John 17:1-26 – The Lord’s Prayer

When we talk about the Lord’s Prayer, we of course are generally speaking of the prayer he taught to his disciples when they wanted to learn how to pray. But this passage is also the “Lord’s Prayer,” in a different way. It’s not the prayer he taught; it’s the prayer he prayed. And it’s not just any prayer. This is the prayer that he lifted up at the end of the Last Supper. In John’s gospel, this is the major portion of teaching that Jesus gave. Matthew has the Sermon on the Mount, and John has the Farewell Discourse at the Last Supper. The prayer is the culmination of all that Jesus had to offer to his disciples, and it comes immediately before he offered himself to arrest, crucifixion, and death.

At first, it seems as though we’re listening in on a private conversation between Jesus and his heavenly Father. But it doesn’t take long to realize that we’re not eavesdropping, because it’s a prayer for us and about us. In fact, that’s the whole point.

Two words come out repeatedly in this prayer; glory and unity. And the two go together.

First, Jesus asks the Father to glorify him, and he spoke of the glory that he brought to the Father and will bring to him. “Glory” is one of those odd words that everyone knows, but no one really knows how to explain. It’s associated with honor and respect: with increasing the power and influence of the one being glorified. When you glorify someone, you’re “expanding” them. When we think of glorifying someone, we generally picture a ticker-tape parade, cheering crowds, and receiving some sort of honor or award. But here, when two of the three Persons of the Trinity are involved in glorifying each other, it looks a bit different. In John’s gospel, Jesus’ cross is also a throne. He is glorified, and he glorifies his Father, through suffering.

Second, Jesus’ prayer expresses unity between himself and the Father. That’s appropriate, since they’re bound in this odd three-and-one sense of Trinity that theologians and philosophers have struggled with for centuries. It’s a unity that leads to honoring and glorifying the other and not the self.

But the prayer gets really interesting when we find out that we’re a part of it. When Jesus speaks of glorification and unity, he’s talking about us, too.

GLORIFICATION PART ONE: We’re looking forward to the day when we will be glorified and made utterly holy in God’s presence. In the meantime, God offers us protection from evil as we engage in a broken and evil world.

GLORIFICATION PART TWO: We bring glory to God as we are his presence in this broken and evil world, working to bring more and more of it into God’s realm. Work which we can only do through his power, of course.

UNITY: This passage is used by a lot of people who advocate for more unity among Christians. That’s great. But let’s be sure to recognize that this is not a unity based upon the decisions of people to join together, or of church structures to be merged together. It’s the unity that is based on God. In fact, the unity we share – with Christ, with one another – is an overflow of the unity of the Trinity. It’s a unity that recognizes difference, but not to show how our differences set us apart from each other, or even to argue that we’re better than someone else. It’s a unity that comes from the common identity “Property of Jesus Christ.” It’s a unity that comes from our shared salvation and creation.

And our unity is how we glorify Jesus. When the world sees that we are united, this is a powerful witness. And when we bicker and disagree with each other, it makes others wonder if there’s really anything different about us at all.