Beautiful and Baffling [Easter 7A - John 17:1-11]

 The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

John 17:1-11

 

Beautiful and baffling

 

Have you ever read a poem that you know is good – it’s one of those poems that is included in all the anthologies, professors assign it in their college lit classes, it is easy to find on the internet, hundreds of MFA students make it the topic of their thesis – but you have no idea what it means?  Has that ever happened to you?  I know at least of few of you know what I am talking about; I see your faces when I read poetry during Bible Study.  Have ever read a poem that at once is beautiful and baffling?

 

John 17 is like that.  We know it is good.  It is in the Gospel.  Spoken by the mouth of Jesus.  Precious to generations of Christians.  Beautiful but also baffling.

 

I am you and you are me and they are yours so they are mine and so I will give them your words which are my words but are now their words.  Also glorify you with the glorify me with glory.  It’s a lot.  And it feels light years away from that time Jesus was on the mount saying things like, “Consider the lilies of the field…they are pretty.”   

 

But the days on the mount were, admittedly, simpler times.  Jesus and his disciples, at this point in John’s Gospel, are in the midst of Holy Week.  About to absorb the sharp nails of the cross and the sharp insults of the crowd, Jesus prays this prayer.  It seems to be equally directed to God and to the listening ears of his disciples.  These disciples who typically, throughout the four Gospels, misunderstand even the simplest teachings of Jesus.  And now, with their hearts in an emotional wringer, distracted by the approaching mob and an unthinkable future, Jesus goes all metaphysical.

 

And there is no time for a follow-up; no chance to ask clarifying questions.  In the old days, they would retire to a quiet house and unpack parables.  But not now.  Instead everything will move fast: arrest to trial to cross to grave in a matter of hours.  Only later, in the Easter season, when the unthinkable future is transformed into limitless possibility, will the followers of Jesus have time to reflect on this farewell prayer, these last words, this beautiful, baffling poem.

 

And with all of that time to think, the prayer, John 17, becomes no less baffling, but also no less beautiful.  And with all of this time to think, centuries of sermons and expositions, this prayer, and the complexly fluid relationships it describes, is no less a mystery.  Because, of course, that is what it was always meant to be.

 

The divine life was never going to be something the human mind could grasp.  It is all too big to wrap one’s arms around.  A God in three persons, a Trinity in Unity, a Unity in Trinity, will never add up.  A Body of Christ built of a world of people, and a heaven of people, and the people yet unborn will never make sense; it will only make us marvel.  We cannot grasp it; it has to grasp us.  All of it is beautiful and baffling – and it can be no other way.

 

We are not called to be experts of the divine.  We are called to be mystics.  We love what we cannot understand.  We pray to the ineffable.  We strive for presence more than prescience.  We were created by God with these stunning limitations: created to not know, but believe; to see the tree but to resist its fruit; to trust because trust pulls us into the heart of God – a God who makes a home in the obscurity of the clouds, but also in our hearts.

 

We can love God without understanding everything about God.  Which is good news because we cannot understand everything about God.  And that can be hard to admit; it can be hard to accept.  And some Christians will never do either.  And instead will craft a God far too small and far too flimsy.  But at least manageable. 

 

God is that poem that we know is good.  And that is good enough.  It is OK to fall in love with a mystery.  We do it all the time.  I love my wife.  I have loved her for years.  And still she surprises me.  Still I find her baffling.  Still she can be a mystery to me.  And that is beautiful.  Her depth is inexhaustible.  And our love, despite its domesticity, carries still in its core a feral quality.  And that is how I know it is real: because this thing that possesses me is also beyond me.

 

Jesus didn’t pray this prayer in the hearing of his disciples so that they could claim theological acuity.  Jesus prayed this prayer for his disciples, and for his disciples, so that they would believe that, even in the worst of times, they belonged to God.  They were held in the arms of a love from which nothing could ever take them or shake them.  And they didn’t have to understand the hows or the whys for it to be true. 

 

It is just true.  The God who is beyond knowing is never beyond us.  God is baffling but beautiful, the mystery we cannot understand, but far more importantly, cannot escape.