Somebody Prayed For You

Rev. Bobby Musengwa

Transitional General Presbyter

"I pray for them… for they are yours." — John 17:9

This week, I have the honor and privilege of preaching at a vespers service for the graduating class of high school students at the Presbyterian Pan American School in Kingsville, South Texas. 

As a graduate of a boarding school myself, I can relate to some of their boarding school experiences. 

This is the context of my reflection.

While the students are all from various countries, I understand that most of them come from Mexico. 

These students have been living and studying far from home, far from the voices of the people who love them most. 

The Presbyterian Pan American School (PPAS) has blessed Mission Presbytery with some luminous and distinguished alumni, such as the Rev. Lemuel Garcia-Arroyo at the Stewardship & Funds Development of the PCUSA, Rev. Jasiel Hernandez Garcia of First Presbyterian Church in Kerrville, and most recently ordained a week ago, Rev. David Angulo, at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Austin. 

There are many more of these formidable, beloved PPAS graduates for whom we give thanks to God. 

These are dearly beloved people who embody the core values of the Presbyterian Pan American school, one of which is to “Inspire students to thrive and to lead the next generation into an ever-changing world.”

As I look out at their faces — young, bright, full of possibility and uncertainty — one thought keeps rising in me like a tide:

Somebody prayed for you to get here.

In John 17, we are given one of the most intimate and extraordinary scenes in all of Scripture. 

The entire chapter is Jesus’s prayer. 

On the night before Jesus’s crucifixion, the night we know as Maundy Thursday, with the cross casting its shadow over every word, Jesus looked toward heaven and prayed — not for himself, but for those entrusted to his care. 

"I pray for them," he said. 

Not for the powerful. Not for the comfortable. For them. For us. For these graduating students.

We are all beneficiaries of the prayers of Jesus Christ.

Think about that!

Before you knew your own name, before you made your first choice or drew your first breath of faith, the Son of God was interceding for you. 

He is interceding for you still, at the right hand of God, even now. 

Your life — with all of its chapters, its detours, its graces and its griefs — has been held in the prayers of Jesus.

With this fervent prayer, Jesus started a long prayer chain. 

Jesus’s prayer is like a deep river, gushing forth into many tributaries of prayers flowing over the ages.

Think of those who came before you. Those who prayed for you.

Your ancestors — people whose names you may carry but whose faces you may never have seen — knelt in fields and kitchens and small churches and asked God to be faithful to the children who would come after them. 

They could not have imagined you. They prayed for you anyway. 

You are your ancestors’ dream come true. 

Your grandparents whispered your future before it existed. 

Your parents have worn out the knees of their prayers on your behalf.

You are your parents’ answered prayers.

Indeed, we are beneficiaries of a long, unbroken chain of intercession.

And that means something. 

It means we did not arrive where we are by our own brilliance and ingenuity alone. 

We were carried here — by grace, yes, but also by the faithful, persistent, often unseen prayers of people who loved us and loved God and believed those two loves belonged together.

Which brings us to the question that reflection always asks: Now what?

Now we pray. We pray for those coming behind us — the young people finding their footing, the communities struggling for dignity, the neighbors near and far who are navigating a world in revolution. 

We do not simply receive the gift of intercession and world class education and keep it. 

We pass it forward.

And we work. Prayer and action have never been enemies in the Reformed tradition. 

We pray, and then we rise from our knees and we labor for the world our prayers describe — a world of justice, of peace, of flourishing for all of God's children and all of God's creation. 

We pray for the hungry, and we feed them. 

We pray for the marginalized, and we stand beside them. 

We pray for creation, and we tend it with care.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once warned people not to sleep through a revolution. 

We are living through the revolution right now — technological, social, cultural revolution — and the temptation to disengage, to draw back into the comfortable and the familiar, is real. 

But the Church was never called to sleep. 

It was called to be awake, to be salt and light, to be a community of people whose prayers cost them something because their prayers commit them to something.

As you go out into the world, seek out and join a community of faith, with whom you would walk along on this long journey of life. 

Seek out people who love and care for one another, who strive to make justice roll down like a mighty river.

Seek out a Beloved Community. If you don’t find one, create one. 

My youth pastor, Tshifhiwa Muofhe, who was unjustly killed by Apartheid police, once told us, “Young as you are, you have the power to change the world.”

Those words changed my life. They inspired me. Your words matter. Your words and actions have power. Choose wisely.

Our world is groaning. It’s suffering from injustice and inequity. 

You have been prepared to live in this world. You have all that you need to make the world a better and safer place.

Surely, somebody prayed for you. 

Mission Presbytery prayed for you, and we will continue to pray for you.

The world is still waiting for the fruit of those prayers — in your hands, your voice, your choices, your service.

Pray for others. Work for justice. Work for peace. Build and strengthen the Beloved Community, wherever you are. 

Do not shrink yourself from assuming your full responsibilities before you. 

Let no one else define you but yourself. You are a beloved child of God. You belong to God. You are loved. Period.

Trust that God is still gathering the harvest of every faithful prayer ever lifted in love.

Surrounded by Jesus’s prayer, and the prayers of your ancestors, your grandparents, your parents, your teachers, your friends, your faith community, you’ve got this.

Go out into the world, confident that you are surrounded by our prayers, and the prayer of Jesus. 

Go now and flourish. Go Eagles. Fly away! Let the world marvel as the Eagles fly away!

To God be the glory!