Once more we are in the midst of the long, winding, deep and repetitive three chapter long farewell discourse of Jesus.
This section of the discourse is called the High Priestly prayer – because Jesus seems to take on the role of an ancient priest, mediating between deity and humanity, between the sacred and the mundane, the eternal and the mortal.
He does this on behalf of his disciples, the human ones who know and love him, because he knows and loves them.
Though this is called the Highly Priestly prayer, Jesus is unlike any high priest before or after him.
He can mediate perfectly between the One, the Uncreated source of all, his Father, and the disciples, because he is perfectly, and completely one, divine with his father and one, fully human with his disciples.
He therefore stands perfectly as the open gateway between the spiritual and human worlds. As we hear towards the conclusion of our passage:
18 As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.
The pattern, the flow, the spiritual dynamic here is clear. The father to the Son, incarnate as body and flesh, to his first disciples – sent into the world as he was sent into the world. And we know why God, the Father sent the son – because he loves the world so much.
However, this role, as mediator is dynamic and not fixed. Jesus will soon leave the world. Firstly, through his perfect death and then finally via his perfect ascent and return to the divine realm. And once he has left, it is we, his disciples, it is us, his only Body now on earth, who will take his place.
11 And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world,
So today, right now, it is:
Father, to Son, Son to the body of Christ, the church and then to the world. All of course through the grace of the Holy Spirit, whom we will celebrate and deeply invoke on Sunday at Pentecost.
It is intriguing that Jesus says, “I am no longer in the world”, while of course he is still there, physically talking with his disciples. By the time the Gospel was written though, some 60-80 years after his death, Jesus was, like now, no longer in the world. So, this may have been a way of John, in his literary creation of the Gospel, addressing the current situation of the community he was part of.
But it also harkens back to the betrayal by Judas in chapter 13, just before Jesus begins his farewell discourse. As soon as Judas departed on his mission of betrayal, Jesus declared “Now the Son of Man has been glorified”. The act, the impetus of the betrayal was the beginning of the cascade that would lead to the death, absence and resurrection, and therefore the glorification of Christ. So, when Jesus, in this discourse, really only minutes after Judas had left, says he is no longer in the world, he is already in the in-between space, the liminal space where yes, he is no longer firmly in the world, his death now assured by the absence of Judas and the night that has fallen.
And so, he continues his prayer:
11 and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.
And as we explored on Sunday, a key aim, a key purpose, of the gracious incarnation of Christ, is the unity of the disciples, of us, with the divine – so they, we may be one, as Christ and the Father are one.
But for this unity to occur we need protection – from what we hear later, but for now we focus on how this protection can be accomplished – “in the name” of the father that has been given to Christ.
In the spiritual cultures of the time and region, ancient south-west Asia, divine names were of utmost importance. Bearing the name, holding the name, uttering and speaking the name of a deity, of God, activated divinity and manifested the presence of that divinity in the physical world.
Jesus has been given the name of the most high. He is the new temple, the place where, at its very centre, the holy of holies, the one true name of God was uttered to manifest God in the temple, to the people and to the world. And now, as God incarnate, Jesus has been given this same name and it is this name, this presence, energy, blessing and power that protects.
So, what do his disciples, what do we need protection from? It is easy to assume spiritual powers and entities and forces like the devil, Satan or demons. But the text is both clearer and less clear.
We need protection from the world.
14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.
Because we have been given the word, because we have been given the logos, the divine creative power of god, through Christ, because he has spoken and speaks this word to us, we are changed. As the word enters us, as the holy word, the holy name of Christ, resides and takes up place within us, we are no longer of the world. Because the logos is not of this world. This is the word of the uncreated, non-worldly father, and it is only through the perfect mediator, who is God and Human, Christ, that this word, this love can reside within us.
So, we are changed, we become different to the world, the world that rejects and hates God. We become, through obeying the commandment to love, almost foreign, alien to the world. We become a body, a people that choose love over transaction, service over self, unity over division. We become, because of Christ within us, that which the world must reject. And so, the world hates.
As with the physical and the seen, so with the spiritual and the unseen forces: we are hated. So, Jesus, as perfect meditator, knowing our mission as his Body, requires us to be in the world, prays
15 I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from evil.
When after, through the holy name and his prayers, Jesus has ensured our protection, he gives us his final, incomprehensible, unsupportable blessing. He does not pray to the father, because he is also fully God, he simply acts:
19 And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.
Through his sanctification, by his conscious death and resurrection, we are also sanctified, we are also made holy, one and indivisible in the truth that is the word of God. So, yes, this is Jesus as High Priest, but it is also Jesus as God, loving us, forming us, blessing us into unity so we too may unfold toward divinity.
In his Name, Amen.