I did not even make an attempt to memorize the Gospel reading for this morning. At the synod assembly this week, the bishop preached on this text, and he also read the Gospel rather than memorizing it, announcing that in thirty-plus years of ministry he’d never managed to memorize Jesus’ farewell prayer for his disciples. So rather than stumble through an attempt this morning, I decided it was better if we just wonder in it together.
Chapter seventeen sits at a pivotal point in John’s Gospel. If chapters fourteen through sixteen are the shift from Jesus’ ministry to his passion, chapter seventeen is the tipping point of that shift. In this prayer, Jesus turned his attention from his disciples to God. While the Jesus of John’s Gospel was always in control, from here on out that control becomes laser focused on one thing and one thing only, the revelation of the ultimate glory of God through the cross. Fun fact for you to consider: on Good Fridays when I tell the passion story, I always stage it so Jesus is in the very center. Everything else, the disciples in the courtyard, Pilate going out to speak to the crowds, all of that action rotates around Jesus like the spoke of a wheel. The characters of the passion story are like an orchestra, whom Jesus is conducting to uncover the revelation of God’s glory.
But before that, before Jesus directed the disciples like a string section, to rise and fall and rise again through the story of his passion, Jesus gathered them together in a room and prayed for them. And this prayer is the theological climax of Jesus teaching’ ministry, this prayer echoes themes from throughout the Gospel. This prayer also tells us something else incredibly powerful about Jesus, it is a demonstration of just how much “the Word became flesh and lived among us” was about the importance God places in the power of presence. Jesus’ parting words in and among his disciples in the flesh were not a final lesson on mission and discipleship, or a clarification of his purpose, or a call to action. Jesus’ final words weren’t even to them; they were for them. Jesus’ last action as their Teacher was to pray for them, that they may be as intimately connected to God as he himself was, that they may be one with God, as Jesus was, is, and always had been, since “before the world existed,” “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
One of the reasons this passage is hard to memorize is Jesus seems to have little regard for time. We humans function on a chronological time scale, traveling in a line with a fixed past, present, and future. But in this prayer, Jesus speaks of his hour as passed, in verse eleven when he said, “I am no longer in the world,” imminent but not yet present, verse one, “Father, the hour has come,” and also yet also in the process of happening, again verse eleven, “I am coming to you.” C. S. Lewis described humanity’s relationship to time as moving along the edge of a ruler, with God being the air around the ruler, touching it at all parts at all times, both behind us, ahead of us, above and below us. In John chapter seventeen, the Word became flesh begins the process of stepping out of flesh again, out of the constraints of human existence, and back into the oneness of God.
All of this is cool, and beautiful, and powerful, but what really caught my attention in the text this week is verse three. Jesus started his prayer by asking God to glorify him, since God had given him authority to give eternal life. Now, Jesus had been talking about eternal life a lot during his ministry. Through chapter twelve, basically up until the farewell discourse with the disciples, eternal life had been his favorite topic of conversation. Eternal life was the primary description of the gift Jesus brought to those who believed in him. But he never explained what he was talking about, leaving his disciples, the crowds, and everyone to wonder what exactly he was offering.
The phrase “eternal life” conjures up a whole host of images. We know “eternal life” does not literally mean living forever, like some sort of weird fountain of life. Though some of the disciples certainly had that impression, which is why Paul had to assure them in First Thessalonians when some of the original followers started dying, that the fact that Jesus had not returned in a few years was not proof he was never coming back. In the two millennia since the death of Jesus, billions upon billions of followers have died, so we know eternal life is not never dying. But given the reality of physical death, we do place a physical construct on eternal life, and think about it as life after death. Eternal life is life in the future.
But listen to how Jesus defined it: “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Did you catch that? “And this is eternal life…” Not, “and this will be” eternal life, but “this is” eternal life, that they may know you. Eternal life isn’t time-based or spatial, eternal life is relationship, relationship with God, “that they may be one, as we are one.” Which means eternal life was not only the disciples’ future, it was also their present and also their past. Jesus, who had been with them since before the world began, who had for a while walked with them on the earth, was now returning to the father, and was praying for their protection going forward. Eternal life was not a new thing Jesus was offering them before he died, it was, is, and will be the reality of relationship with Jesus, a relationship not built on the disciples ability to deserve or receive it, but on Jesus’ presence in and with them. And then, we didn’t read this part, but in verse twenty, Jesus said “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word,” which means this prayer is for us as well. Eternal life is not some distant promise for our future, eternal life is our past, present, AND future. Eternal life is now. Dear friends in Christ this is eternal life, we are experiencing eternal life. Not because of anything you’ve done or believed or said, but because Jesus has the authority to give it, and has asked on our behalf, and has made his name known to us, we have eternal life, we always did, and we always will.
Now bear with me here, I know what you might be thinking. You might be thinking, wait a second here, how can this be eternal life? This life, this world, doesn’t feel all that eternal, and if it is, I’m not sure I’m keen on spending all eternity in it. Some parts are great, sunsets and puppies and people you love. But other parts, war and the refugee crisis and climate change, these parts seem not so great, and in fact seem to be bringing on death rather than life. So in a world with all those things, how is this eternal life?
This is eternal life, because eternal life is not a place or a time, eternal life is a relationship, eternal life is in us, it is us. We have eternal life, we are eternal life, and we bring eternal life with us into the world. Doing the work of Jesus, and in fact as we heard in chapter fourteen, doing greater work even than him, because while he was only in the flesh a few years, he has been in us since before the world began, and will be for all of time. When Jesus prayed for his disciples in chapter seventeen, he did not pray that they would be taken out of the world, we didn’t read that far but he does that in verse fifteen, but he prayed that we would be sent into the world, that’s in verse eighteen, that we are sanctified, glorified, made holy, to do the work that Jesus himself had done, to bring about the revelation of God.
Dear friends in Christ, eternal life is not some hazy future promise, eternal life is now. It is, it was, and it always will be, because Jesus, whose voice spoke the very world into existence, prayed for us, on our behalf, that it would be so. So believe it, take heart in it, and rest in it. Thanks be to God. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment