The Pastor’s Reflections
We have only a few more days before we conclude the glorious week of weeks, the Easter Season, forty-nine days of resurrection joy! Next Sunday we’ll be celebrating the Feast of Pentecost. This Sunday provides us with an interesting and beautiful reflection to end the Easter Season; we read the conclusion of Jesus’ Last Supper discourse. It ends chapter seventeen of John’s Gospel. Chapter eighteen begins the account of the Passion with the arrest of Jesus. However, the ending of the discourse is a perfect segue to the Feast of Pentecost and the beginning of “Ordinary Time.” The ending of this discourse is a prayer that Jesus addresses to the Father. Before we ponder the prayer it will be helpful to recount what came before.
At the Last Supper, Jesus imparted his most important teachings to his disciples. He washed their feet in an act of profound humility, taking on the task of a slave. He asked them to follow his example, to leave their pride behind and to devote their lives to one another. He focused this teaching by giving them a new commandment: “As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.” By washing their feet he impressed on them the nature of his love. It was a sacrificial love. He was asking them to follow him by offering their lives in loving service to one another.
He continued by announcing to them that, though he was leaving them and going back to his Father, he would prepare a place for them in his Father’s house. It was at this point that Jesus began to introduce the second theme of his discourse, unity. “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” He continued, “Whoever loves me will keep my word and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.”
Jesus, developing the themes of service and unity, used a metaphor to enforce his teaching. “Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.” He followed this by twice repeating, “love one another as I have loved you.”
Several times during the discourse Jesus mentioned the coming of another Advocate. “The holy Spirit that the Father will send in my name – he will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.” “When the Advocate comes whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth that proceeds from the Father, he will testify to me. And you also will testify, because you have been with me from the beginning.” The promise of the Advocate was an important element in Jesus’ farewell discourse. Jesus was returning to the Father. He was now commissioning the disciples to take up the work he had begun. They would be enlightened, and strengthened by the Advocate that he would send them. Having concluded his discourse Jesus raised his eyes in a prayer to his Father. This is the passage we contemplate today.
“Father, the hour has come. Give glory to your son, so that your son may glorify you, just as you gave him authority over all people, so that he may give eternal life to all that you gave him.” (John 17: 1-2) John the evangelist named his account of the Last Supper and Passion, the Book of Glory, and used the words “glory” and “glorify” twenty-six times in his Gospel. Jesus changed water into wine “and so revealed his glory, and his disciples began to believe in him.” (John 2:11) When Lazarus’ sister told Jesus not to open the tomb because her brother had been dead four days, he said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of God?” (John 11:40) Glory is God’s manifested majesty. Through the works he performed, Jesus glorified the Father. In this prayer he asked the Father to glorify him “with the glory that I had with you before the world began.” (John 17:5) But his prayer didn’t conclude there. His prayer continued in a most extraordinary way.
He reminded the Father of the depth of his relationship with his disciples. “I revealed your name to those you gave me out of the world.” (John 17:6) The revelation of a name implies tremendous intimacy with a person. It means knowing who the person really is. Jesus opened the door to the Father. All those who believed in Jesus have seen the Father’s glory. They witnessed it in the person of Jesus, in the works he performed, and the message he shared with them. He went on to remind the Father that he “has been glorified in them.”(John 17:10) Lastly, he consecrated the disciples’ mission. “I will no longer be in the world, but they are in the world.” (John17:11)
These last words of Jesus pull together the entire Last Supper teaching. Jesus’ disciples, from that day on, have been consecrated to carry on his mission. We’re to remain after him as the leaven of the Kingdom in a world that moves contrary to God. In the world, personal glory is achieved through the accumulation of wealth, and the exercise of power over others. The disciples of Jesus discover the glory of God through their dedicated and loving service to the poor, the outcast and the powerless. The Advocate, Jesus’ eternal gift to us, is with us, and in us, giving us the power to counteract the world and its false and dehumanizing values.
The coming Feast of Pentecost is our yearly reminder that we have accepted to carry on the mission of Jesus to conquer the world. Loving service is to be our weapon. Harmony with God and one another is the power behind our service. At the Last Supper Jesus clearly told his disciples, “I have told you this so that you might have peace in me. In the world you will have trouble, but take courage, I have conquered the world.” (John 16:33)
