER ROOM?

ACTS 1:12-14
1 PETER 4:13-16
JOHN 17:1-11

Everyone needs an Upper Room. Everyone needs a place whether it be an actual physical locale or simply a spiritual meeting of minds and hearts, where it is possible to pause and pray and be together with others who believe in and are committed to Christ. An Upper Room offers a time and place for the necessary human and divine exchanges which keep individuals and communities on track and clear-eyed, realistic about the present, and optimistic about the future. Those who seek the company of one another in an Upper Room find support, feedback and advice concerning similar values and goals. It is in an Upper Room where diverse ideas can be aired, evaluated and appreciated; it is there that acceptance and affirmation are found when difficulties threaten to depress both joy and hope. Upper Rooms are think-tanks where the sharing of enthusiasms and imaginations can offer new life to those wearied by the banality of routine tasks. Upper Rooms can be a resource-center, when energies are stymied by life’s burdens and it becomes difficult to decide what to do, how to live, when to act, what to say. An Upper Room is a place of respite where there are no protocols; it is a source of security and welcome, of tranquility and rest.

An Upper Room can be a mobile event, like a quiet walk with friends, an Upper Room can be a gathering in a fellowship hall or parish center, a neighbor’s home, a shared picnic in a city park, or even an appointment with a trusted mentor. For many believers, the weekly sacramental gathering of the worshipping community constitutes the Upper Room experience.

But Upper Rooms are not permanent residences. They are necessary resting and renewal places, but not hiding places where refugees from reality may escape from the world. Once individual believers and the community are mutually refreshed, the Upper Room must be left behind for a time; the renewal it has afforded must be translated into service for others. In reminding its members of their responsibility for allowing that experience to spill over into the rest of the week, the United Presbyterian Church included the following petition in its Litany For Holy Communion (1962): “Forgive us for turning our churches into private clubs; for loving familiar hymns and religious feelings more than we love You; for putting stained glass on our eyes and our ears to shut out the cry of the hungry and the hurt of the world.”

As Luke recounts in today’s first reading, the disciples returned to Jerusalem to the Upper Room after Jesus’ death, resurrection and return to the Father. All of the Twelve were present except Judas. With Mary and the others who gathered with them, the disciples prayed and renewed each other with the memory of what had happened in the Upper Room the night before Jesus died. But, as they were directed by the angel messengers (see Feast of Ascension, Acts 1:11), they were not to remain on the mountain, gazing at the sky, awaiting Jesus’ return; nor were they to ensconce themselves in the Upper Room. The time had come for them to assume the work Jesus had begun.

In today’s gospel, the Johannine Jesus assures his disciples that his concern for them will not cease after his departure; for those to whom he had entrusted the message of salvation, he will continue to pray to the Father. On the strength of Jesus’ prayer, believers can persevere in his service until the time comes to join him in the eternal Upper Room.

Reminding his readers that baptismal commitment to Christ and the church will necessarily entail suffering, the author of 1 Peter offers the encouragement that suffering will lend to glory and rejoicing.

Where is your Upper Room? Have you been there lately?

ACTS 1:12-14

Today, both Christian and Jewish visitors to Jerusalem include the traditional site of the Upper Room or cenacle (from the Latin coenaculum which means dining room) on their tour. For their part, Christians venerate the memory and significance of the Upper Room on the second floor of a Gothic chapel southwest of the present city walls. Jewish tourists gather on the ground floor of the same building to view an ancient cenotaph of David, the tenth century B.C.E. king of Israel.

Average homes in ancient Palestine were simple one-storied flat-roofed structures; wealthier people however often included a guest room on the second or upper floor, with an outside staircase leading up to it. In an Upper Room such as this, Jesus had celebrated his last supper with his disciples, and Luke would have us understand that it was in this same Upper Room that the disciples gathered after Jesus’ departure. (Luke 22:11-12, Acts 1:13). Notice the description of their gathering place as the Upper Room, indicating that it was a site already familiar to the community.

Having made their way about a Sabbath’s journey (about 1.2 kilometers or 0.75 miles) from Mt. Olivet, the disciples assembled in the Upper Room and “devoted themselves to constant prayer.” Here, as elsewhere in the Lucan literature, prayer is featured as a necessary preparation for and prelude to a significant event in Jesus life and in that of the church (Luke 3:21; 5:16; 6:12; 9:18; 9:29; 22:32; 23:46; Acts 1:24-26; 2:46 ff; 4:24-30, etc.). Here also, as was his habit, Luke has portrayed Mary, present with Jesus and present with the church as a model of a prayerful, believing disciple.

No doubt, Luke’s readers recalled his descriptions of Mary as one who had cherished all of her experiences of Jesus and reflected on them in her heart (Luke 2:19, 51). Margaret Hebblethwaite (Six New Gospels, New Testament Women Tell Their Stories, Cowley Pub., Boston: 1994), has suggested that Mary’s example was helpful to the early church in developing its theology. “That is true theology”, says Hebblethwaite, “to experience, to reflect, to live and value the reality, and then out of the richness of one’s heart to bring up an eternal truth, drawn out of the human story.”

By virtue of their reflection on their experiences of Jesus, their trust in God and their prayerful receptivity to his overtures, the first believers were able to begin to assimilate what they had been privileged to witness during Jesus’ ministry among them. They began, in an atmosphere of prayer, to come to terms with the mystery of his death and resurrection and to understand these events as part of God’s revealed plan of salvation. Through the impetus of ongoing daily prayer they were able to begin to integrate the faith they professed in those first simple creeds (e.g. “Jesus lives!”, “The Lord has indeed been raised from the dead!”) with the lives they were called to lead as a consequence of their faith.

