Jeremy L. Berg

Lectionary Reflection

Seventh Sunday of Easter: John 17:6-19

On August 6 and 9, 1945, the United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians. My boys are currently fascinated by the atom bomb after the release of the blockbuster film Oppenheimer, which follows the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American theoretical physicist who helped develop the first nuclear weapons during World War II. 

Can you blame a 12 and 10 year old for having questions about how a civilized nation came to drop two death bombs, respectively named Little Boy and Fat Man, without any warning on two cities full of innocent civilians? Supporters justify the bombings by arguing it brought a swift end to a war that would have resulted in even more lives lost.

Critics, on the other hand, state that the bombings were unnecessary for the war’s end and a war crime, highlighting the moral and ethical implications of an intentional nuclear attack on civilians. Whatever side we take, we all must come to terms that we now live in a nuclear age and possess the horrific potential to destroy the human race. We live forever in the afterglow and dark shadow of nuclear possibilities. 

Another cataclysmic event in human civilization took place 2,000 years earlier, when the God of Light and Truth dropped a firm but gentle Truth Bomb into a world of darkness and deception. This other Little Boy dropped into Bethlehem brought not death and destruction, but peace and hope and the chance at liberation from the Kingdom of Darkness commanded by the Father of Lies. 

The initial blast of the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed many, but many more would succumb to radiation disease as the result of the toxic cloud that settled over the population of survivors. Inversely, the Truth Bomb dropped into history in Jesus would produce a cloud of Kingdom clarity that would settle over the apostolic message and the church it would birth — spreading light and healing far and wide. 

In this jarring comparison between the destructive force of atom bombs and the restorative power of the Truth Bomb of the Gospel, I’m reaching for language capable of underscoring the gravity and power of Jesus’ final prayer for his followers as he returns to the Father and leaves his church on mission in a hostile world. Let’s examine some of the explosive themes detonated in Jesus’ so-called High Priestly Prayer to the Father in John 17, using here The Message translation:

I spelled out your character in detail
To the men and women you gave me…

And my life is on display in them.
For I’m no longer going to be visible in the world;
They’ll continue in the world while I return to you.
Holy Father, guard them as they pursue this life…

On the cross, Jesus will in one sense finish the task set before him, the task of bearing the sin of humanity and defeating the powers holding God’s creation in bondage. In another sense, Jesus will leave part of his work in the hands of his followers—the work of bearing witness to the reality of God and his Kingdom of Light and Truth. Jesus came not only to save us from sin, but to inaugurate his reign and launch the New Creation.

Jesus uses “kingdom” as shorthand for this larger project of bringing people into the orbit of this new reality where lives are made new by the power of the Spirit, and hearts are transformed by the same Spirit to reflect the character of God: “I spelled out your character in detail to the men and women you gave me,” Jesus prays. “And my life is on display in them” insofar as we walk in the truth and don’t get led astray. 

One senses the urgency and even a hint of anxiety in Jesus’ prayer—his full humanity on display—as he wonders if they can succeed in the task of being shining billboards advertising the Kingdom to a watching world whose systems are still under the sway of the Evil One. So he prays, “Holy Father, guard them as they pursue this life.” It’s as if Jesus is saying, “Father, don’t let the afterglow of my Truth fade like the morning fog. Don’t let the impact and imprint of my Grace crater be filled in and grown over by weeds and forgotten after I return to You!” 

The incarnation and the cross is so costly an event, may it never be forgotten or its impact minimized. He prays for a people who will faithfully carry His torch even deeper into the darkness, and such a people must be fortified by faith and filled with the same joy set before Jesus that helped him endure the cross (Heb. 12:1-2). So he prays:

I’m saying these things in the world’s hearing
So my people can experience my joy completed in them.
I gave them your word; the godless world hated them because of it, Because they didn’t join the world’s ways,
Just as I didn’t join the world’s ways.

The “world” here in John’s Gospel is the fallen order and sin-soaked systems of injustice lying under the power and influence of the Devil, the “god of this age” who has blinded the minds of unbelievers so they can’t see the truth (2 Cor. 4:4)—even a Truth as big and loud and consequential as a nuclear bomb dropped in their own backyard. Tragically, “The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world….and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him” (John 1:9-11).

Likewise, the godless world and its ways will reject the Way of Jesus practiced by his followers down through the centuries. So, Jesus here prays that the Father will not take his church out of the world, but sends us into the world as a radiation cloud of kingdom witness and asks the Father to guard us from the deceptive ploys of the Evil One. 

I’m not asking that you take them out of the world
But that you guard them from the Evil One.
They are no more defined by the world
Than I am defined by the world.

Jesus doesn’t not allow his church to play the victim card, to complain about persecution and claw for the worldly power and status that would enable us to avoid it. Nor does he send us out to fight the “culture war” or baptize the world’s systems or reclaim society using the devil’s tactics. Rather, he sends us into the fray as ambassadors of God’s peaceable Kingdom—shrewd as serpents but innocent as doves—representing a Kingdom that is “not of this world,” but is certainly a vision of God’s future for this world. 

The greatest danger Jesus is praying against, and perhaps sweating blood as he does just like he will soon in Gethsemane, is that his people will in time become more “defined by the world” than by the values of his upside down Kingdom he’s called us to represent (see Matt 5-7). How can we remain faithful and continue to live in the afterglow of the divine Truth Bomb dropped into history in Jesus? Jesus prays another bombshell as he asks the Father to: 

“Make them holy—consecrated—with the truth.” 

