According to rabbinic theology, the idea of the covenant—the idea of establishing a holy people to be an interlocutor for God in union with him—is prior to the idea of the creation of the world and supplies its inner motive. The cosmos was created, not that there might be manifold things in heaven and earth, but that there might be a space for the “covenant”, for the loving “yes” between God and his human respondent. Each year the Feast of Atonement restores this harmony, this inner meaning of the world that is constantly disrupted by sin, and it therefore marks the high point of the liturgical year.
The structure of the ritual described in Leviticus 16 is reproduced exactly in Jesus’ prayer: just as the high priest makes atonement for himself, for the priestly clan, and for the whole community of Israel, so Jesus prays for himself, for the Apostles, and finally for all who will come to believe in him through their word—for the Church of all times (cf. Jn 17:20). He sanctifies “himself”, and he obtains the sanctification of those who are his. The fact that, despite a certain demarcation from the “world” (cf. 17:9), this means the salvation of all, the “life of the world” as a whole (cf. 6:51), is something we will be considering later. Jesus’ prayer manifests him as the high priest of the Day of Atonement. His Cross and his exaltation is the Day of Atonement for the world, in which the whole of world history—in the face of all human sin and its destructive consequences—finds its meaning and is aligned with its true purpose and destiny.
In this sense, the theology of John 17 corresponds exactly to the ideas that are worked out in detail in the Letter to the Hebrews. The interpretation put forward there of Old Testament worship in the light of Jesus Christ is what lies at the heart of the prayer of John 17. But Saint Paul’s theology also converges on this center, as we see from his dramatic plea in the Second Letter to the Corinthians: “We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (5:20).
And is it not the case that our need to be reconciled with God—the silent, mysterious, seemingly absent, and yet omnipresent God—is the real problem of the whole of world history?
Jesus’ high-priestly prayer is the consummation of the Day of Atonement, the eternally accessible feast, as it were, of God’s reconciliation with men. At this point, the question arises over the connection between Jesus’ high-priestly prayer and the Eucharist. There have been attempts to portray this prayer as a kind of Eucharistic Prayer, to present it as John’s version, so to speak, of the institution of the Sacrament. Such attempts are untenable. Yet on a deeper level, a connection does exist.
In the words addressed by Jesus to the Father, the ritual of the Day of Atonement is transformed into prayer. Here we find a concrete example of that cultic renewal toward which the cleansing of the Temple and Jesus’ interpretation of it were pointing. Sacrificial animals are a thing of the past. In their place are what the Greek Fathers called thysía logikē—spiritual sacrifices [literally: sacrifices after the manner of the word]—and what Paul described in similar terms as logikē latreía, that is, worship shaped by the word, structured on reason (Rom 12:1).
Admittedly, this “word” that supplants the sacrificial offerings is no ordinary word. To begin with, it is no mere human speech, but rather the word of him who is “the Word”, and so it draws all human words into God’s inner dialogue, into his reason and his love. For this reason, though, let me reiterate that it is more than a word, because the eternal Word said: “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me” (Heb 10:5; cf. Ps 40:6). The Word is now flesh, and not only that: it is his body offered up, his blood poured out.
With the institution of the Eucharist, Jesus transforms his cruel death into “word”, into the radical expression of his love, his self-giving to the point of death. So he himself becomes the “Temple”. Insofar as the high-priestly prayer forms the consummation of Jesus’ self-gift, it represents the new worship and has a deep inner connection with the Eucharist: when we consider the institution of the Eucharist, we shall return to this.
Before we consider the individual themes contained in Jesus’ high-priestly prayer, one further Old Testament allusion should be mentioned, one that has again been studied by Andre Feuillet. He shows that the renewed and deepened spiritual understanding of the priesthood found in John 17 is already prefigured in Isaiah’s Suffering Servant Songs, especially in Isaiah 53. The Suffering Servant, who has the guilt of all laid upon him (53:6), giving up his life as a sin-offering (53:10) and bearing the sins of many (53:12), thereby carries out the ministry of the high priest, fulfilling the figure of the priesthood from deep within. He is both priest and victim, and in this way he achieves reconciliation. Thus the Suffering Servant Songs continue along the whole path of exploring the deeper meaning of the priesthood and worship, in harmony with the prophetic tradition, especially Ezekiel.
Even if there is no direct reference in John 17 to the Suffering Servant Songs, nevertheless the vision of Isaiah 53 is fundamental for the new understanding of the priesthood and worship that is presented throughout John’s Gospel and especially in the high-priestly prayer. We came across a clear manifestation of this connection in the chapter on the washing of the feet, and it is also evident in the Good Shepherd discourse, where Jesus says five times that the Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep (Jn 10:11, 15, 17, 18 [twice]), clearly echoing Isaiah 53:10.
The “newness” of the figure of Jesus Christ—made visible in the outward discontinuity with the Temple and its sacrifices—nevertheless maintains a deep inner unity with the salvation history of the Old Covenant. If we think of the figure of Moses, who intercedes for Israel’s salvation by offering his life to God, then this unity becomes evident yet again, and it is an essential concern of John’s Gospel to reveal it.
