John 17: 1-11

[Following his exhortation to his disciples] Jesus lifted his eyes skyward, saying: "Father, the hour has come. Now honor your son so that your son may honor you.  Because you have conferred upon him authority over all people, he can now confer the gift of life that matters on all you have given him. This is the life that matters: to know you, the one true God and Jesus the Christ whom you have sent. I am honoring you here by finishing the work you gave me to do. Now, father, let your honor be present in me as it was so completely before the world came into being. Meanwhile, I have made your nature known to all you gave me from the world. They, of course, were yours, but you gave them to me, and they have held fast to your word.  I said to them the words you gave me to say, and they received them believing that you sent me. I am interceding on their behalf - not for the world but for them because they belong to you. All those that belong to me were yours in the first place and will be unto the end. They are my honor. I am no longer of this world, but they are at the same time I am returning to you. Holy Father, preserve them so they may be united as one just as you and I are one." (Translated, condensed and paraphrased by Harry T. Cook.)

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Three and a half chapters ago, John's Jesus was depicted as opening a final discourse in the presence of his disciples. The discourse begins "after Judas had gone out" and ends at 17:26. Chapter 17 consists entirely in an address to "the father," and like many a prayer, is chock-full of theology -- as in the appositive: "the one true God" ("one" as in Deuteronomy 6:4, "true" as in that which discloses what is real as opposed to that which is not).  The eleven verses in this passage now before the homilist or study class leader limn a dense Christology as well as a theory of prayer. If prayer for the 21st century realist is understood to be interior meditation and consideration rather than the indiscriminate flinging out of rhetoric into space hoping for divine reception and response, it will be possible to understand John 17: 1-11 in the same light as this series suggested Matthew 4: 1-11 may be understood, viz. as an inward dialogue on the part of a person trying to make sense of something important.

One of the central themes here is "honor" or "glory," both of which we tend to associate with adulation and heroic accomplishment. The Hebrew word kahvod and the Greek δοξα convey more the idea of "weight" or "consideration." Where John depicts Jesus as asking for God to "honor" or "glorify" him, the petition is something like this: "Make it so that I am taken seriously, given my due weight." John's Jesus goes on to say "I am honoring you here by finishing the work you gave me to do." The implication seems to be that Jesus in his public career had caused people to take Yahweh seriously, to give Yahweh his due weight and consideration.

What John's Jesus seems to want for himself is a reciprocal honoring: "Now, father, let your honor be present in me as it was so completely before the world came into being." The mutual honoring of son by father and father by son is the idea here. For Jesus the honor will come, in John's scheme, at the "resurrection" and Jesus' ability to tarry long enough to rally his troops (see John 20:15ff, 19-23, 26-29 and 21: 1-23). In this context, honor or glorification amounts to vindication.

Jesus is made to rehearse the terms of his life with his close community of followers -- if that is the meaning of "those who you have given me." How they were given is spelled out in the story of the Messiah told by Andrew and the consequent introduction of Simon (1:35-51), the call of Philip (1:43) and the dialogue with Nathanael (1:45-50), which result in their recruitment to the mission. These are the ones who were given "out of the world," i.e. from ordinary events and responsibilities to a larger and more significant pathway of accomplishment.

A word about "I have made your nature known to all you gave me from the world." The usual translation of όνομα is "name" but can also mean and probably does mean "nature" or "character," as in "one's own good name" or "her character is good." The nature or character of Yahweh for John is manifest in light, truth, love and life.

We may ask what the content is referred to in this statement: "I said to them what you gave me to say." What did John think Jesus had told his close followers some 60 years prior to the compilation of this gospel? The Greek is literally "what has been spoken." This may be one of the few references in the fourth gospel to the body of ethical wisdom sayings attributed by Mark, Matthew, Luke and Thomas (some via "Q") to Jesus.

The ethic underlying those sayings is the principle that one treats another as he or she would be treated (thank you, Hillel). Here one may be reminded of the clause in the Baptismal Covenant of the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer (p. 305): "Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?" If "Christ" is the human disclosure of life's highest value, then "serving Christ in all persons" would be organizing one's life in a way that would disclose the nature or character of that value.

