View Archived Content

Comments and Observations

One of the most creative preachers I know who always manages to approach texts in a very fresh way is Debbie Blue.   For this text, she reminds us that biblically “glory doesn’t shine, it bleeds.”   You can hear that sermon by clicking on this link:

http://www.calvin.edu/worship/podcast/cep/archive/dblue_john17.mp3

 What does Jesus mean by all his talk here about “glory”? 

“I have given them the glory that you gave me . . .” (vs. 22)

“I want them . . . to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me . . .” (vs. 24)

Clearly this has been a key theme in John’s gospel all along.  It began in his opening chapter and that well-known soaring prologue.  However, a striking feature to that prologue is the fact that John never mentions “glory” until after he has given the shocking revelation that the eternal Word of God—who had been with God in the beginning and through whom all things had been made—was made flesh.  “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen his glory, the glory of God’s one and only, full of grace and truth.”

John did not talk about “glory” in connection to the soaring words about the beginning of all things, about the creation, or about anything that we might regard as “heavenly” and eternal in nature.  No, glory came onto the scene only after the incarnation is mentioned.  It reminds you of also Philippians 2 where Paul talks about the glorification of Christ Jesus only after he depicts him as having sunk as far down into death and hell as he can go.  Only then was he glorified and given the name above all names.

There is in the gospel a wonderfully paradoxical presentation of glory.  Yes, glory can be and is everything we usually associate with the glory of God: glory can be luminous and splendid and mind-boggling and blinding and majestic in ways that unmake us and send us falling down upon our faces in humble adoration.

But glory can also come through the grace and truth of the very humble incarnate Lord Jesus.  When in John 17 Jesus says he has shown the disciples his glory, it is all-but certain that he is not talking about extraordinary spectacles of light and effulgence and mind-bending special effects.  The glory of Jesus emerged in the course of his ministry when he gave hope to the poor, when he forgave the sins of downtrodden and marginalized persons, when he reached out to his enemies in love, when he displayed grace to the least deserving. 

In verse 24 when we hear Jesus say he wants his followers to be with him where he is so that they can see the glory the Father has given, we tend to picture golden thrones situated on lofty clouds in the heavens above.  But considering that Jesus was within minutes of being arrested, tried, and crucified, is it not likely that the “where” of Jesus’ glory would very shortly be the cross itself?   Is it not likely that Jesus is praying that his followers will not abandon him but will stay with him even at Golgotha to see the true measure of divine glory in reaching out to and saving a very fallen world?

If there is anything to this line of thought, then it is also a bracing reminder to us all that the Church today gains conformity to Christ and displays unity with the Father not when it garners the attention of the media and not when its programming and ministries become global in scope and not when it has to build bigger sanctuaries to accommodate the thousands who throng into popular megachurches.  No, glory shines through when the Church is humble, doing quiet things to serve the poor and preach good news to the downtrodden.

The glory that the Father gave to the Son and that the Son gives to the Church is not the glory of klieg lights and media sizzle.  It’s the glory of the Word of God becoming meat, being made flesh, dwelling here in the mud and muck of this world.  It’s the glory of the One who came to serve and not be served.  It’s the glory of the One who was, as Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3, lifted up off the earth not on some high throne but on a cross of wood.

That is the glory the Father gave the Son.  That is the glory we display in the Church we, like our Savior, serve quietly and humbly.

As Debbie Blue put it, glory doesn’t shine. 

It bleeds.

Questions to Ponder/Issues to Address

The evangelist John does not give us the “classic” telling of the Last Supper in the upper room on the night in which Jesus was betrayed.  But not to put too fine a point on it, he more than makes up for it with a wealth of material covering no less than five very full chapters from John 13-17.  Here John is at his theological, synthesizing best in bringing together long soliloquies and prayers from Jesus that, in the end, cover a wide range of theological subjects, not the least of which is the single most extended section in the gospels dealing with the Holy Spirit. 