2. Four Major Themes of the Prayer
From the great wealth of material contained in John 17, I should now like to select four principal themes that draw out essential aspects of this great text and, hence, of John’s message in general.
“This is eternal life. . .”
To begin with, there is verse 3: “This is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”
The theme of “life” (zōē), which pervades the whole Gospel from verse 4 of the Prologue onward, is bound to feature also in the new liturgy of atonement that is realized in the high-priestly prayer. The thesis of Rudolf Schnackenburg and others that this verse is a later gloss, on the basis that the word “life” does not recur in John 17, seems to me to arise—just like the separation of sources in the chapter on the washing of the feet—from the kind of academic logic that takes the compositional form of modern scholarly texts as the criterion for something so utterly different in its expression and thought as John’s Gospel.
“Eternal life” is not—as the modern reader might immediately assume—life after death, in contrast to this present life, which is transient and not eternal. “Eternal life” is life itself, real life, which can also be lived in the present age and is no longer challenged by physical death. This is the point: to seize “life” here and now, real life that can no longer be destroyed by anything or anyone.
This meaning of “eternal life” appears very clearly in the account of the raising of Lazarus: “He who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die” (Jn 11:25-26). “Because I live, you will live also”, says Jesus to his disciples at the Last Supper (Jn 14:19), and he thereby reveals once again that a distinguishing feature of the disciple of Jesus is the fact that he “lives”: beyond the mere fact of existing, he has found and embraced the real life that everyone is seeking. On the basis of such texts, the early Christians called themselves simply “the living” (hoi zōntes). They had found what all are seeking—life itself, full and, hence, indestructible life.
Yet how does one obtain it? The high-priestly prayer gives an answer that may surprise us, even though in the context of biblical thought it wa
s already present. “Eternal life” is gained through “recognition”, presupposing here the Old Testament concept of recognition: recognizing creates communion; it is union of being with the one recognized. But of course the key to life is not any kind of recognition, but to “know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (17:3). This is a kind of summary creedal formula expressing the essential content of the decision to be a Christian—the recognition granted to us by faith. The Christian does not believe in a multiplicity of things. Ultimately he believes, quite simply, in God: he believes that there is only one true God.
This God becomes accessible to us through the one he sent, Jesus Christ: it is in the encounter with him that we experience the recognition of God that leads to communion and thus to “life”. In the twofold expression “God and the one whom he sent”, we hear echoes of a constantly recurring message, found especially in God’s words in the Book of Exodus: they are to believe in “me”, in God, and in Moses, the one he sent. God reveals his face in the one sent—definitively in his Son.
“Eternal life” is thus a relational event. Man did not acquire it from himself or for himself alone. Through relationship with the one who is himself life, man too comes alive.
Some preliminary steps toward this profoundly biblical idea can also be found in Plato, whose work draws upon very different traditions and reflections on the theme of immortality. His thought includes the idea that man can become immortal by uniting himself to the immortal. The more he takes truth into himself, binds himself to the truth and adheres to it, the more he is related to and filled with that which cannot be destroyed. Insofar as he himself, as it were, adheres to the truth, insofar as he is carried by that which endures, he may be sure of life after death—the fullness of life.
What these ideas explore only tentatively shines forth without a hint of ambiguity in the words of Jesus. Man has found life when he adheres to him who is himself Life. Then much that pertains to him can be destroyed. Death may remove him from the biosphere, but the life that reaches beyond it—real life—remains. This life, which John calls zōē as opposed to bios, is man’s goal. The relationship to God in Jesus Christ is the source of a life that no death can take away.
Clearly, this “life in relation” refers to a thoroughly concrete manner of existence; faith and recognition are not like any other kind of human knowledge; rather, they are the very form of man’s existence. Even if we are not yet speaking of love, it is clear that the “recognition” of him who is himself Love leads in turn to love, with all that it gives and all that it demands.
“Sanctify them in the truth. . .”
As a second theme, I should like to explore the idea of sanctification and sanctifying, which points strongly toward the connection with the event of atonement and with the high priesthood.
In the prayer for the disciples, Jesus says: “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. . . . For their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be consecrated in truth” (Jn 17:17, 19). Let us also cite a passage from the controversy discourses that belongs in this context: here Jesus designates himself as the one sanctified and sent into the world by the Father (cf. 10:36). Hence we are dealing with a triple “sanctification”: the Father has sanctified the Son and sent him into the world; the Son sanctifies himself; and he asks, on the basis of his own sanctification, that the disciples be sanctified in the truth.
What does it mean to “sanctify”? According to biblical understanding, sanctity or “holiness” in the fullest sense is attributable only to God. Holiness expresses his particular way of being, divine being as such. So the word “sanctify” (qadoš is the word for “holy” in the Hebrew Bible) means handing over a reality—a person or even a thing—to God, especially through appropriation for worship. This can take the form of consecration for sacrifice (cf. Ex 13:2; Deut 15:19); or, on the other hand, it can mean priestly consecration (cf. Ex 28:41), the designation of a man for God and for divine worship.
