Gospel Glory
John 17:1-11
For the past six weeks of this Easter season, ever since Easter Sunday, we’ve read, for the most part, either an account of the resurrected Jesus, such as when he met the disciples on the road to Emmaus, or a passage from the book of Acts about the earliest days of the church. Yet today, for the seventh and final Sunday of Easter, we step back in time before the resurrection and before the crucifixion to join Jesus and the disciples around the table of the Last Supper. This is the last time that Jesus will spend with his disciples before his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane shortly after the supper has ended. After he is arrested he will be handed over to be crucified. Within twenty-four hours he will be dead.
Imagine you’re Jesus. You know what’s about to happen. You know that one of your twelve chosen disciples, Judas, will betray you. You know that the disciple with whom you are closest, Peter, will deny you. You know that all of the disciples—to a man—will abandon you. What would you say to them? What would be your parting words? Can you imagine praying for them? Can you imagine praying for the people who are about to do something terrible to you?
If I’m being honest (and, hey, why not?), I’ve never much cared for this passage, or for the longer prayer of which it is a part. It’s a bit abstract, with its talk of glory and eternal life. There is little in the way of concrete nouns. We see none of the usual imagery we associate with Jesus…no mustard seeds or fig trees, no loaves or fish, no water or wine. Nothing to hold in your hand or see with the mind’s eye.
On top of that, nothing happens. I mean, Jesus prays, of course, but that’s it. It’s much easier to preach about a narrative in which something happens—in which Jesus does something that moves the narrative along; he heals the sick, or feeds the hungry, preaches to the crowds, or teaches his disciples in private. Even when Jesus merely tells a parable there is action—seed is thrown, a banquet is held, a father welcomes home his rebellious son. But in this prayer, nothing happens. Jesus just prays.
But I’ve begun to come around on this passage. Not only for the fact that Jesus prays for the very people who are about to do him wrong, but for what Jesus prays…for the message of the prayer, for what it means for Jesus’ twelve disciples and what it means for us. This prayer contains Jesus’ final lesson for his disciples, a lesson that upends our notions of glory and eternal life.
As JESUS prepares to depart from them for the last time, his focus is not on the suffering that he will soon experience but on them.
John 17 is the culmination of Jesus’ final evening with the disciples, a long goodbye that begins back in chapter 13 when the teacher stoops to wash the feet of his disciples. This is also when Jesus gives them a new commandment—to love one another just as he has loved them. Now in chapter 17 he once more demonstrates his undying love for them even as he is about to die. As he prepares to depart from them for the last time, his focus is not on the suffering that he will soon experience but on them. He prays for God to protect them. He prays that as he is one with God they may also be one, because in the wake of his death the horror of crucifixion and the fear of being associated with him will tempt them to disband, to go their separate ways.
Jesus prays to God not in private but in the presence of his disciples because he wants them to hear. With his last words spoken in their presence he wants them to know what matters most from his entire ministry. And among those last words, one word that he uses repeatedly is glorify. Beginning in verse 1, Jesus prays, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you.”
We associate glory with achievement and adulation. So did Jesus’ own disciples. That’s why they wanted it for themselves. Earlier the brothers James and John approached Jesus privately, apart from the other disciples, and asked that they might be seated at his left and his right when he comes in his glory. They were entertaining visions of Jesus arriving in Jerusalem before cheering crowds, leading the armies of God against the Roman occupiers, and then taking his seat upon the throne of Israel. Jesus would be crowned king and they would be his princes. Being seated in such close proximity to Jesus, some of that royal glory was bound to rub off on them, or so they thought.
James and John, like most of us, have a worldly view of glory. From the perspective of the world, glory is a golden statue of yourself that says “Look at me. Look at how powerful and successful I am.” Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair! Such a view could not be further from the gospel of Jesus Christ. From the perspective of Jesus Christ, there is no glory in self-glorification. Earlier in John’s Gospel Jesus says, “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing” (John 8:54). How I would like to see that as an inscription on every self-aggrandizing monument that will be erected in the coming years!
