John 17:1-11 (Year A, Sunday after Ascension Day)
The one where Jesus looks up
The gospel reading for Sunday, May 21st is John 17:1-11. This Sunday is the Sunday after Ascension Day.
I love the fact that it’s the Sunday after Ascension Day, which reinforces the point that it’s not Ascension Day. Ascension Day is fixed on the date that falls forty days after Easter Sunday, which will always be a Thursday, the way Ash Wednesday, forty non-Sunday days before Easter, will always fall on a Wednesday.
Unfortunately, the week got away from me, so I’m phoning it in on this piece. Just the gospel, plus a few observations, a day late.
John 17:1-11
When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.
“I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.”
What I(’ve) noticed (so far)
“These words” seems to refer to the entire discourse from about 13:12 to 16:33.
He says, “Father, the hour has come.” This contrasts, “Woman… my hour has not yet come” (2:4) at the Wedding at Cana.
“Authority” isn’t a frequent conversation topic in John. It usually comes up in conversations about whether Jesus’ life is being taken from him, or he lays it down himself (10:18; 19:10-11). Here, as in 1:12, it is the authority to give eternal life.
“Eternal life” is a frequent conversation topic in John. Whoever believes in Jesus, or his works, gets it. There is living water, and bread and wine, and words and commandments that have it. Perhaps most importantly, whoever has eternal life, “I will raise him up on the last day” (6:54). Good of Jesus to give his disciples the thing that gets them raised.
Jesus says he has accomplished the work he’d been given to do. But he hadn’t died yet, and Jesus is perhaps more famous for saying “It is finished” from on the cross (19:30). So what has he accomplished? Probably glorifying God, making him known, and giving people eternal life with his authority. Or, I suppose, the second paragraph continues to answer answer that question.
Verses 6-11 are about a particular kind of people: “the people whom you gave me out of the world.” Identifying the disciples as “given” by the Father to the Son is interesting to me, because it implies that we belonged to the Father before we belonged to the Son. Is that the process of discipleship? God giving us to Jesus? That means that Jesus “giving” us the words that his Father “gave” him is one of the ways in which God gives us to Jesus.
This, then, is part of the logic of giving and receiving and owning. To love another person, which is to desire some kind of union with them (h/t Aquinas, and Aquinas), requires giving them the words that God gave you, so that He can give them to you as He gives them to His Son.
Jesus says “I am no longer” in the world. Some translations correct him, rendering a decidedly present tense verb in the future tense: “I will no longer be in the world.” Why does Jesus put this in the present tense? I don’t know.