FINDINGS II
Easter
VII - C - May 16, 2010
Acts 16: 16-34; Revelation 22: 12, 14,
16-17, 20-21; John 17: 20-26
 By Harry T. Cook
5/10/10
RUBRIC
The passage at hand is part of John's exit strategy for
Jesus. As we observed in the analysis of 14: 25-29, John arranges for Jesus to
depart and to return, and, indeed, he will never really leave. That was a
theological tactic of the late first century Jesus communities, i.e., to craft
and tell stories about his presence, however conceived. He certainly could not very
well be the true messiah from his moldering grave, neither the logos incarnate.
So John meant it to be understood that those who come to believe that the dead
Jesus was alive in the communities gathered around his memory and his wisdom
could experience his living presence.
John's effort does not quite produce the body, as a habeas
corpus order would provide, but it is as close as it can get to it. Any
religion worth a person's time has to be about something that is living rather
than dead, that is dynamic rather than static, that is of the present and
future, not just of the past.
The genius of early Christianity -- or late Jesus Judaism --
is to be found in such passages as we have under consideration in this essay.
It is just such passages as caused the late John A.T. Robinson to speak of "the
primacy of John." Withal, it is too bad that Thomas is given such a drubbing by
John in ch. 20: 24-29). Elaine Pagels* thinks the drubbing was crafted to blunt
the existence of the Gospel of Thomas, the text of which pointedly omits any
such spiritual language about Jesus. For Thomas (the gospel) Jesus was an edgy,
somewhat ornery speaker of often baffling sayings and clearly of the earth,
earthy.
In the end, though, that which is of the earth, earthy does
not have a long shelf life, and what late first century Jesus Judaism-early
Christianity needed was non-perishable. They found it in such concepts as John
spins out in these final chapters of the gospel.
*Beyond Belief: The Secret
Gospel of Thomas, 2003, Random House, pp. 30-75.
WORKSHOP
John 17: 20-26 is the valedictory of the great high priestly
prayer and comes in the gospel immediately prior to the beginning of the
passion narrative. Heretofore since 17:1, Jesus has been depicted as praying
for his disciples, "those whom you gave me from the world" (17:6) Now the prayer is
for the next generation, viz. "those who are to believe . . . through their
(the disciples') word."
"Those who will believe in me" (v. 20) are not unlike those
for whom Paul accounts in Ephesians 2: 13ff, those "who were once far off." It
is an organic unity not a mechanical or bureaucratic one that is here
envisioned. And it is for the "far off" that Jesus now turns the intention of
his prayer: "that they all may be one, even as you, Father, are in me, and I in
you, that they may be in us" (v. 21a). The oneness here is at the most
fundamental level as between father and son, virtually biological in nature.
Several of the Qumran documents speak of such unity. Was John aware of the
Qumran and like traditions: tightly woven monastic communities united in a
singular purpose and separated from "the world?"
Even as the world (or "all") will know that the disciples
belong to the way of Jesus (13:35), so the oneness of the community will
inspire and support belief in Jesus' historic legitimacy as one sent by the
Father (v. 21b). V. 24 introduces re-introduces a spatial-temporal conundrum
that appears earlier in 7:34 and again at 8:21: Jesus saying to the Pharisees,
the chief priests and the crowd at 7:34 that "where I am you cannot come" and
at 8:21 it is repeated. Where and what is that "where" and why is it in the
present tense? It may be that the verb "eimi" can be translated here as "where
I will be." That would help matters
a great deal.
It is clear why John's Jesus would say to his detractors
that they could not get to where he is going. Such was the bitter nature of the
conflict between the Jesus Jews and synagogue Jews at the end of the first
century C.E. But the disciples about whom John depicts Jesus as praying in ch.
17 are to be with him (lit, "where I am") so they may see for themselves his
glory, i.e., revealed essential nature or favorable public opinion about him
which has been his as a divine gift from before the foundations of the world.
If we are attentive to the incarnational theme that
underlies this gospel beginning with its prologue at 1: 1-18, we see why Jesus'
fully realized nature can only be disclosed when his union with the Father is
complete. That is, John says, the "where" and the "what" to which he is going.
And those who love him by keeping his teachings may be with him in that glory
-- that is, in the esteem of the living and in memory.
One thinks of how to state that proposition in 21st century
language. One way, perhaps, is to say that in the intentional living out of the
ethical teaching of Jesus (admittedly not much of a part of John's gospel), one
bears that attitude of self-giving love (see 13:34, which is perhaps as much as
John cared to convey of that ethic) and so makes Jesus present while disclosing
who and what he was/is.
In a world in which rational people pretty much have to
acknowledge that the space and time we know are the only space and time we're
likely to know, where Jesus "is going" is where his followers, if they are true
to their commitment, are going, i.e. toward the realization of the rule of goodness,
which elsewhere Jesus is quoted as saying is within us.
HOMILETIC COMMENTARY
The final words of the high priestly prayer (vv. 25-26)
reiterate the idea that the "world" (kosmos) does not know the deity, and that
John's Jesus has made his/its "name" (or nature) known. Note that the text does
not say Jesus was the only source of that knowledge. Yet no other source is
named. The dread words of Acts 4:12 spring to mind here: "There is salvation in
no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by
which we must be saved." On the flimsy basis of such texts has been built an
imperial and imperious structure whose builders and keepers flaunt an unwarranted
superiority and a claim upon a non-existent truth, paradoxically made all the
more powerful by it non-existence.
That is not what John meant by putting words on Jesus' lips
to the effect that the world ("kosmos") does not know the Father. The world
can't know anything unless it is told. "How shall they call upon him in whom
they have not believed? And shall they believe in him of whom they have not
heard? And how shall they hear without some one to tell them?" (Romans 11:14)
The first thought of ones who have internalized the ethical
wisdom attributed to Jesus will not be to undertake a preaching mission. That
first thought and all subsequent thoughts will be devoted to putting that
wisdom into practice by seeking justice and peace, by loving enemy as well as
neighbor, by cheek-turning, by second mile-walking, by coat and cloak-sharing
and by debtor-forgiving.
Those anywhere in the "kosmos" who witness such behavior
will have had made known to them "the Father," that is the whole purpose of
human beings having evolved from unicellular bits of matter to Homo sapiens. In
humanity at its best we have the best chance of glimpsing what some call God.
NOTE: A question
was raised by a reader about my transliteration of παράκλητος in last week's
FINDINGS II. It has become my custom for the convenience of those not
acquainted with Koine Greek to render the Greek η (eta) as an English long "a"
( ā) as that is how the letter is pronounced.
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