‘…this is eternal life’
May 21, 2023
Scriptures: Acts 1:6-14, John 17:1-11
Our passage today has several phrases that stand out…small turns of phrase that can stand all alone, words that catch the imagination, causing wonder in the listening heart. Words spoken by Jesus on the night of his arrest, just after he washed his disciples feet and shared the bread and wine. Words, prayers, and instructions he so wanted them to remember after the long night to come. These closing chapters of John’s gospel are dedicated to these final and critical instructions of Jesus, preparing the disciples for all that was to come, trying to dot all the ‘i’s’ and cross all the ‘t’s’ before the night was out and the horror of the betrayal, arrest, and scattering had begun.
After the meal that evening Jesus left the room where they were staying and went out with them into the Kidron Valley that ran along the east side of Jerusalem separating the Temple Mount from the Mount of Olives. Filled with ancient grapevines, the valley offered privacy and context for the teachings Jesus so wanted his disciples to hear. Out there in the valley in the presence and hearing of all his followers Jesus prayed deeply and fervently for the steadfastness of his disciples, knowing what they as yet did not…asking the Father to keep them safe and to keep them as one, and in that same loving community which they had long walked together.
And in the middle of today’s passage there was one of those key phrases that spoke loudly to my heart…a simple phrase really, only five words, but one that is perhaps easy to overlook. That phrase, taken all by itself, is kind of amazing really…but when it is read as a core teaching of what Jesus was seeking to teach, it gains even more weight and credence. Those five words are: ‘And this…is eternal life’. ‘This, is eternal life’. Jesus is sharing here an amazing truth, or at least so it seems. I mean, if someone came up to you and said, ‘I have something profound to share with you…I know what eternal life is. And not only that, but I know without a doubt how to get there!’ Surely, if we did not think the person was fully crazy, we might at the least be very curious. And yet, that is precisely what Jesus said during his prayer out there within the hearing of his followers on the last night of his freedom. ‘…and this is eternal life’…
Let’s imagine, just for a moment, that Jesus knew what he was saying, and that the truths he was trying to share with his followers hold more weight of validity than all of our modern thought and understanding. And let’s also imagine that Jesus was sharing something not just for those with him, not just for others in a different time, place and context, but something for us as well…a truth as to the real nature of God’s reality, and of the underlying reality of all creation.
Let’s imagine for a moment that Jesus was saying to us here, ‘This…is eternal life’! Surely, we would listen very, very carefully…as did those followers beside him that dark night I am sure. And, allowing all that, let us then hear what Jesus said next…as he shared exactly what eternal life is. He went on to share that eternal life is found in, and consists of the knowledge of, and relationship with, God. That’s all!
It is right here, right now…if we are in a relationship with our God of love…then there is no need to wait around for some shadowy and uncertain after-death experience. Rather, Jesus says it very plainly, ‘This is eternal life, to know God and to know the Son’. Somehow in those simple instructions of our Lord we find the key to eternal life or perhaps more wonderfully, eternally living. According to these words of our Lord, ‘eternal life’ seems to have its start at this moment of truly knowing our Lord, and continues on from there through all of one’s life, up to and through the transition across to bodily death, and then onto…forever.
Let me say it again, Jesus is telling us that eternal life starts when we know God and Jesus…when we enter into and live in relationship with our triune God. That’s it…no formulas, no life of good deeds or sufficient forgiveness and penance…just know who God is and live in union with God, Son, and Spirit. Sounds simple…but I am not so sure it is…
We so often get caught up in worrying about what the future may hold, instead of fully living into God’s plans for us right now. In truth, we spend a lot of time thinking about the future or reflecting on the past, but there really is nothing except the present moment, a moment in which we continually choose how we want to be…a moment we can choose to give to God, or a moment we can keep solely to ourselves. The ‘past’ as such, does not last beyond the next moment, although we do need to learn from our past experience as we work to make our life deeper and more holy. And the ‘future’, so to speak, never really arrives, it only becomes the next moment in the present.
Our understanding of ‘eternal life’ is one of those that is in deep bondage to all of our notions regarding ‘time’. In fact, it is very hard to wrestle it free, and to look at it in a new way. But it seems that Jesus is asking us to do just that, to imagine that eternal life is not just some future goal to live our lives in search of, and in hope for, but rather, a way of being right now…a state of ‘being in union with God’, that is actually outside of time and immune to its effects.
