Tuesday
of the
Seventh
Week of Easter
May 26th
READING: John 17:1-11
After Jesus had spoken these
words, he looked up to heaven and said, ‘Father, the hour has come; glorify
your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority
over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this
is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ
whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you
gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory
that I had in your presence before the world existed.
‘I have made your name known to those whom you
gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have
kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you;
for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received
them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you
sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world,
but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are
yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no
longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy
Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be
one, as we are one.
~~~
New Revised Standard Version
Bible: Anglicised Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993, 1995 the Division
of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the
United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
REFLECTION
Jesus concludes a long discourse with his disciples with a prayer. In
John’s hands, Jesus’ great prayer is narrated as Jesus enters the “hour” of
suffering and defeat. That, of course, is the great victory, but if we are
hearing this for the first time we don’t know that. And Jesus anchors his
prayer in awareness of his union with the Creator-Father.
But here Jesus recognizes that his relationship with the one he calls
Abba, (though John has him address God as “pater,” more gender specific)
is different to ours. It is one time we almost need to speak of a transition in
Jesus’ perspective. His perspective glances, as it were, shifts from his all too
human nature, mutable (able to experience physical and emotional pain and thus
to change), to the immutable divine nature. (I wouldn’t push that suggestion
too far: heresy trials have abounded in Church history, and while the presence
of two natures in the Incarnate Son is orthodox, any explanation of if and how
he transitioned between natures will invite a quick visit to the fires of
execution).
So, recognizing that while his forthcoming journey to the depths of
non-being is, as Joseph Conrad might have put it, “horror” beyond
imagining (Matt. 27:46, Psalm 22:1), Jesus also recognizes that the cost for his
followers, after the empowerment by the Spirit, will not be a basket of Tim Tams
either.
That has hardly been the case for most of us. Yet a glance though
history, as I have often mentioned here and elsewhere, reminds us that the cost
of following Jesus is often enough martyrdom. I tend often to cite the story of
the 21 Libyan martyrs,[1]
but the list of those dying for their Christian faith has never stopped
growing.
Jesus places all this, his own unimaginable impending horror, and the
suffering of his followers thereafter, into the context of glory. “Glory” –
without wanting to be too theological about it – is primarily the domain of
God. God doesn’t belong on a cross; God doesn’t belong in suffering. The Hebrew
tradition had – has – long produced its martyrs, glorifying God. Jesus senses,
perhaps knows, that his own followers will add to that. And in their senseless,
crazy, needless deaths for their compassion, their justice, their commitment
above all to his name, God will paradoxically be glorified.
[1]
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_kidnapping_and_beheading_of_Copts_in_Libya.
I reflect on their martyrdom and that of other modern martyrs in my Entertaining
Angels, 129-137.
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