The Church Jesus Prayed For: A personal journey into John 17

by Michael Cassidy

Masterful, comprehensive, and timely.' - Professor Eugene H. Peterson, Professor Emeritus of Spiritual Theology, Regent College, Vancouver This book is the fruit of meditation over thirty-five years on John 17. For most of his ministry Michael Cassidy has been wracked by the discrepancy between the church Jesus portrays, and the church in daily experience. Luther wrote of John17: 'It is so deep, so rich, so wide, no one can fathom it.' John Knox had the chapter read to him every day of his last illness. William Temple once reflected that 'it is perhaps the most sacred passage even in the four Gospels.' John Stott called it 'one of the profoundest chapters of the Bible'. Michael Cassidy looks at Jesus's vision and the church's mundane reality with care and prayerful reflection, asking: Where have we gone wrong? What can we do? How should we amend our ways? He studs his text with dozens of luminous and engaging anecdotes. This is an enormously readable and attractive book, permeated with Michael's generous, engaging spirit and shot through with insights into the human condition.

416 pages, Paperback

First published November 23, 2012

Reviews

[Alun]

Excellent commentary on Jesus' prayer in John 17 full of careful thought, inspiration and wisdom. I can recommend this volume as well worth reading. The book is Biblical throughout with an emphasis on Christian Unity which is essential nowadays.

Esboniad ardderchog o'r weddi offeiriadol gan Iesu yn Ioan 17. Mae'r dadansoddi yn fanwl iawn gan ei fod yn treulio amser yn edrych ar bob cymal. Defnyddiais y llyfr fel sylfaen i'm dyletswydd foreol wrth ddarllen gair Duw. Ydy hi yn ormodol dweud fod hon yn gyfrol ysbrydoledig? Nacydy

[David Meldrum · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is really a summation of Michael Cassidy's life and work, in both a good and not so good fashion. It's helpful in that what we have in places here are hard-won insights that no-one can accuse of being shallow or frothy. Here's a man who's life of service proves that he's sought to live in the direction of the truths which this book unpacks. It's hard to question the 10 marks of church which he identifies in John 17; clearly much theological work has gone into this, but it's still a relatively easy read - he doesn't feel a need to 'show the working', thankfully. There's much meat to chew on here.

Which is why it feels strange to come to the end of it and feel there's something slightly dis-satisfying about the book. A few times I was left thinking 'yes, and ... ?'; at others it felt more like there were a few things he wanted to get off his chest rather than truths that were being mined. There's a lack of engagement with the times that leaves you feeling the book wants to go back to what was rather than discover what God is doing. At times there's real depths - and others it's in danger of a deceptive shallowness in that it lacks application to what we're facing here and now.

Helpful, but not all it could have been.