Back when I was working as a copywriter in New York City, my office overlooked Broadway between 52nd and 53rd Streets. Oftentimes in the early evening, right around 5 o’clock, I would hear a voice shouting from the street six floors below. Even though my office windows did not open, I could still hear the man’s voice and make out his words. Or rather, word. It was just one word that the man shouted over and over: “Glory.” He had a particular cadence and rhythm in the way he shouted it, elongating the first syllable of “glory” while allowing about one second between each iteration. Sometimes, after a half dozen or so glories, he would break into joyous knee-slapping laughter or punctuate the glories with a shout of “Jesus!” or “Hallelujah!”
Occasionally, when I got out of work early enough, I would pass by the man on my way home. He was a frail-looking elderly African American gentleman, always neatly dressed in a suit and tie. I assumed he was connected to Times Square Church, an evangelical megachurch housed in an office building just a block from my office.
One evening after work I met a friend outside my office. As we were walking down Broadway I heard the familiar refrain: “Glory! Glory! Glory!” I should say that my friend is an atheist, and not a casual atheist either but a rather committed one. His atheism has a kind of fundamentalist zeal. As we walked directly past the man and glories filled our ears, my friend turned to me and deadpanned, “You know, that guy made a lot of sense.”
I’ll admit I chuckled. I thought it was funny. I still do. After all, what sense was there in someone shouting “glory” over and over again to masses of New Yorkers doing everything in their power to ignore him?
Although my friend’s sarcastic quip still amuses me, I’ve learned to appreciate Mr. Glory beyond his being yet another colorful character in the never-ending drama that is New York City. I wonder now if he was not a prophet, someone blessed with a vision of something the rest of us could not see. A prophet with a message that sounded like foolishness to most ears. Because the glory of Jesus Christ does sound like complete and utter foolishness to anyone who is not already a believer. Even to many of us who do believe, the glorification of a crucified Savior is hard for us to fully accept.
We admire success, celebrity, victory. We want to embrace winners. He’s a savior because he was crucified? I like saviors who aren’t crucified. Don’t we all! But here again we see the irony of the gospel at work. Gospel glory does not wear a crown, it’s nailed to a cross.
Jesus’ glory is not self-aggrandizing but self-emptying.
“I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do,” Jesus says in verse 4. Let’s dwell on what that means, on what Jesus is really saying. “I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do.” The work that God gave Jesus to do was to proclaim the kingdom of God, a kingdom unlike any this world has ever seen. Jesus proclaimed that kingdom in word and deed…in healing the sick, in feeding the hungry, in releasing the captives, in proclaiming good news to the poor…and in offering himself up to death. Jesus finishes the work that God gave him to do by dying on the cross! His glory is not self-aggrandizing but self-emptying. As we say in the affirmation of faith each week, “We believe in Christ Jesus…who though he was in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited but emptied himself.”
“But emptied himself.” Jesus empties himself of power so that we might be raised with him in the power of his resurrection. Jesus empties himself of life so that we might receive eternal life. Eternal life, meaning pearly gates and clouds and everyone playing a harp? Lord, I sure hope not! Give me a drum set over a harp any day. More importantly, that is not the vision that Jesus presents of eternal life. He lays out quite clearly in his prayer just what he means by “eternal life” as if one of the disciples had asked him point blank, “What is eternal life?” “And this is eternal life,” Jesus says, “that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”
“That they may know you, the one true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” Okay, fine, but how do we know God? For real, how do we know God? How do we know what God is like? Sitting where we are right now, where do we turn for knowledge of God?
When in doubt, just like in the children’s ministry, the answer is always Jesus. Which is to say that to know Jesus is to experience eternal life. In other words, eternal life does not wait for death. Eternal life is not solely for the hereafter but begins in the here and now.
To know Jesus is to have a foretaste of the heavenly feast that is to come. It is not the full taste but a foretaste. The table has already been set. The wine has been poured. You have a standing invitation.
Does this shocking? It shouldn’t. This idea of eternal life that begins in the here and now is nothing new. We pray this every time we pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Whenever we do the will of God, as it’s made known to us through Jesus Christ, we proclaim an alternative way of being in the world—a way of love, justice, and mercy. A way of peace, hope, and joy. A holy way. A compassionate way. A glorious way.