Those who gathered in the Upper Room so many centuries ago, continue to inspire this gathered assembly to persevere in constant prayer and faithful discipleship.

1 PETER 4:13-16

Just as their experiences of prayer and reflection in the Upper Room helped the earliest believers to develop a theology regarding Jesus’ death and resurrection, so did the existential situation of later generations of Christians aid them in probing more deeply the mystery of Jesus’ redemptive suffering. The recipients of 1 Peter were being subjected to an ever escalating persecution because of their acceptance of Christ. No longer regarded as a sect or offshoot of Judaism (a religion tolerated by the empire’s authorities), because of the breach between the church and synagogue which occurred in the mid-80s C.E., Christians became the targets of Roman as well as Jewish animosity. A sharer in the persecution of his contemporaries, the author of 1 Peter urged his readers to consider their personal passions in light of Jesus’ passion and to find therein some positive, redemptive value in their suffering.

To further encourage his readers to persevere in their commitment to Christ, despite the hardships it entailed, this ancient letter writer recalled the fact that Jesus’ suffering had been his path to glory; so also would the suffering of each disciple conclude in a share in his glory. Reminding the persecuted Christians that their suffering provided an occasion for the Spirit to be manifested in them (vs. 14), he assured them that they were not alone in their troubles. The correlation of suffering and the presence of the Spirit was a frequent theme of the early Christian writers (John 15:8-16:15, Romans 8:18-23). In fact, it was believed that because persecutions and suffering were a means whereby the presence of the Spirit was revealed, both of these factors (tribulation and presence of the Spirit) were signals of the final age and the beginning of everlasting glory (Isaiah 11:2, Joel 3:1-5). Moreover, because suffering patterns the life of the believer so closely to the life of Jesus, it can prove to be source of rejoicing.

But the author of 1 Peter made it clear that the suffering which results from being sinful (vs. 15), is of no redemptive value. Then, in one of the few instances in the new Testament where the term Christian appears (vs. 16) this early author asserted that suffering for being a Christian should bring no shame; in fact, it becomes an act whereby God is glorified.

As is frequently the case, edifying words such as these which comprise today’s second reading, are difficult to remember or to make sense of when we feel overwhelmed by the suffering and burdens of life. In such instances, a trip to the Upper Room may help to maintain our perspective and renew our resolve in living the faith to which we have been called.

JOHN 17:1-11

A businessman and admirer of Mother Teresa of Calcutta (born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje, Albania, in 1910) offered to make a set of “business cards” for her work. Imprinted on the small yellow cards, are five lines which outline the direction of what Mother Teresa calls her simple path. The cards read: “The fruit of silence is PRAYER. The fruit of prayer is FAITH. The fruit of faith is LOVE. The fruit of love is SERVICE. The fruit of service is PEACE” (Mother Teresa, A Simple Path, Ballantine Books, New York: 1995). This simple path has led Mother Teresa to live her life in union with God and given in loving service to the poorest of the poor. While he was with them, Jesus marked a similar path for his disciples. A life of prayer, faith, love, service and peace was his legacy to them, and before he returned to the Father who had sent him, he prayed that his followers would persevere in the path he himself had traveled. To aid believers in keeping to the path he had set for them, Jesus promised that he and the Father would come to dwell within them through the Spirit who would remain with them always (recall the gospel for Sixth Sunday of Easter, especially John 14:16-20). In a sense, Jesus was telling his disciples that each of them would become a dwelling place for God, a meeting place of prayer and peace, an Upper Room!

Today’s gospel is an excerpt from a lengthier prayer (John 17:1-26), which Cyril, patriarch of Alexandria (from 414-444 C.E.) called Christ’s priestly prayer and which the Lutheran theologian David Chrytaeus (d. 1600 C.E.) called Jesus’ high priestly prayer. Reminiscent to the prayer of Aaron (Leviticus 9:16), the prayer is comprised of petitions for Jesus himself (vvs. 1-5), for his followers (vss. 6-19) and for all who would come to believe in him through the work of his disciples (vss. 20-26).

Jesus prayed that just as his life had been spent glorifying the Father (vs. 4) by: making him known (vss. 3,6), by speaking and living the saving word he had been sent to reveal (vs. 8) and by accomplishing the work he had been given to do (vs. 4), so also would his followers tread a similar path to glory.

Some scholars have suggested that this prayer, which concludes the last supper discourse, may have been structured on the petitions of the Our Father or Lord’s Prayer. For example, Jesus addressed God as Father, verses 1, 5, 11, 21, 24, 25. A reference to “hallowed be thy name” is echoed in verses 6, 11, 12, 26. “Your kingdom come” is referenced in verse 1. “On earth as it is in heaven” is reflected in verses 4 and 5, while the phrase “I kept, I guarded them from the evil one” (John 17:12, 15) is equivalent to “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” (F. H. Chase, The Lord’s Prayer in the Early Church, Theological Studies, 1981). Because the Johannine author incorporated this, his version of the Our Father into the eucharistic setting of the last supper and because he has here portrayed Jesus as high priest, some have suggested that John 17 could be appreciated as a sort of eucharistic prayer. As the culmination of Jesus’ teaching ministry (Liturgy of the Word) and as the preface to the ultimate saving sacrifice of himself (Breaking of the Bread of his Body; Liturgy of the Eucharist), Jesus, in John 17 is celebrating what Teilhard de Chardin once called a Mass of the World or a liturgy of life.

Each Sunday, those who would follow Jesus’ path to glory are called to the Upper Room; there once again we celebrate with him and with one another the liturgy of our life and salvation.

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