Introduction
John 17
I passed over this passage for decades. It meant little to me. I loved the whole book of John, but this passage the least. It seemed dull, jumbled, scattered words I couldn't place in my life, in my understanding of God. Even the sermons I heard failed to bring any meaningful light, focusing on one passage – "that they may be one" – even with all the exposition on that, it seems to me now the orators failed utterly to understand.
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But the passage I believe to be darkened – darkened to most at least, for it is so intensely revealing. Could God let himself be shown, at his most vulnerable, at his chamber of intense intimacy, to a casual onlooker? I pursued him for decades of my life. Uncovered unspeakable glories; had experiences with God that left me speechless, reduced to tears, laid out and undone before him.
And then I came again to John 17. Something was new. It intrigued me, it stirred in me a more intense longing. For months I could not leave this passage, looking every morning. A year went by; I felt a holy addiction. No other scripture captured me as this had. For perhaps two years I meditated. It finally began to open, and I began to see.
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And yet I knew, I was tasting but trickles of a divine intensity that lay behind those words. I could see dimly. I could catch but fleeting glimpses. They were magnificent. They were a headwater stream when I could hear thundering cascades. They were scattering sparks of what I could sense was a furious blaze. They were obscured glimmers and reflections of a brilliant light. There was infinite there, a depth I could never plumb, a chasm so vast I feared to look in.
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Now I see the passage so differently. It is the thinnest of all windows in Scripture. It is sheer, diaphanous; like a concealing vapor, a translucent gossamer weave, obscuring all but shadows, glimpses. Behind it are glimmers of a glory so sweet, so beautiful, so astounding, and yet so frightening. An overwhelming intensity. It is the most tender facet of God we will see in this world. He at his most vulnerable, and being so, his most desirable.
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I do not dare tread much beyond what I have seen. I fear God. Not that I don't love him intensely. But I think that no man can see his glory and live. It is the death curtain that took Sirius Black. That shadowy passage that is the passage to ultimate life. One fears, but one so desires. I know someone who has so tread that path, and he dreams of his death now. He sees himself in a photo like a ghost. He has visions of heaven, waking up and covering his eyes, knowing if he sees Jesus he will never want to leave, but pleading with him to send him back with so much unfinished.
How tender that divine heart of Jesus appears to me, beating as it does through John 17. One so vulnerable, so alone, so full of desire, of need, of hope, of passion. It is not the heart of Jesus alone that is so, it is the Father that is one with him. It is the Spirit God, whose whole eternal being is now wrapped around this moment. A longing at last, fulfilled in human companionship. A God-sized longing, tasting the fruit of an eternity of suffering, of waiting. Finding the love of his life. Tasting the fulfillment of all dreams. If hope deferred makes the heart sick, then how heavy was God's, waiting, waiting, wanting. And now, for these fleeting years, fulfilled.
I cannot hope that what I have experienced of God in this passage will be captured here. There really are no words. My only hope to have captured a glimmer, a few of the tender feelings, a taste of the intensity. I can only hope that you, the reader, will find breadcrumbs that will stir you to search, and perhaps be a trail to lead you to a table as I have found. It will be all yours if you do find it, as I could never find it for you; and really, your table will be all yours, as mine is all mine.
When you take the whole of John 17, you begin to see from Jesus a full, passionate cry for this people who are his. There is a measure of anxiety infused through the whole passage. That anxiety is perhaps best understood by flipping the page. It is after all, John 18, when Jesus is led away to what will be his death. These are his last real words on earth, his last moments with his disciples, his last experience of that intense comradery he had had for three years, and his last chance to express what is so deeply within his heart.
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John 17. This remarkable prayer of revealing. Jesus and all his inner thoughts, bouncing around from thing to thing. All the rushing thoughts in that time of intense stress. He knew what was coming. Was he so different than us in the face of impending and certain doom? Doubtless he slept little in those days before the cross. His mind and more his heart racing. “Did I say enough? Did I give them all I could? Am I ready for my life to end? Did I love enough. Did I love enough?”
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He seems initially anxious about himself, crying for glory. Crying for a sense of significance. Combating the fear that all his life was for naught. Groping for some assurance it would all matter. "Glorify me with the glory I had." Surely, I have not failed, for "they believe..." I've done all I can; please make it enough! Perhaps you are uncomfortable with an image of Jesus with such human frailty, but I believe the passage more than reveals it.
But his anxiety turns to his people. I protected them. I guarded them. Let them find that place of security I’ve longed that they would. Let them be where I am. Let them be one even as we are one. How he cries for this people! It has perhaps gone from his anxiety over his legacy, and the fear his life didn't matter, to a deep impassioned cry for those he had come to love so much.
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The gospel writers, all but John that is, record the prayer in the garden, the Gethsemane. John doesn't directly record these events, at least not as the other gospel writers do. However, follow the timeline, go step by step through the last events of Jesus life, and you land very close to John 17 as the fuller expression of that Gethsemane prayer, if not the prayer itself. The travail of Christ, words uttered in John’s hearing, dissolve into impassioned feelings, strong crying and tears, that no words could express.
The other writers record the disciples sleeping. But were they all asleep? Could perhaps John, Jesus closest companion, have captured the fuller content of John17, as he listened in on the impassioned cries of his Lord? How deep this anxiety ran! The dark night as Christ is agonizing, pleading, in extreme stress as he cries to the Father, sweating drops of blood in the fury of feelings at that moment. "Let this cup pass." The cup of separation from his beloved!
These meditations explore, perhaps more than anything else, this anxiety. If you do not fear, it is perhaps because you do not love. Jesus fears, for he deeply loves, and here, in the pages of John 17, is that love revealed more completely than we will perhaps see anywhere else this side of heaven. “Let them be one. Let them be one with me! Let them be with me!”