The Long Goodbye
Text: John 17:1-11
This is the last Sunday in Easter. Next week is Pentecost.
It marks a change of seasons. Today’s reading is the last for a while from the Gospel of John, who has been our guide for all of Easter. From now on it will be mostly Matthew. We leave the season of resurrection stories and enter a season of ordinary time, a time of the life of the Spirit sustaining and revealed in the daily lives of people here.
In the church year, it is the end (for a while) of the life of Jesus in this world. He will ascend, leaving behind the Paraclete, the advocate, the Spirit. And in the order of the story in John, Jesus’ prayer we heard today is followed immediately by the passion, the story of his trial and death. Either way, Jesus is saying goodbye.
We talk a lot about the continuing presence of Jesus, but he really will not be with the disciples in the same way he has been. A different way, perhaps. But no more long walks, no more sermons, no more fish cooked on the beach.
The disciples are, not a surprise, fearful about how things will be once Jesus is gone. They have known this time was coming. Jesus told them so, and even if he had not, they could see the signs. Little children, I am only with you a little longer, Jesus had said. Where I am going, you cannot come.
The disciples remain here. I am no longer in the world, Jesus prays to the Father, but they are in the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, … as you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them. The followers of Jesus will learn a new way of being people of the resurrection.
So Jesus prays for them. A heartfelt prayer, it reveals his love for them and, it seems to me, some apprehension. It is personal, based on their lives together, and their hard mission, and their almost-certain fate. It is in the Gospel of John that Jesus weeps for Lazarus; it is in this Gospel that Jesus reveals himself to be a friend (you are my friends, he says elsewhere) whose heart is moved. Does not Jesus grieve for them, and for himself, his own loss?
It is instructive, if perhaps a little suspect theologically, to say this prayer out loud, but to substitute your own name every time Jesus says “them.” You may then find this prayer to be not so much a general meditation on the nature of God, Jesus, the world, and Christians. But instead, an intimate prayer about very particular people. I do not pray for the world, Jesus says, but on behalf of those you gave me. This is not (at least here) a judgment about anybody else; rather, it makes clear that this prayer, this time, this moment, is for his disciples, his friends.
The portion of the prayer we heard today is, in spite of its strange and almost mystical expression, simply argued: My work is done. These, my disciples are great. They are ready. Protect them.
In one sense, the whole passage is a blessing: Jesus prays that they might have eternal life. Which he straightforwardly (and for many people surprisingly)—which he defines as this: that they may know God. This is eternal life. Not to know about God, or to know of God, or to know God’s celebrity. But to know God. Not “to be in a relationship with God,” a phrase that always strikes me as nearly meaningless and sterile. But to actively, intimately, and compellingly do things with God, talk to God, listen, argue and berate, plead, obey.
Though Jesus may be praying for the wellbeing and protection of his followers, there is more to this prayer than support and affection. Earlier he had promised that his followers would do works as great as his, and even greater. How can that be? Because, he says, because he is going to the Father. His leaving makes space for the disciples to advance the mission of Jesus.
We can hear in this prayer that Jesus wants his disciples to do something. That he hopes they will continue on the mission—but in their own way. This prayer is a statement of Jesus’ trust and hope in them. I imagine him thinking about how things will be for the disciples, and wondering in what way they will follow his way. What of the things that Jesus thought were important will also be thought important by them? What commands will they remember? What parables will open wisdom in them? What habits of body and heart will be preserved?
One reason why we are so moved by this prayer is that bidding farewell is part of our human existence, and so we find things in Jesus’ heart (or maybe we put them there) that are in our own hearts.
Times of change are hard and, as they are for the disciples, both hope-filled and scary. At Faith we have hopes for concrete things like fixing the roof and sprucing up the restrooms. But we more importantly have hopes of a different kind. That we will remain of cheerful heart. That we will love one another, including the ones not here yet. That we will not forget who we are. That we will remain fearless.
The book of Acts, from which we have been reading all Easter and will continue reading next week, is a story in which the resurrection is not the end of the Gospel but the beginning. It is Jesus’ leaving that makes Acts possible. He says goodbye to his followers, but he knows and prays, in the very last words of this prayer, that the love with which God has loved Jesus will be in them, and he in them, also.