But of all the richly embroidered material in this part of John’s gospel, John 17 stands out for its highly wrought (and at times almost confusing) language of oneness, unity, in-ness, and a number of other related themes that look ahead to the future of Jesus’ followers.  Anyone who adheres anywhere near the viewpoint of something like the Jesus Seminar will surely regard most of this chapter to be spurious and a later addition—the kind of thing Jesus of Nazareth would never have said in that it so clearly points to the Church in a way Jesus himself could never have done.  Or so they say.

But if we assume that Jesus did envision some kind of future for his followers and if he really did have hope that the Father would glorify him despite the dark events soon to descend upon him, then it makes sense that Jesus would pray for the future wellbeing of his disciples and any latter-day people who became associated with them on account of the witness of those same disciples.  In this sense, Jesus in the upper room on that particular night was not unlike a father praying to God for the future safety and flourishing of his own children and grandchildren.  Far from an unlikely thing to do, it’s actually a very natural thing for a person of love to do regarding those whom he held dear.  (What parent, upon first laying eyes on a newborn child, does not immediately feel welling up within him or her far-reaching desires for this child to grow and be well and to flourish far into the future, including into the years beyond the life of the parent?)

To get more specific, however, Jesus prays here for two main items: unity among his followers and (in part through that unity) the sending of the clear message that Jesus was sent to this world by God the Father.  It is clearly important here that the life of the disciples mirror the life of Jesus and his Father in terms of unity and closeness and oneness.  But it’s equally clear that whatever benefits may accrue from that unity on a sheerly human level, there is something about the unity that ties in directly to the primary message regarding the divine agency of Jesus’ entire mission. 

Clearly it is of huge importance to Jesus that the disciples know—and that they in turn let the unbelieving world know—that Jesus did not merely appear in this world as some kind of coincidence and that he did what he did and said what he said not on account of his own cleverness.  No, Jesus was SENT.  He was sent BY GOD.   He was sent by the God who loved him from all eternity. 

Weaving in and through these concluding words of Jesus’ long prayer in John 17 is a perspective that is truly cosmic in nature.  If Jesus were just a local phenomenon—a Mediterranean Basin “flash in the pan” from two millennia ago—then it would be easy to dismiss him and his entire ministry.   Even if most everything that took place in the gospels were historically true, if it all took place within just the vertical dimensions and confines of this world, then its meaning would be likewise very limited in scope.  But if Jesus really was sent by God—and if it all was part of a larger plan that reaches back before the creation of the world as part of an eternity-long love affair among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—THEN the meaning of Jesus and his words and his work is magnified beyond the telling of it.

Here is a dimension to the gospel that we all-too-often miss in the church today.  Even despite our North American fascination with big things—big churches, big-name celebrity preachers, big programs, etc.—we seldom reflect enough on how enormously big the plan of salvation is as it comes to its cosmos-shattering climax in Christ Jesus the Lord.  In fact, most of the time when we read or preach on John 17, we focus in on the plea for unity and use that (obviously ardent) desire of Jesus as a club with which to beat ourselves up for the church’s glaring lack of unity today across our amazingly varied denominational landscape.  And lamenting our lack of unity is a perfectly legitimate response to John 17 as is a call to become as united as we can as brothers and sisters in Christ.

But what we may miss in our focus on that part of this passage is the amazing message that:

First, through Jesus no less than the fullness of God was in the world (and something of that fullness remains in the world through US when we abide in Christ by the Spirit);

Second, Jesus’ presence in this world was clearly the culmination of a plan that spanned cosmic history;

Third, therefore, we serve one BIG God who has big plans that go far beyond any one era of church history and that transcend (thanks be to God) even whatever brokenness and disunity we may (unhappily) experience for now.

In short, we’re not going to get in the way of this God or his Triune plans for the world.  In fact, we in the church should fall back in wonder far more often than we do at being associated with a plan of salvation this divine, this cosmic, this broad in height and depth and breadth.

Too often today we reduce the church and its mission and its theology to bumper sticker slogans (like the one I saw on a car some while back that proclaimed “Got Jesus? It’s Hell without Him.”)   We reduce the gospel to Four Spiritual Laws and Forty Days of Purpose and “Chicken Soup for the Soul” and trite church signs that declare to the world things like “We’re Too Blessed to Be Depressed.”   Do we have any idea of how big a God we serve, how grand are his purposes, and how all of that is to be on display in us within the Church when we stay united with Christ and with his Father?