What might it mean for John to depict Jesus as saying: "I am interceding on their behalf -- not for the world but for them because they belong to you"? Does this reflect a paranoid state that may have descended upon outposts of Jesus Judaism as a result of its ongoing conflict with synagogue Judaism? John depicts the parents of the man born blind fearing to bear witness to their newly sighted son because they feared crediting Jesus in any way would cause them to be expelled from the synagogue (John 9: 22-23). And, of course, as the text above points out, John understood that the apostolic community remained "in the world" however much they may not have been "of the world."  That's why the petition: "I am no longer of this world, but they are at the same time I am returning to you. Holy Father, preserve them . . ." The "world," however, would be the dwelling place of "all people" over whom John's Jesus was made to say he had "authority."

The image of Jesus interceding on behalf of the communities of Jesus Judaism must have been a source of considerable comfort for them. Their commitment to follow the Jesus movement of passive resistance and passive insistence would certainly have had its apocalyptic angle, which had been encouraged already by Paul and Mark. Yet the idea that Jesus would somehow return to fix things must have been difficult to maintain in light of the fact that he did not.

Maybe that's why Christians should stop saying, as they do in the words of the Nicene Creed:

"He will come again in glory to judge the living and dead . . ." Those who embrace Jesus' ethical wisdom are on their own. They advocate it by living it, come what may.

There is little doubt that the communities whose direct descendants became the church had pretty rough beginnings. That is the clear signal from a good many passages in the Gospel according to John. Elsewhere in first century CE texts one can see the promise of deliverance in a fresh appearance of a messiah known to have died, believed to have been resurrected and hoped for as an end-time savior.

The scandal in all of that is the incredibility of the resurrection proclamation and 2,000 years without the promised messiah's return, which included whole centuries during which any salvation from any quarter would have been embraced by multitudes weeping in rapturous joy.

Therefore, the thinking person who is also a caring person moves on from impossible believing and pointless longing to firm resolve to get on with saving what part of the world is immediately at hand. That person concurs with popular British author Julian Barnes, viz.: "I don't believe in God, but I miss him" -- at least with regard to the proposition that such a deity can be expected to intervene in human affairs and set things to right as a given believer might wish.

The deity of Jewish and Christian imagination did not intervene to stop the massive Nazi atrocities. Nor did Allah interdict the late Osama bin Laden's liegemen in their sudden and deliberate attack upon America on Sept. 11, 2001.

The message is unmistakable: We are on our own. If evil, however manifested, is to be dealt with decisively -- e.g. poverty, starvation, homelessness, torture, repression, subjugation -- human beings individually and together will do the dealing, or it will not get done.

Casting eyes heavenward and offering up the incense of fervent, even sincere, prayers will avail nothing. Or, shall we say, they have availed nothing yet. When the psalmist cried, How long, O Lord, he or she meant just that. Or when Jesus is depicted as groaning on the cross "Eli, eli, lema sabacthani," there was no deliverance in sight. Christian theologians have tried their mightiest to say that such deliverance came via the resurrection. Not convincing.

But deliverance has come. It has come in the body of ethical teaching the author and editors of the gospel document under consideration on this seventh of Sunday of Easter chose to ignore: those scintillating one-liners of ethical wisdom credited to Jesus about how people would do well to conduct their lives for their sake and the sake of all concerned, viz. by loving their enemies as well as their neighbors, by forgiving offenses as a matter of course and by treating others as they themselves want to be treated -- this latter a clear riff on Hillel the Elder's "What you hate, do not do to another."

Those are the armaments provided to take the battle to evil. No bombs; no guns; no drones.

Any victory in such a battle will come of human initiative. As the late humanist rabbi Sherwin T. Wine wrote: Where is my strength? My strength is in me; my strength is in me, and in you and in you. Where is my hope? My hope is in me; my hope is in me, and in you and in you.