New Ways to See the World
John 17:9-16
Our reading today is a pastoral prayer - Jesus praying for those gathered in a community with him. As in John 15:1, where the branches are tended by God, so here God is at work before Jesus begins, and Jesus asks for that work to continue once he is no longer physically present.
The verb give occurs 17 times in this chapter, more by far than in any other chapter of the New Testament. The uses of this verb tell the story of the prayer: The Father gives Jesus authority over all flesh to give eternal life to all whom God has given him. He has given Jesus work to do, but most of all in the section under consideration this week, it is a question of those whom God has given Jesus from the world. They were first the Father’s own but are now Jesus’ own. Jesus has given them words and indeed the word that the Father gave to him. But the prayer is about them, the given ones.
Jesus makes three requests on their behalf in this week’s section of the prayer. The first two are for protection. The point of the protection is that they should mirror and be drawn into the oneness in love of the Father and Son themselves, as is made even clearer in John 17:21-23. They are to be protected so that they may love as they have been commanded to love in a way that not only draws them into union with the divine love but also shows that love to the world into which they are being sent as Jesus has been sent. So Jesus’ own are to be protected not only for their own sakes but also in order to fulfill the mission of love in the world.
The second petition is that the Father should protect them from the evil one (John 17:15), whose activity has been highlighted with respect to Judas (John 13:2, 27), the one Jesus has lost because he was destined to be lost (John 17:12). Emerging from that second request is the third, that they be sanctified in the truth (John 17:17), further defined as the Father’s word (logos), both of which we know, from John 1:1-18 (logos) and John 14:6 (truth), to be the Son Jesus himself. The word for sanctified is translated hallowed in the Lord’s Prayer; the Father’s name there is to be sanctified, and here Jesus’ own themselves, God’s gift to him, are to be hallowed for God’s purposes. This is bound up with their being sent into the world as earlier, in John 10:36, the Son’s sending has been linked with his sanctification. Jesus’ own are set apart for the logos, God’s self-revealing testimony, God’s act of love in the world.
The emphasis on the world underscores the importance of God’s mission of love. The world, which appears 13 times in these 14 verses, is complicated in John. One could easily be forgiven for seeing it as mostly scary and hate-full. The reason that they are mirroring the union of the Father and Son and carrying the love of God and Jesus for them into the world that doesn’t know God is precisely that God loves that world and wants it to know that love.
In the center of the prayer (John 17:13) is Jesus’ intention that in hearing the prayer spoken “in the world” where they are being sent even as Jesus is returning to the Father, his own should find his joy made complete in themselves. We saw already in last week’s text Jesus’ intention that his words should issue in joy for his own. There it was that they should have joy in his command to them to abide in love; now they are to find joy in overhearing Jesus’ prayer on their behalf for the same thing -- that they should be protected for love by the one in whose love they dwell.
Reflection Questions:
Imagine that you are sitting with Jesus at that Passover meal. What are you thinking and feeling as you hear Jesus pray for you?
How would we feel and behave differently if we remember that we are a community that Jesus prays for?
What did Jesus mean when he prayed, “that they may be one, as we are one?” Do you think he was praying only for his disciples?
What's the connection between living in truth and being close to God?