John 17.1-13

17 After saying all these things, Jesus looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son so he can give glory back to you. 2 For you have given him authority over everyone. He gives eternal life to each one you have given him. 3 And this is the way to have eternal life—to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, the one you sent to earth. 4 I brought glory to you here on earth by completing the work you gave me to do. 5 Now, Father, bring me into the glory we shared before the world began.

6 I have revealed you to the ones you gave me from this world. They were always yours. You gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 7 Now they know that everything I have is a gift from you, 8 for I have passed on to them the message you gave me. They accepted it and know that I came from you, and they believe you sent me.

9 My prayer is not for the world, but for those you have given me, because they belong to you. 10 All who are mine belong to you, and you have given them to me, so they bring me glory. 11 Now I am departing from the world; they are staying in this world, but I am coming to you. Holy Father, you have given me your name; now protect them by the power of your name so that they will be united just as we are. 12 During my time here, I protected them by the power of the name you gave me. I guarded them so that not one was lost, except the one headed for destruction, as the Scriptures foretold. 13 Now I am coming to you. I told them many things while I was with them in this world so they would be filled with my joy.”

Comments

Chapter 17 is the end of John’s Farewell Discourse. After this, we get into the arrest and the passion story, where John falls much more in line with the other three Gospels than he has at any point so far. That coming agreement serves to throw this passage into additional relief as the place where John is perhaps most at odds with the other three. Mark and Matthew depict a suffering Jesus who says, “My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death,” and prays three times not to have to go through with the crucifixion. (Mk. 14.34 and Matt. 26.38) In Luke, Jesus only prays this one time, and though Jesus doesn’t make the same statement, Luke does tell us, “he was in such agony of spirit that his sweat fell to the ground like great drops of blood.” (Lk. 22.44)

We don’t get any of that here in John. This entire chapter is a prayer from Jesus to the Father, but it is nothing at all like those other prayers. If we wanted to reconcile the accounts we would need to ask whether John’s prayer comes before or after the others. Did Jesus pray confidently and then break down or did he break down and then recover enough to pray confidently? There are examples in the Psalms of each type of movement and I have done it both ways (you probably have too). I don’t feel a need to figure this out but it is interesting to let the confidence of John’s Gethsemane sit on a garden bench next to the desperation of the other Gethsemane accounts.

There are also interesting features within this prayer. For some reason Jesus uses the third person to talk about himself to the Father in prayer in v.1-3 before switching to the first person for the rest of the prayer. One commentary tried to make the point that this is a normal way of praying, but, um, no, it’s not. I don’t think I have ever once used my full name when praying for something relating to myself. In fact, I just tried it and it felt as weird as I thought it would (try it, go on, try it. See what I mean?) The commentator’s point though was that “Son” and “Christ” are actually more titles than names and thus good to pray about. I might quibble about “Son,” but certainly “Christ” means “anointed one,” and is a title. The point is well taken. I don’t often pray about “Michael Raburn,” but I do pray a lot about how the words “husband,” “dad,” “pastor,” and “professor” relate to me. We would do well to follow Jesus’ example in referring to the titles/names that connote responsibilities in our lives. We will never fulfill those on our own as well as we can when we rely on the empowering Jesus has been promising since ch. 14.

Another interesting feature is the mini-creed in v.3: “And this is the way to have eternal life – to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, the one you sent to earth.” Why did Jesus need to pray this? Is this really something intimate between him and the Father? Or is this one of those ‘prayers’ the pastor ‘prays’ in church that is more sermon than prayer, more for the benefit of the human hearers than the divine Hearer? Those seem so disingenuous and I want to believe Jesus was above that sort of thing. Or maybe John is sneaking some doctrine in, making one last push against those who were denying the divinity of Jesus (remember the Ebionites I’ve mentioned several times) by putting words in Jesus’ mouth. But that is such an easy cop out and more patently false than the (wink-wink) pastory ‘prayer’ explanation. Hold this thought.

The last interesting feature for today is that in some ways, this prayer follows the script of the Lord’s Prayer (you know the famous one, “Our Father…”) from Matthew. It’s not a perfect one-to-one (and the details are more than we can get into here), but there are enough parallels that some commentaries build their whole explanation around it. The point is that the confidence Jesus expresses here is in line with the confidence he taught us to pray with. He taught us to address God as “Father” and state our case positively and boldly, just as Jesus does here.

John has given us such a divine-leaning take on Jesus that we’re prone to read this prayer not as a prayer. We’re prone not to hear the desperation so present in the other Gethsemane accounts. But I think it is right there under the surface. I think this is the prayer of a man who has risked everything because he trusts the Father, he trusts what he thinks the Spirit has been saying to him. He hopes that this is the right path, all the miracles lend themselves to that hope, but in the end, he is a man facing an uncertain future. Well, he is certain of his impending violent death. Beyond that there is only hope. No certainty. Only opportunity. Jesus recites the faith statement in v.3 to build up his own faith, to remind himself, with the listening Father as witness, of what he believes, of why he is doing this. He recaps all he has done, not in a self-congratulatory way, but as one hoping that he has in fact revealed and brought glory to the Father, according to his anointing (hence the self-naming) and intention. He prays as a man who knows he is leaving human life – leaving behind people he loves and a work unfinished, a work barely begun.