Okay, so, given that wild idea, what does it actually mean to do what Jesus said in our passage, to ‘know God and to know Jesus’? First, we need to believe it is possible…we need to accept that something we do not know, this holy presence we cannot see, touch, or feel actually exists…and perhaps most importantly, is intimately interested in being in a loving relationship with each one of us. And then, we need to accept that the underlying energy and life of our faith is actually found in that relationship. For without ‘relationship’, there can be no faith.
Absent a holy, two-way relationship, our faith is merely a set of rituals and rules governing behavior which far too often have little relevance and even less meaning to us. It may sound like heresy, but faith without relationship, is really merely a set of controls disguised as religious practice.
So many are searching for the real God today, the God they are sure exists, but the God that rigid faith has always concealed from view…a God dressed in the clothing of propriety and morality rather than love and relationship. In truth the argument can be made that our system of morality was set in stone at the start of the 20th century and has not changed or modified at all to keep pace with continuous and substantial human social evolution or profound changes in human thought and understanding.
In truth, and in fact, most of the inter-religious strife in the world today, most of the human strife that works its way out in warring and profound religious abuse has its foundation in radically different perspectives on the meaning of love and social expressions of ‘morality’. If we could just learn how to truly care for one another, to love instead of to seeking to control, then Jesus’ prayer here in our passage might have a chance of being realized within the human experience and within creation as a whole.
‘That we might be one’… ‘that we might know God and Jesus Christ’…those two are one and the same, for to know God is to know the unity of relationship that exists within the Trinity…to know the essential underlying reality of God, Son, and Spirit. To know the unity of God, is to be aware of the very essence of life, and the underlying source of all life. For all that was created was created to be in profound, interdependent, and mutually beneficial relationship. And to know the relationship that is God, is to have entered into that relationship, and to have become a participant in that relationship. Truly knowing the love of God in relationship, is the beginning of eternal life, and eternal love.
Jesus prayed this prayer on the night of his arrest, just after washing his disciple’s feet and sharing a meal. He then took the time to tell them all they needed to understand in order to be able to sustain their faith through what would prove to be a very trying future. Jesus prayed this prayer for deeper and fuller unity. at the point at which the disciples were already the most unified, and just hours before they would all scatter and go their separate ways for fear of the authorities. He knew they needed this message and challenge at that point…as do we…for we too have been walking a similar road together for some time now…we too have been hearing the Spirit challenge us to come fuller into unity and oneness in compassionate love. In truth, this prayer could have been spoken just as well in our presence today as in that of the disciple’s.
So in closing let us hear the words Jesus prayed that night anew. As though he were standing right here among us, encouraging us as well to follow after him…Jesus speaks to our hearts and minds telling us…
“Father, the hour has come…we are all here in your presence…hear my prayer…make who I am even more apparent to these gathered here with us…increase their understanding that they may be even more sure of who I am and who you are, and of the truth that we are truly one. You gave them to me and I have revealed myself to them in word and deed, I have shown them the glory of love lived out in the open.
You have gifted all your believers with both an entrance and invitation into eternal love and life. Life which has its start in belief, and its substance in love practiced. Truly this is eternal life…that they know you, the one true God and author of all life, and me, the Christ who came to them in order to reveal your love.
Father, I am returning to the oneness we share having shown all to them, having demonstrated that love is both eternal, and the underlying essence of all that is. Now that they know all they need to know in order to carry on the work I began and for which I came, I ask that you would further strengthen their ability and resolve to walk in all the ways of justice and holiness, empowering them with the width and length, breadth and height of your love, such that the mere passing by of their presence to another here on earth might cause a question and a yearning in the hearts of those who do not yet know the wonder of your love, causing those unknowing hearts to look and to search diligently for the source of the love your people share.
All these here are yours, sealed within the embrace of your love, bound forever into your call and the pathway towards justice tempered with mercy and grace. Keep them safe within your purposes, shining within and without in this your joyous creation.
But most of all Father, I ask that they may continue to know and to live the unity that is who we are…that they might be fully and truly one as you and I are one…love causing ever deeper love, mercy that births understanding, forgiveness for all who seek it, compassion without number or fatigue, and joy that runs deeper and stronger than anything which seeks to quench or extinguish it.
Father, I pray that they might learn the freedom of love offered without condition…love that can flow freely only when it is outside of the constrictive bonds so often fashioned to create division and separation. They know love, they know freedom, they know you Father, and they know you sent me…therefore lead them together towards the Day of Glory that was foretold by prophets of old…give them the means to fulfill your will and desire, the courage to journey as one, and the fearlessness to meet and pass by every obstacle that may appear on the road before them.
I am yours, you are mine, and they…are ours…keep them ever as one…
…amen.