Put simply: Jesus’ prayer for the church sent out into a world full of darkness and deception, pain and suffering, injustice and greed, is a prayer for us to be people anchored in the Truth he came to teach, embody and spread. The great temptation to be resisted is falling prey to lies and playing fast and loose with the truth.

When Jesus said that the “truth will set you free” from the godless powers, he also implied that flirting with duplicity, lies, doublespeak, and “alternative facts” will lead his people into bondage and undercut their witness before a watching world. 

So, how is the church today doing at living out the heartbeat of Jesus’ high priestly prayer? Is the church in America walking in the truth and the light of the gospel? Are we confronting the cynicism of our age as joyful ambassadors of the age to come? Are we exposing lies and shining a spotlight on the places where our witness has taken on the “ways of the world” we are called to resist?

When it comes to  engaging in politics, are we putting off falsehood and speaking truthfully to our neighbors” and fellow church members, eschewing partisan divisions for the sake of a greater unity as “members of one body” (Eph. 4:25)? Are we heeding the Bible’s command to avoid disreputable associations and unholy allegiances, knowing that “bad company corrupts good character” (1 Cor. 15:33)—both the character of individuals and the collective character of the church’s public witness?  

In 2020-2021, the universe detonated another cataclysmic bomb and dropped a deadly virus onto onto every city in the world. The Covid-19 pandemic brought not only physical disease to our shores, but also the rapid spread of paranoia, misinformation, deepening political divisions, and a dramatic increase in so-called “alternative facts,” “fake news,” and outrageous conspiracy theories. Sadly, Jesus’ prayer that his church would be be unified—“that they may be one as we are one” (v. 11) and “sanctified by the truth” (v. 17, 19)—became coopted and complicit with much of the deception and partisan rancor that has has only intensified since. 

My pastoral heart was crushed and my prophetic zeal enraged watching so many Christians be led astray by political leaders and agendas that dragged Jesus and his Kingdom values through the mud. Despite having spent the past 20 years professionally studying, teaching, and writing about biblical truth, and holding a doctorate degree in Christian Thinking and Living, people in my orbit were choosing to instead listen to the perspectives of non-Christian political pundits and the next click-bait article or video going viral on social media. 

Worried that people were no longer really interested in finding the “facts” (facts can be terribly impractical if they don’t advance my agenda) and concerned that many are simply incapable of having a civil dialogue with those they differ with, I was ready to despair of my pastoral calling. Like Jesus before Pilate, I was wondering “What is truth anymore to people these days?” Remember the scene? 

“The reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. “What is truth?” Retorted Pilate” (John 18:37-38).

The “truth” has always been a slippery thing, easily manipulated, easily spun, easily misplaced or lost in the couch cushions of public discourse. I found comfort and a renewed focus by answering Pilate’s pregnant question. The atomic, bone rattling, earth-shaking radioactive Truth Bomb of the ages is that since the incarnation of the Word—God’s truth and wisdom enfleshed—all human ideas, arguments, concepts, abstractions, formulas, presentations, principles of “truth” must now stand before and buckle its knees in the presence of the Truth Incarnate in Jesus. Jesus boldly claimed, “I am the Truth” (John 14:6) and those who came into contact with him described him as “full of grace and truth” (John 1:13). 

This means that we should place knowing and grasping and obeying and representing Jesus as the central Truth that guides our life as more important and pressing than knowing and arguing and defending religious ideas and political convictions in the public square. 

I found relief knowing that pastors and Christians in general need not sort out and solve every confusing issue, accumulate academic degrees, or prove every spurious conspiracy theory right or wrong. We simply need to get to know Jesus better by immersing ourselves in his life and teachings, and then make sure our actions, words, and values reflect his actions, words and values. Truth is a person, not a theological puzzle or political platform. Defend Him. Love Him. Propagate Him. That’s our highest calling as Christians.

We don’t need to win America back from the radical Left, nor do we need to win American back from Right Wing extremists IF we end up sacrificing our pure witness and dragging Jesus’ name in the mud in the process. We need to be “Jesus with skin on” and a prophetic voice to both the political Left and Right in this country. As Kingdom apprentices of Jesus, our highest calling is to reflect Jesus’ life and values to a watching world that is already cynical and suspicious toward religious hucksters and politicians who want to use religion to advance a political agenda and mobilize voters.

In summary, Jesus dropped (or was dropped, or was born) an atomic Truth Bomb into a world that continues to be led astray by the serpent’s lies. In his prayer in John 17, the Truth-in-Person is returning to the Father and leaving his followers behind in a world of shifting shadows and devilish deceptions. Jesus prays that we will be unified in the truth and put his character on display in our lives. His urgent plea is that God will guard us from the Evil One and “sanctify us in the truth.”

But hear me now: the Truth we are consecrated to, set apart for, and sanctified by, is a person. This Truth we bear and embody will always look like, smell like, act like and speak like Jesus. If it doesn’t, it’s not truly True, I don’t care how one tries to spin it or justify it. 

This is one of 35+ reflections and biblical expositions in my forthcoming book Mining For God: Explorations in the Gospel of John. COMING SOON!