Jesus prays here because he trusts the Father. Jesus prays because he hopes his works and teachings have done their part. Jesus prays because he loves his friends, both the ones he had met and the ones he hopes will become his friends down the road.

In short, we get a very high, divine view of Jesus here because of what he says. And we get a very low, human view of Jesus because he doesn’t just say, he prays it, trusting it to be true.

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright© 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale HousePublishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

John 16.17-33

17 Some of the disciples asked each other, “What does he mean when he says, ‘In a little while you won’t see me, but then you will see me,’ and ‘I am going to the Father’? 18 And what does he mean by ‘a little while’? We don’t understand.”

19 Jesus realized they wanted to ask him about it, so he said, “Are you asking yourselves what I meant? I said in a little while you won’t see me, but a little while after that you will see me again. 20 I tell you the truth, you will weep and mourn over what is going to happen to me, but the world will rejoice. You will grieve, but your grief will suddenly turn to wonderful joy. 21 It will be like a woman suffering the pains of labor. When her child is born, her anguish gives way to joy because she has brought a new baby into the world. 22 So you have sorrow now, but I will see you again; then you will rejoice, and no one can rob you of that joy. 23 At that time you won’t need to ask me for anything. I tell you the truth, you will ask the Father directly, and he will grant your request because you use my name. 24 You haven’t done this before. Ask, using my name, and you will receive, and you will have abundant joy.

25 I have spoken of these matters in figures of speech, but soon I will stop speaking figuratively and will tell you plainly all about the Father. 26 Then you will ask in my name. I’m not saying I will ask the Father on your behalf, 27 for the Father himself loves you dearly because you love me and believe that I came from God. 28 Yes, I came from the Father into the world, and now I will leave the world and return to the Father.”

29 Then his disciples said, “At last you are speaking plainly and not figuratively.30 Now we understand that you know everything, and there’s no need to question you. From this we trust that you came from God.”

31 Jesus asked, “Do you finally trust? 32 But the time is coming—indeed it’s here now—when you will be scattered, each one going his own way, leaving me alone. Yet I am not alone because the Father is with me. 33 I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.”

Comments

Well, I made it almost all year without missing a day. Made it through finishing my Ph.D., three conferences, a full semester of teaching, and then I spent two days in bed sick and lost it. The sickness was only part of it though. The other factor was the density of these passages. I had a lot to say about the one before this because it was a main part of my dissertation, and that clued me into the depth these waters. I read this passage and felt lightheaded, both from the medication and the statements Jesus makes here.

• You won’t see me. Then you will see me.
• You will weep, mourn, grieve. Then your grief will turn to joy.
• It will be like going through the travail of labor: intense pain, then relief and happiness of having a child.
• You will have joy that cannot be taken away, cannot be stolen.
• You can ask for anything and the Father will give it to you.

That’s a lot. And wow it sounds great. Too good to be true in fact. In his final teaching moment, Jesus goes for the sell, puts on a strong close. It sounds even bolder when we remember he was moments away from being arrested, a fact John has already told us Jesus was well aware of. Faced with his impending death, Jesus sounds really positive. The sorrow and travail he talks about here reminds us of the Gethsemane scene from the other Gospels, but there is no indication he had a personal struggle here. For John, not seeing Jesus goes along with sorrow, trials, and grief. Seeing Jesus goes along with joy and peace. While grief is coming, joy remains where Jesus is.

Commentators debate whether John meant this not-seeing and seeing to refer to Jesus’ death and resurrection only, or to his promised return as well. The first two make sense for those Jesus was talking to, the third makes more sense for John’s readers (including us). Or so the debate goes. But I want to connect this not-seeing to what Jesus said back in v.10, “I go to the Father and you won’t see me anymore.” If the promise of joy and peace are only for the short time between resurrection and ascension and then not again until the end of all things, how does that help us? Why include that in a last exhortation? It’s like saying, “Things are going to stink for a couple thousand years (or more), but it’ll be okay.” What? What sort of overcoming of the world is that?

Remember what I said about v.10. The followers of Jesus not seeing him anymore relates to our promotion to being the ones who bear justice to the world. We are the healers of the sick. We are the ones who give sight to the blind. We are the ones who do life with the marginalized. The world is full of grief and sorrow (v.32), that is its default setting, but the followers of Jesus bring his joy and his peace to the grief-stricken world.

Or at least, we’re supposed to. Too often our concerns are for ourselves, not for justice for others, but for privilege for us. It is in this context of being the hope, joy, and peace of the world that Jesus gives this blank check. We can ask for whatever we want – that is, for whatever helps us do life with those who suffer and mourn – and God will help us do that. But we turn a great resource for justice into an infinite line of credit for perpetuating injustice. Prosperity gospels miss the essential selflessness of this promise and make the opposite of it: empowerment to live emulating Christ becomes a selfish pursuit that is altogether anti-Christ.

We don’t see Jesus in the world when we fail to be Jesus for the world. That should cause us to weep, mourn, and grieve.

We see Jesus in the world when we are Jesus for the world. The justice we work for brings hope, peace, and joy to the world. Our joy cannot be stolen because we give it away freely.

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright© 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale HousePublishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.