One in Christ
John 17:1-19
Rev. Dr. Mary Alice Mulligan
The Gospel of John begins with an amazing theological claim. “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.” He is claiming the Messiah is the eternal Word, wisdom, and power of God, who takes on human flesh for a specific purpose – to glorify God. In fact, some scholars call the Gospel of John: “the Gospel of the Glory.”[i] Much of the time Christians sort of ignore the whole notion of “glory.” We just carry some vague idea, and let it go at that.
But today, we are going to look at a passage that rests on our understanding of “glory.” The word appears several times here and elsewhere throughout John. For a month we have been in the Gospel of John. For two Sundays we listened to passages depicting the time following the Last Supper called the final or “Farewell Discourse,” Jesus’ last teachings. Here we are 2 chapters later, still in the farewell discourse, but the focus changes from teaching to prayer. Scholars call this section of the farewell discourse, “the high priestly prayer.” Jesus here prays, and we get to listen in. Like a priest, he is communicating with God on behalf of the people (the disciples). If we are careful, we can hear that the entire Gospel has been pointing to this hour, the hour for Jesus to be glorified. From the 17th chapter of the Gospel of John, listen for the word of God.
After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.
”I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them.
And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.
Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.
This is a passage with a lot of repetition; some of the claims are confusing. More than teaching; Jesus is praying here, although his prayer teaches, too. He is praying for us. So what can we learn as Jesus lifts up in prayer his immediate disciples and all followers to come? I think we can learn a few things about Jesus and God, about the world, and about us.
We learn that Jesus manifests God’s glory. He is the Incarnate Word who reveals God’s glory. But what do we mean when we say “Jesus manifests God’s glory?” We have to know what “glory” is. In the Old Testament alone, the Greek word doxa (glory) is used to translate at least 25 Hebrew words.[ii] Among them are words indicating reputation, fame, and blinding shine. Glory also often involves relationship.
This is complicated, but let’s push on the ideas a little. God’s glory has to do with God’s presence. Old Testament writers describe “glory” as beyond human understanding; the mystery when YHWH God becomes present on Earth, even though YHWH lives in the 7th heaven (about as distant from the physical earth as is possible).[iii] When the Hebrew people traveled through the wilderness toward the Promise Land, they carried a tabernacle (the Tent of Meeting) with them. The Tabernacle somehow became God’s dwelling, even though God’s presence also filled the entire universe. This earthly domicile would be filled with YHWH’s presence (Shekinah is the Hebrew word). 21st century people might think of a sacred portal through which the actual living presence of God arrives. God’s shekinah glory (in New Testament Greek: doxa) filled the tabernacle. Almost a millennium later, when John wrote the start of his Gospel, he used some of those same words to speak of Jesus. “The Word became flesh and dwelt [tabernacled] among us…we have beheld his (shekinah, doxa) glory.”[iv] In Jesus, the very glory of God was present.
Reading the Gospels, we see people almost never actually noticed the shekinah, doxa, glory in Jesus. But see, in today’s passage, in the high priestly prayer, the Gospel writer describes this as a moment slicing into time. Jesus says the hour has come. As the Crucifixion looms before him, we sense time stops. This is a frozen, liminal moment between Earth time and eternity.[v] Jesus holds the moment to bring his followers into the very shekinah presence of God. The time has come for the Creator God to reveal the fullness of who Jesus is, namely the explosive, shining presence of God’s glory. We see Jesus is God’s glory.
