The hour and the gifts

Bible study two
John 17.1-10, 17-26

Paul Minear

Like other Johannine passages, this chapter contains an infinite richness of symbolic reference both to the story of Jesus and to the experience of the early church. My formal study must be limited to a few selected themes; your individual imaginations must range more widely in tracing out the symbolic implications. I will focus upon four questions:

1. How does this prayer fit into the literary design of the gospel?
2. What is the internal structure of the prayer?
3. What is the meaning of the hour?
4. What are the gifts for which Jesus prayed?

How does this prayer fit into the literary design of the gospel?

The high importance of this prayer is indicated by its location at the point of transition between the ministry of Jesus and his passion. Here the narrative turns from intimate dialogues with his disciples to his betrayal by one of those disciples. Attention shifts from quiet, intense conversation with "his own" to noisy arrest and angry trial. The time for verbal teaching is over; now Jesus must teach through his suffering. The prayer thus forms a dramatic prelude to the passion: "Father, the hour has come...". It also forms a retrospective coda to those same events: "I glorified you on earth..." Readers are invited to look both forward and backward to that hour. One should therefore read this chapter with the whole gospel in mind, and then read the whole gospel with this chapter in mind. These same readers, who were almost certainly believers who were not present in the original instance, were also enabled to grasp multiple connections between the passion and their own eucharistic liturgy, at which Jesus was still host. He was still engaged in teaching uncomprehending disciples, still engaged in intercessions for them. So the very form of the chapter - a son's prayer to his father - suggests the context and situation and mood in which we should listen to it.

What is the internal structure of the prayer?

Let us look now at the internal structure of the prayer itself. In its substance, it articulates a highly complex pattern of relationships: the Son to the Father and the Father to the Son; the master to the disciples and the disciples to the master; the disciples to the world and the world to the disciples.

The preceding verses in Ch. 16 suggest one function of the prayer, for they show how badly these disciples needed precisely this type of intercession. They were convinced that they had understood Jesus' message and that they had believed in him. They thought that they would remain faithful to him, confident that they had already overcome the world. They were mistaken. The prayer presupposes their confusions, provides as a foil his perfect understanding, and in effect suggests that apart from his intervention, apart from his power to give them life, their future would have been empty indeed.

The immediate sequel indicates another function of the prayer, for as soon as Jesus had finished, he took them to the garden where he would be arrested. Prayer and passion are correlatives: the passion is the embodiment of the prayer; the prayer gives words to what happened in the passion. The first paragraph (vv. 1-5) summarizes this meaning for Jesus himself. Notice his petition: "Father glorify me in your own presence with the glory which I had with you before the world was made" (v. 5). This is a petition, but more than a petition: it is a final accounting of an ambassador to the one who sent him. "1 have glorified you on earth". So we learn what happened, as far as Jesus was concerned, in the accomplishment of his assignment. His death is to constitute the point of intersection for two streams of glorification: the Son glorifies the Father, the Father glorifies the Son. And at that point of intersection the Son is given "power over all flesh" and is enabled to give eternal life to all whom God gives him. So much for the first of three paragraphs which serves as the necessary basis for the other two.

In the second paragraph this power is released through Jesus' intercession for the very disciples who were with him in the Upper Room. They had belonged to God; God had given them to Jesus. ("Mine are yours, yours are mine"). They had come out of the world in order to be sent into the world (vv. 6, 18). The consecration of Jesus in death is to become the means for their consecration to the same mission (v. 19). Here again is an amazing point of intersection: Jesus is to be glorified in them as they are to be glorified in him. Through his intercessory prayer and death their vocation becomes a continuation of his. The vocational link is provided by his word, his logos, which evokes the same hostility from the world but contains the power to overcome the world. So the center of concern in this second paragraph is with the disciples at first hand.

In the third and climactic paragraph, the concern of Jesus shifts to the disciples at second hand, "those who believe in me through their word" (v. 20-26). This logos is the essential link between the first and second generations. These believers have not seen the Lord but they are indwelt by his word and by his Father's word. In this paragraph lies the centre of gravity for the prayer as a whole, for here emerges the Evangelist's own concern for his own readers, disciples whose vocation must be carried out in a hostile world that rejects this word. They faced as much hatred as their predecessors - social ridicule, economic discrimination, excommunication from the synagogue, imprisonment, execution. But they had no personal memories of Jesus. Their only resource seemed to be the testimony of witnesses whose own memories were becoming steadily dimmer. It was far from easy for them to achieve or to preserve unity with one another, with disciples of the previous generation, and, most importantly, with Jesus. Was there in their case, as in their predecessors', a point of intersection between their glorification of Jesus and his glorification of them? There was no doubt of their need for Jesus' help, both in word and in deed. So the prayer articulates the needs of Jesus himself and then the needs of the two succeeding generations; all of these needs required a profound understanding of the hour.

What is the meaning of the hour?

