READINGS

1. John 17:1-11

HOMILY

This is a special, almost intimate Sunday – a time of waiting between the Ascension, its solemnity was celebrated on Thursday, and Pentecost next Sunday.

It’s a time when the Apostles along with Mary, the Mother of God, are in the upper room praying and waiting.

And the Gospel, which comes from Jesus’s so-called high priestly prayer before his Passion, it’s given to us today, I think, because it talks about an intimate kind of sharing.

Now, as is often the case with texts in St John, the language at first seems mystical, mystifying, difficult to understand.

And in particular the word ‘glory’ bears a lot of weight.

It’s repeated throughout today’s Gospel.

My take on St John’s Gospel is that John’s Gospel is much more straightforward, clear, it’s almost blindingly clear and obvious in what it wants to say than we can imagine.

And that we have to do an awful lot of cleaning of the mud from our lenses to grasp it’s obviousness.

And I think that’s particularly true with the word ‘glory’. 

So before I actually read the text with you, just let’s take a little time to deal with this word ‘glory’ and its oddness and what’s really going on there.

When we hear the word ‘glory’, we think of oh – I don’t know - military parades, heavenly angels, all sorts of exuberant, slightly over-the-top things.

But ‘glory’, the Greek word, is the same word for reputation, for opinion, it’s what someone thinks of someone else.

St Augustine understood this very clearly.

His definition of heaven, what it’s going to be like for us to be in heaven, is – he says this in Latin: clara cum laude letitia (to be noticed with clear praise).

That’s what we want. We want people to look at us and say: yes, that’s who you are; yeah, that’s my boy, that’s my girl.

To be held in glory - that’s what glory is, being able to rejoice in being known and loved and appreciated. That’s glory.

Please notice, friends of mine who understand that I’m a student of the thought of René Girard, will understand it perfectly clearly: the glory is a completely mimetic thing, it’s how we get a sense of something from what other people think of us.

Reputation is always a social thing.

And I think that that’s vital if we’re to understand what Jesus is talking about here.

It’s actually terribly simple.

It’s as if he’s having a family, an intimate family conversation with his apostles, and by extension – with us. 

So let’s have a look at the phrases.

Just think a little bit about this talk about glory.

So Jesus looks up to heaven and says:

Father, the hour has come; – it is before the Passion here – glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you. 

Give me the reputation, which is really mine, who I’m really known to be by you, so that when I go to my death I will, in fact, be showing who you really are.

In other words, who you really are in heaven, that’s something which I know.

I’ve been trying to show people who you are.

I’ve even taught to pray “Hallowed be thy name”.

May your name who really are become ever more evident in heaven, so on earth as it is in heaven.

And I’m here to make it evident.

I want to allow your real reputation and who you really actually are to be known.

So please show all these here who I am, so that they will understand who you are.

And that what I’m doing shows who you are.

Obviously, that’s a level of intimacy with people whose very being is given to each other by the love, and the fame, and the appreciation. 

Jesus now goes on:

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. 

In other words, the Father wants who he is to be known.

He’s made it possible at a human level who he really is to be known.

And he’s inviting people into this knowing who he really is in such way that it can be shared by us intimately, because as we know this we start participating in it.

He says:

And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

In other words, once we appreciate who God really is, with all the glory that he has always had, but also quite how gentle and intimate he is in wanting to come and be amongst us as a friend and share who he is with us, going and giving himself up to death for us, so that we no longer need to be frightened by death, but start to be able to know who he is and so live towards him – all of that has been done at this tremendously intimate, domestic, family level. 

He continued:

I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do.

In other words, all these signs that I’ve been doing, by all of them I have been pointing people to who you really are.

I was making who you really are known to them.

And I’ll be finishing that work so that who you really are can be completed.

I’m just about to finish it by going to my death so that you’ll be able to show who you really are to everyone. 

So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.

So he’s saying: make our absolute inter involvement become absolutely visible to everybody, so that people can know that where I am, who I am – as I go into my death – is exactly the glorious One who was exactly that long before I came into the world.

The image which I always have: the lamb slain before the foundation world.

Allow it to be known that this is what I had been doing, and I’ve been doing to show who you are.

Let’s bring this whole revealing in love of who we are to a conclusion so that all are able to be involved in it. 

And he says:

I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the beginning. 

Again, there’s an intimacy about this.

He understands that the people he is with are the people who he was given.

This is what for us life in the Church is like: discovering with joy the people who …

They were yours, and you gave them to me. 

These disciples are a gift.

And they have kept your word. 

They’ve actually followed on with some difficulty as I try to take them to the place where they can see that you are in me and I am in you, that I am opening up what is completely true about you in exactly in the degree to which you are opening up exactly what is true about me. 

Now they know that everything you have given me is from you.

They realize in fact that I’m not an ambassador from you, I’m not someone with a special message from you.

I am you.

Everything you have given me is from you.

There’s simply no distinction between what comes from me and what comes 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.

In other words, they’re beginning to get the sense that your glory and who I am showing you to be are not incidental.

It’s not that I am a particularly good signpost; but that what you are showing and what I am showing are the same thing.

Because we are the same thing. 

I’m asking on their behalf and not asking on behalf of the… 

Here is a mistranslation, world is not so useful.

Cosmo in Greek refers to the failed order of creation.

We are not talking about creation in a sense of something good; the failed order, the running down, the futile world.

But on behalf of those who whom you gave me.

That’s what I’m asking for. 

Because they are yours.

Again, what I want to bring out is this wonderful tabletop intimacy between Jesus talking to his Father in the presence of the disciples, and sharing how they are all in this together.

All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them.

This is an amazing thing: Jesus is prepared to allow himself to be glorified in us, meaning: we are going to become bearers of his glory, witnesses to what God is really all about, witnesses to what the real order of creation pending to heaven is.

Witnesses, of course, from the moment that Jesus is seated at the right hand of God and the power of the realigned creation flows into us.  

And now, he says, now I no longer in the world but they are in world.

In other words, I'm no longer inside the – how would we say this – the fallible, the futile, the vanity-stricken cosmos.

I am now beyond that.

I am sitting above the heavens, where I was in the first place.

But you, my friends, my disciples – you are still in there.

And you are going to be the living through that towards the new creation, towards the realignment or heaven on earth, because Holy Father is being asked to protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one as we are one. 

So he is praying that the Holy Spirit come down upon us all, so as we may be kept together in this project of being amazing, even what fallible, screwed-up people we are.

Amazing that we are being given the power and strength actually to become part of what the life of God really is, as shown by Jesus, which we find ourselves invited into.

So much to think about.

So much intimacy to begin to prepare for as we wait for the Spirit to come upon us at Pentecost.