The process of consecration, “sanctification”, includes two apparently opposed, but in reality deeply conjoined, aspects. On the one hand, “consecrating” as “sanctifying” means setting apart from the rest of reality that pertains to man’s ordinary everyday life. Something that is consecrated is raised into a new sphere that is no longer under human control. But this setting apart also includes the essential dynamic of “existing for”. Precisely because it is entirely given over to God, this reality is now there for the world, for men, it speaks for them and exists for their healing. We may also say: setting apart and mission form a single whole.
The connection between the two can be seen very clearly if we consider the special vocation of Israel: on the one hand, it is set apart from all other peoples, but for a particular reason—in order to carry out a commission for all peoples, for the whole world. That is what is meant when Israel is designated a “holy people”.
Let us return to John’s Gospel. What is the meaning of the three sanctifications (consecrations) that are spoken of there? First we are told that the Father sent his Son into the world and consecrated him (cf. 10:36). What does that mean? The exegetes suggest a certain parallel between this expression and the call of the Prophet Jeremiah: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations” (Jer 1:5). Consecration means that God is exercising a total claim over this man, “setting him apart” for himself, yet at the same time sending him out for the nations.
In Jesus’ words, too, consecration and mission are directly linked. Thus one may say that this consecration of Jesus by the Father is identical with the Incarnation: it expresses both total unity with the Father and total existence for the world. Jesus belongs entirely to God, and that is what makes him entirely “for all”. “You are the Holy One of God”, Peter said to him in the synagogue at Capernaum, and these words constitute a comprehensive Christological confession (Jn 6:69).
Once the Father has “consecrated” him, though, what is meant when he goes on to say “I consecrate (hagiázō) myself” (17:19)? Rudolf Bultmann gives a convincing answer to this question in his commentary on John’s Gospel. “Hagiázō, put here in the farewell prayer at the beginning of the Passion, and used together with hyper autōn (for them), means ‘to make holy’ in the sense of ‘to consecrate for the sacrifice’ ”; Bultmann quotes in support a saying of Saint John Chrysostom: “I sanctify myself—I present myself as a sacrifice” (The Gospel of John, p. 510, n. 5; cf. also Feuillet, The Priesthood of Christ and His Ministers, pp. 35 and 44). If the first “sanctification” is related to the Incarnation, here the focus is on the Passion as sacrifice.
Bultmann has presented the inner connection between the two “sanctifications” very beautifully. The holiness that Jesus received from the Father is his “being for the world”, or “being for his own”. His holiness is “no static difference in substance from the world, but is something Jesus achieves only by completing the stand he has made for God and against the world. But this completion means sacrifice. In the sacrifice he is, in the manner of God, so against the world that he is at the same time for it” (The Gospel of John, p. 511). In this passage, one may object to the sharp distinction between substantial being and completion of the sacrifice: Jesus’ “substantial” being is as such the entire dynamic of “being for”; the two are inseparable. But perhaps Bultmann meant this as well. He should, moreover, be given credit when he says of John 17:19 that “there is no disputing the allusion to the words of the Lord’s supper” (ibid., p. 510 n. 5).
Thus, in these few words, we see before us the new atonement liturgy of Jesus Christ, the liturgy of the New Covenant, in its entire grandeur and purity. Jesus himself is the priest sent into the world by the Father; he himself is the sacrifice that is made present in the Eucharist of all times. Somehow Philo of Alexandria had correctly anticipated this when he spoke of the Logos as priest and high priest (Leg. All. III, 82; De Somn. I, 215; II, 183; referen
ce found in Bultmann, ibid.). The meaning of the Day of Atonement is completely fulfilled in the “Word” that was made flesh “for the life of the world” (Jn 6:51).
Let us turn to the third sanctification that is spoken of in Jesus’ prayer: “Sanctify them in the truth” (17:17). “I consecrate myself, that they also may be consecrated in truth” (17:19). The disciples are to be drawn into Jesus’ sanctification; they too are included in this reappropriation into God’s sphere and the ensuing mission for the world. “I consecrate myself, that they also may be consecrated in truth”: their being given over to God, their “consecration”, is tied to the consecration of Jesus Christ; it is a participation in his state of sanctification.
Between verses 17 and 19, which speak of the consecration of the disciples, there is a small but important difference. Verse 19 says that they are to be consecrated “in truth”: not just ritually, but truly, in their whole being—this is doubtless how it should be translated. Verse 17, on the other hand, reads: “sanctify them in the truth”. Here the truth is designated as the force of sanctification, as “their consecration”.
According to the Book of Exodus, the priestly consecration of the sons of Aaron is accomplished when they are vested in sacred robes and anointed (29:1-9); the ritual of the Day of Atonement also speaks of a complete bath before the investiture with sacred robes (Lev 16:4). The disciples of Jesus are sanctified, consecrated “in the truth”. The truth is the bath that purifies them; the truth is the robe and the anointing they need.
Jesus of Nazareth: From His Transfiguration Through His Death and Resurrection Page 8