"Father, the hour has come..." How does John understand such a declaration? The same question is raised by the frequent use the adverb now (vv. 5, 7, 11, 13). To what does this Now refer? In trying to penetrate this mystery, we should remember that we are dealing with a dialogue between earth and heaven, between Son and Father, and that different time-scales may be native to that dialogue. Events take place on earth within one time scheme; prayer has the power to place this scheme within the brackets of divine purposes, and thus to transcend human calenders. For the sake of brevity, let me hastily mention nine features of this hour.

1. To speak of the hour is to embrace within a single word all that will happen between this prayer and its fulfilment in Jesus' glorification (v. 5): arrest, trial, execution, burial, resurrection, ascension, going to the Father, coming to his disciples.
2. This period of time can be viewed simultaneously from the standpoint of both earlier and later periods, both in prospect and in retrospect. It therefore virtually requires that a confusion of tenses be used in referring to it, future, present, perfect, etc.
3. The hour is a time appointed and set in advance by God in accordance with his purposes and plans for his selected messengers.
4. In Jesus' case, it is a time set for the "world", the adversaries of Jesus, to complete the rejection of him, and, in consequence, for Jesus' disciples to be scattered in sorrow, fear and confusion.
5. It is the time recognized and accepted by Jesus as the completion of his own work, a time for final accounting with his Father and for final intercession for his disciples.
6. By disclosing the glory which Jesus had before the world was made, the hour conveys knowledge of that primal reality and participation in that glory.
7. Similarly, the hour is the moment of truth, disclosing knowledge concerning the final reality and participation in the tribulation, the judgement, the victory, the ultimate unification of all things.
8. The hour represents the final and full authorization of the disciples for their work in the world, for their conflict with the world, and for the promise of victory over the world.
9. In this hour, Jesus' intercessory praying and dying become accessible to all future generations of disciples, those who have not seen him but who believe in him through the word. This one time becomes relevant to all times, for Jesus is now able to be present to and to abide \with each successive company of disciples, enabling them to be one with him and with the Father, and thus with one another.

Note: this last point may be especially relevant to our centennial celebration by making clear how successive generations of Christians become one, and by destroying a false reliance on longevity.

What are the gifts for which Jesus prayed?

We may summarize all aspects of the hour by saying that it is the time for the movement of momentous gifts from heaven to earth. So we ask what is the character of those gifts. The prayer makes it clear that Jesus could give nothing to the disciples which he had not first received from God. God had given Jesus "power over all flesh", a power synonymous with eternal life, a gift to Jesus for him to give to them (VV. 2, 3). Power and life were embodied in the gift of God's name, first to Jesus and then to the disciples (vv. 6, 11, 12, 26). Inseparable from name, life, power, was the gift of unity, the mutual indwelling of Father and Son, into which all true disciples were incorporated by the praying/ dying of the Son. In fact, the intercessory vocation of Jesus was based on the truth that God had given to him the very souls of the disciples, those at second-hand no less than those at first-hand (vv.6, 24). These gifts constitute the hidden reality that "emerges into view in the spoken prayer. There are, in addition, at least five other gifts which may be mentioned:

1. The hatred of the world, combined with Jesus' victory over the world, leads to the gift of tribulation and peace, of sorrow and joy. When they were attacked by the Evil One, they would receive protection through his prayer (16:32 f.; 17:11, 15).
2. Jesus' intercession gives them power to keep the word (the logos) which he has received from the Father. This word enables them to believe and to know and to share in Jesus' origin and mission; it is the living link between Father, Son and messengers (vv. 3, 6, 8, 14).
3. When they accomplish the work that Christ has given them, they will be sanctified and consecrated in the truth, the very same truth that God's word had conveyed to Jesus and which the word would convey to them. His prayer links their hour of consecration to his hour (vv. 4, 17-19).
4. Jesus' last petition (v. 26) stresses the centrality of love in this complex pattern. Jesus gives them God's love; that is to say, he chooses to live within them. There is and can be no knowledge of the Father apart from the sharing of this love, of which the passion of Jesus is the measure.
5. Finally, there is the gift of doxa, glory, another word for God's life of love. This glory links every act of love to the primal act of creation (v. 24). As God was glorified in Jesus' mission, so is Jesus glorified in their vocation of love. It is this gift of glory that makes all disciples one, one with the Father, the Son, and one another (v. 22).

To sum up, nothing could be more typical of the prayer as a whole than the petition of verse 24:

"Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to behold my glory which you have given me in your love for me before the foundation of the world".

Did the Father answer this prayer of his Son? Did his disciples receive these gifts? Were these the actual fruits of that awful Tree on which he hung? However we may answer that question, the Evangelist surely believed the promise: "Ask and you shall receive" (16:24). And what is the minimum relevance of this prayer for our consideration of the theme, The Glory of God and the Future of Man? Surely this: whenever we think about that theme, we must ask what it is that has been present with God from the foundation of the world. And that question cannot be answered apart from such words as life, truth, power, peace, joy, unity, love - and glory. And one access to the meaning of those words (as well as of the word) is forever given to us in the praying and dying of Jesus the Christ.