Progressive reflections on the lectionary #113
John 17:1-11 an anti-empire prayer... (includes new Process insight)
Today I explore the passage known as the ‘High Priestly prayer’ and say that actually this reads more like a dramatic farewell speech than the sort of prayer that Jesus might have said. It is a passage in which John unpacks some of his subversive, relational, Hebrew theology. Here John reframes ideas like ‘glory’, undermines notions of social and political power relations, and offers a vision of ‘eternal life’ which doesn’t, actually, sound much like the sort of ‘eternal life’ that we hear about in many churches. My process insights dwell a little longer on the ideas of relationality and power with a classic quote from Whitehead himself.
Drawing on the work of early writers like Origen and John Chrysostom in the 3rd and 4th centuries CE respectively, Reformers like Calvin and Luther called the prayer that Jesus offers in the opening verses of John 17 the ‘High Priestly Prayer’.
But although it sort of fits the bill in the sense of being a prayer offered on the behalf of others, it actually reads more like an elaborate farewell speech. Here Jesus speaks aloud to God, in an apparent break away from the type of prayer he teaches in the synoptics gospels (essentially: brief, humble and private).
This is a prayer then, for the disciples sake, rather than God’s (I feel like I’ve heard a few of those prayers in my time). Here John offers it as part of Jesus’ farewell and uses it as a vehicle to teach us some of Jesus’ key ideas.
For instance, there’s a focus on glory - but not the sort of glory enjoyed by the imperial powers - here true glory is found in love, not power. As you will see in my new ‘process insight’ section at the bottom of this page, this is a key idea for open and relational theologians.
As a teaching moment, then, this is a form of handover for John’s Jesus. He’s handing on his work to the disciples - commissioning them. He says this more or less explicitly in the sentence: “All mine are yours, and yours are mine.” A compact and rather dense theological line that, in presenting a level relationship, immediately undermines conventional ideas of hierarchy and ownership.
In a world where men owned women, fathers owned sons, and kings owned subjects here ownership is said to be mutual: yours are mine, mine are yours. Mutuality - community based on equal sharing, not domination.
Perhaps it’s because I’m a little fixated on how this plays out in a process sense, but I can’t get away from the idea of power in this passage.
Jesus, who is about to be executed by the state, specifically refuses or refutes the categories of domination offered by Rome. When, in verse two, he says “you have given him authority over all people,” he specifically defines this as the power of life, rather than the power of death which is what the empire wields.
“…to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” (17:2-3)
That line, which constitutes verse three, is important too (this is such a dense passage!) here we get a sense of deep, intimate, relationality: “that they may know you…”
The verb “to know” here is about a shared life, a mutuality - it’s not about intellectual knowledge.
I’m conscious this is, weirdly, something of a ‘clobber’ passage both for trinitarians and those who dispute the doctrine of the trinity - I think both arguments miss the point.
John’s Jesus is not simply saying ‘I am divine,’ nor, in offering a sentence with two subjects is he offering himself as a subordinate to the divine.
Rather, he is saying ‘my identity is inseparable from the divine identity, and eternal life means realising your identity is also inseparable from it.’ Ok, maybe I’m adding complexity here - perhaps I can simplify it in this way: eternal life here is not a reward or escape, it’s not about immortality in some heavenly paradise, it is knowing/participation/shared life with God.
This passage, then, collapses the hierarchies established by all the temple purity codes, social hierarchies and political realities. The disciples have “kept your word” (17:6) and as such they now share in the divine life. This is not top down, nor even about a bounded set, instead it’s about making the circle ever broader. Relationship with God is not about allegiance to a ‘new/different emperor’ but about a radical new way of thinking.
God is not another landlord (but this time invisible) to whom rent is due; glory is not being celebrated for a martial victory; instead it’s all about love and mutuality.
In verse 11 John returns to one of his favourite ideas: the world. For John the world is not simply ‘the created order’ (planet, universe or whatever) rather it’s the political system that relies on violence and fear rather than love and relationship.
In saying: “I am not in the world, but they are in the world,” (17:11) John has Jesus name the reality that the disciples must navigate. Now they must face what he has faced, conflict with the powers of the world. They are going to need the courage to resist (as do we all, hence the need for communities of resistance).
“I have made your name known,” says Jesus in verse six, and here John, who is so steeped in Greek style, leans heavily on the relational Hebrew theology from which he draws. To make God’s name known is to demonstrate God’s character - the unchanging or fixed nature of the divine: justice, mercy, and solidarity - in other words: love.
John’s Jesus is commissioning his followers, and by extension all of us, to continue his way of being in the world. It’s not orthodoxy that is required, not acceptance of a set of ‘right teachings’ but orthopraxy: a right way of being in the ‘world’.
Process Insight
Ok - so for my brief ‘process insight’ into this passage we’re going to lean on the ideas of relationality and power. These two form the fundamental basis of process theology, relational theology and open theology.
In terms of relational thinking, well, here we get clear language of mutual indwelling: God is not the remote ruler of classical theism but is in dynamic communion with Jesus and the disciples. The ‘prayer’ in this passage shows God as one who works through relationship and persuasion.
“There is, however, in the Galilean origin of Christianity …[a] suggestion which…does not emphasize the ruling Caesar, or the ruthless moralist, or the unmoved mover. It dwells upon the tender elements in the world, which slowly and in quietness operate by love…. Love neither rules, nor is it unmoved; also it is a little oblivious as to morals. It does not look to the future; for it finds its own reward in the immediate present.” (Whitehead, P&R, p343.)
The relationality in the passage, then, is not possible to separate from the issue of power. For process thinkers divine power is always explicitly relational - it invites the response of the other.
God works by persuasion, not coercion; by lure rather than threat. The glory that Jesus speaks of in this passage is that which emerges when we respond to the divine lure toward the good. Glory, in other words, is found in love - not in domination.
Ultimately those who receive and then act on these teachings become co-creators of the of the future that God desires. The future is open - it’s up to us to make it.
Progressive Reflections On the Lectionary are intended to be useful to people who preach, or are interested in why on earth anyone still reads the Bible.