On this Sunday that in the Lectionary falls between Ascension and Pentecost, it would be wonderful if we could use John 17:20-26 to open up a vista on the kingdom that would be properly awe-inspiring to our congregations.  The church and the gospel it proclaims are never some local phenomenon.  Despite our denominational fractures and the lack of formal unity we may have across the face of the Church today, the fact is that in every hamlet where a tiny congregation gathers in the name of the risen Christ, in every soaring cathedral where hundreds gather, in every megachurch that packs in people by the thousands, and in every house church in nations where official church gatherings are banned—in and through and across it all something quite amazing is happening: the revelation of a mystery of divine love that dates back to well before the creation of the world and that will continue on and on into a future in which at some point this same God is going to say “Behold, I make all things new.”

Let’s let no one convince us that the church is mostly about bake sales and vacation Bible schools and senior citizen bus trips and silly committee meetings.  “I have given them the glory you gave me” Jesus prayed.  THAT is a message worth savoring again and again and even forevermore.

Textual Points

KOSMOS (world, cosmos) is one of John’s favorite words and it figures prominently in this prayer in John 17 as well.  There are clear echoes here of John 1:10 in which nearly an identical phrasing is used in the Greek.  In John 1:10 we are told that although Jesus was in the world he himself had made in the beginning, “HO KOSMO AUTON OUK EGNO” (“the world knows him not”).  Now in John 17:25 Jesus addresses the Father and says “HO KOSMO SE OUK EGNO” (“the world knows you not”).   Clearly the world/cosmos is a hostile place for the divine: it knows neither the Son of God who is the Word who made the world in the beginning nor the Father God who sent the Son into this world.   Yet we cannot ponder this sad situation without tumbling to also the grace-filled glory of John 3:16: for God so loved THE WORLD . . .   A good deal of the “glory” Jesus talks about in John 17 can be located right in the midst of this apparently paradoxical circumstance of a world ignorant of God and yet loved enough by God for him to sacrifice himself for that same world.

Illustration Idea

Here is the essence of gospel good news.  We don’t have to wait for special seasons of blessing to see glory.  We don’t need angels’ wings or skies split asunder.  We don’t need to be transported out of the routines of our workaday lives to be encountered by glory.  Nor do we need to be lifted out of our sufferings, our sorrows, our hardships to see glory.  In fact, the gospel suggests that those are the very places where we can expect to see glory more often than not.

I once read a story related by a surgeon named Richard Selzer.  One day Selzer had to remove a tumor from the cheek of a young woman. After the surgery, the woman was in bed, her postoperative mouth twisted in a palsied, clownish way.  A tiny twig of the facial nerve had been severed in the operation, releasing a muscle that led to her mouth. Her young husband was in the room along with the surgeon. "Will my mouth always be like this?" the woman asked.  "Yes," the doctor replied, "the nerve was cut." She nodded, fell silent, and looked broken.

But the young husband smiled gently and said, "I like it. It's kind of cute." And all at once, Dr. Selzer writes, I knew who this young husband was. The doctor saw Jesus in the man. He saw Jesus in the man's gentleness and love, in his sympathy and brokenness. And then he saw Jesus afresh as the kind husband bent down to kiss her crooked mouth, carefully twisting his own lips to accommodate her lips, showing her that their kiss still worked and always would.

Glory infused that hospital room that day—the glory of God’s One and Only who came here, humbly accommodating himself to us in our brokenness by taking on the very nature of a servant.  We have seen his glory.  We still see his glory.  It is all around us.  We see it at the communion table and at the breakfast table; we see it in the water at the baptismal font and in the water from the sprinkler that catches the sun’s rays just so; we see it in the anthem sung by a grand choir and in the simple chorus of “Jesus Loves Me” that our child absent-mindedly sings to herself while doing her paint-by-numbers.

This is the glory we see.  Thanks be to God.