Sermon on John 17: 6-19
Everybody who reads the Gospel of John and in particular the Farewell Speeches knows how repetitive and almost redundant John’s language is. In our Greek translation group we found, that if you could be bothered to memorize a limited amount of Johannine key terms you would have made a prudent investment which would get you quite far.
For this sermon I want to think a bit about three key terms in today’s Gospel passage:
The truth. The world and ‘to protect’ and how they relate to each other.
‘Truth’, aletheia is definitely a favourite term in John’s Gospel, from the ‘true light which enlightens everyone’ in the prologue to Pilate’s hapless or cynical question: ‘What is truth?’ (John 18:38).
Well, good question that one, what is truth? Is it factuality, something is really the case or has really happened? Or is it more the essence of something, the substance? Isn’t all truth relative, seen from a certain perspective, confirmed within certain parameters only?
But now we have the Gospel of John, saying in ever new ways that Jesus is the truth, not just a messenger of the truth, though he bears witness to it, not just an illustration of a truth, but the truth of truth, the reality of all reality, the sun, not just a bright star, the only-begotten Son, exegeting the Father (John 1:18). Jesus is the true vine (John 15:1), not because he needs to have a go at fake vines, but because he is the vine, which truly gives life to those who are joined to it. He is the vine of which all other vines are echoes, illustrations and shadows.
His flesh is true food and his blood is true drink, as Jesus puts it in stark terms in John 6:55, he is the true bread coming from heaven (John 6:32), not because there is no food or drink in the world, but because this is the food giving substance and reality to all foods, the living bread giving eternal life (John 6:51). ‘Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die’ (John 6:49-50).
Jesus is the light without darkness, the life without death, the sun which knows no setting and diminishing.
And he shares that life with his own, by giving them his word. ‘Sanctify them in the truth’ Jesus prays, addressing his Father. ‘Your word is truth’ (John 17:17).
The church in the Swiss village I grew up in, a large, neo-gothic construction with an elegant spire, had an open Bible chiselled over its portal, with these words written on it: ‘Dein Wort ist die Wahrheit’, ‘Your word is truth’. Which is perhaps not so surprising for a Swiss-Reformed church. In keeping with that tradition, it had no icons or statues inside, but it had five large stain glass windows at the east end. The middle one showed the risen and ascended Christ in a gesture of blessing, the other four depicted the four evangelists, each one pointing to Jesus. Though there was a prominent and terrifyingly high pulpit at the side your gaze was instantly drawn to that depiction of the glorified Christ when you entered the church. I guess the architects of that church knew what all good reformed theologians (and of course Anglican theologians) should know – that the written word draws its strength and authority from being a witness to the living Word, Jesus Christ. Preachers who are not joining the evangelists in pointing to Jesus are merely a side-show. Truth in the Gospel of John is personal, in the sense that there is now a person of flesh and blood who says: ‘I AM the way and the truth and the life’ (John 14:6). This truth has connotations of utter faithfulness and trustworthiness. God is true to his word, true to himself and therefore faithfully reaching out, bringing men and women into communion with the Father and the Son, into their life-stream you could say, in the pre-technical sense of the word. It is this truth which sets the disciples free from the slavery of sin and shows them how to worship in Spirit and truth (John 4:23).
But there is also the world, the cosmos. And in the light of the revelation of the Son of God the shadows also deepen. The world is resisting the light, it cannot receive God’s life and it demonstrates its hostility by persecuting the disciples. ‘The world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him’ as the prologue informs us (1:10). Jesus is the one from above and not from the world. He has come from his Father and is about to return to his Father, leaving this world. We hear Jesus saying: ‘I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours’ (John 17:9). This sounds just a tad exclusive, perhaps even sectarian – certainly not very Church of England, though it has its very exclusive pockets – are we all to withdraw into a little group of like-minded people, bolt the door and wait for the end?
But the bolted doors are what happens after Easter, before the risen Christ breathes his Spirit on the disciples in the Gospel of John. ‘As the Father sent me so I send you’ Jesus speaks on that occasion (John 20:21), echoing verse 18 of today’s Gospel: ‘As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.’ The disciples are to share in God’s mission who has not sent the Son to condemn the world but to save the world (John 3:17) and who gives his life ‘for the life of the world’ (John 6:33; 51).
If they are completely absorbed by the world and its logic of power and violence and greed, they have nothing to offer. If they lock the door and pray for a space-ship to take them away asap they are not where they are needed. Salvation comes from outside the world, from outside its resources, which are quickly exhausted, but happens within it. This can be terrifying, because, as the Gospel puts it, there is evil in the world, there is the evil one.
This is why Jesus prays, prays for the disciples, prays for us: ‘I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one’ (John 17:15). Which brings us to the third word: Protection.
When I was a child I was often sent to buy bread in the village bakery and on the way there I walked past the church I have described earlier. I had to walk up or almost climb up some very long and steep stairs, which led through shrubs and bushes, then I went round the church, past the portal (‘Your word is truth’) and there was the bakery. On my way back I loved to linger a bit at the church, especially when I could hear the organist practising. I put my ear against the door and thought I was at the gate of heaven. But when I had to descend the long and steep stairs I felt fearful. What was under these shrubs and bushes, I wondered? What if there was half a dozen robbers hiding, waiting in ambush?
And then, one day the thought occurred to me that no robber would ever DARE to hide in such close proximity to the house of God.’ I can still remember the relief I felt: ‘Oh silly me! What was I even thinking? A robber hiding next to the church! I yet have to meet such a dare-devil.’ Of course things are not quite as straight-forward. There is evil in the world, and sometimes in the church, with the robbers and abusers seeking to hide near it and in it. But I love the courage and boldness my child-like theology gave me. Where God is, where the Spirit of truth is, there is no fear but glorious freedom.
And this is why Jesus does not lock up the believers to protect them and keep them safe, away from the mess of the world. He has guarded them faithfully as the good shepherd, leading them out into new pastures (John 17:12, cf. with John 10:3-4). And now he prays to the Father to protect them. ‘I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one.’ Jesus asks his Father ‘to sanctify them in the truth’, we could also translate to consecrate them in the truth, just as the Son consecrates himself in the truth (John 17:19). Consecrating means ‘to set apart’, to appoint for one distinctive use, to be on a ‘long obedience in the same direction’ as Eugene Peterson puts it, to dedicate one’s life in the service of the truth which gives life, to share in the holiness of the Father and the Son through the Spirit of truth. I like to think that we are to marinate in the truth, to continuously let it inform and shape us, to sing it and pray it, until we take on its distinctive flavour. And I am so grateful that the Community of the Resurrection keeps open this marinating space of daily prayer and worship! Being sanctified in the truth means to be in the world, to love it as God loved it, while fully knowing the strength of its opposition and rejection. It means to keep our eyes on Jesus instead of fearfully glancing under bushes, to see him and to rejoice.
Sometimes there would be an evening service in my home church, to which we children could not go, because it was our bedtime. But we could see the church from the vicarage and its stain-glass windows which were brightly shining in the dark. ‘Oh look – I can see Jesus glowing in his window’ we said to each other. It was very exciting.
And there he still is – glowing, shining brightly, more so as the darkness deepens – with his hands raised in blessing and promising the Spirit of truth which will lead us in all truth (John 16:13).
For the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it (John 1:5). Amen