Then Jesus passes us his ministry. Jesus prays for his followers, because he expects us to carry on his work. The high priestly prayer comes at the end of the evening, but remember what happens at the beginning? The closest followers of Jesus come jostling into dinner as Jesus wraps a towel around his waist like an apron and washes everyone’s feet. Everyone. Peter. Judas. Feet washing is a chore usually left for the lowliest servant. But there’s Jesus washing everyone’s feet. Then he takes off the towel and essentially hands it to them, because he returns to the table, saying their Lord and teacher has washed their feet, so they need to wash each other’s feet. They need to follow his example. After supper he clarifies even more. “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you…love one another.” (13:14-15, 34)
Jesus’ goal is to point them toward the purposes of God, because Jesus is not only God’s presence on Earth, he has been God’s agent for shaping the world into what Martin Luther King Jr. called the Beloved Community, which is what Jesus and all Hebrew people for centuries have been calling the Kingdom of God. More recently, to get away from patriarchal language we call it the Realm of God, although Beloved Community sounds right, too. Followers of Jesus are to take up his ministry, which is to glorify God and to make sure every person has what they need to live fully. Every person must have enough to eat, a chance to learn, the freedom to pursue a meaningful occupation, to live without fear of violence. We know this. Through the millennia since Jesus prayed his high priestly prayer, his most faithful followers have figuratively passed the towel to every new believer, so each one learns to live from generosity and compassion, moving toward the Beloved Community of God. Jesus has shown us the reality toward which he worked; and then, because he loves and trusts us, he passed his ministry on to us.
So, we exist between God and world. Since we follow Jesus, it’s no surprise that we have the double pull to follow him even as our surrounding society entices us. But please don’t misunderstand. The world around us is not evil. The Book of Genesis tells us God created the world and pronounced it “good!” So, the world around us is God’s good creation. But John is just using the term “world” to mean surrounding forces which oppose the ways of God. We know those opposing forces: the pull of acquisitiveness, the draw of selfish desires for our own way, the flashes of hatred. These forces lure us away from the ways of God. Probably most of us have an image from childhood cartoons of a little angel on one shoulder and little horned devil figure on the other. These images of opposing forces are not theologically sophisticated, but we get the idea. We commit to Jesus Christ, but find ourselves living in a double pull, as if we live in a liminal moment all the time.
Most of us can remember times we completely disconnected from thinking about God; times we were busy trying to get ahead in life or times we were swamped by family demands. We weren’t immersed in anything evil; we were just not focused on anything having to do with God.
We may also remember times we felt especially connected to Jesus Christ, when we felt an effervescent presence of God right within us. We might have felt we could almost just step into eternity. Others of us may not have had such a blissful moment, but we may have experienced moments we were confident we were doing what pleases God, like a time we were brave enough to tell someone we are absolutely sure God loves and accepts them as they are, or a time we wrote a significant over and above check for a monthly mission, or a Saturday morning we spent in a nursing home visiting someone we hardly knew. And there it is. We feel God’s holy pleasure filling the place.
For each of us – life moments pull us to the world and life moments pull us into the presence of God. In the high priestly prayer, Jesus prays for our protection because we are living every day between. Although Jesus chooses us, we are still vulnerable to the pull of the world’s opposing forces. So, one additional place we can experience the stronger pull of God is here. A scholar explains, “Christ is the Shekinah in the midst of the worshiping congregation…”[vi] The very presence of God is in our worshiping midst. An ancient Jewish text claims, “If two sit together and words of the Law [are spoken] between them, the Shekinah rests between them.”[vii] Of course, Jesus is reported to have said something similar, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them.” (Matt. 18:20) When the church gathers, the shekinah glory of God is available. We can have those moments of God’s pleasure. When we are connected to Christ, One in Christ, even as puny, imperfect, and broken as we are, pulled between God and opposing forces, we can find ourselves in the presence of God’s shekinah glory.
[i] From the entry “Shekinah,” in The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, ed. George Buttrick (Abington, 1962), vol. 4, 319.
[ii] From the entry “Glory,” in Interpreter’s Dictionary, vol. 2, 401.
[iii] From the entry “Shekinah, 318.
[iv] From the entry “Shekinah,” 319.
[v][v] See Raymond Brown, The Gospel According to John XIII-XXI The Anchor Bible, vol 29A (Doubleday, 1970, 1985), 747.
[vi] From the entry “Shekinah,” 319.
[vii] From the entry “Shekinah” 318, quoting the Mishna (Ab. 3.2).