May 4, 2008
Seventh Sunday of Easter

In today’s Gospel reading, John shows Jesus praying to his Father, asking that his glory, that is, his divinity, become visible.  As he does throughout his Gospel narrative, John presents Jesus to us as a divine person.

At the time John was writing, those Jews who believed in the divinity of Jesus were being expelled from the synagogue by those Jews who did not.  Because Jews were exempt from the Roman law requiring everyone to participate in emperor worship, those expelled from the synagogue lost that status.  Of course, honoring the emperor as a god would be against the conscience of a Christian as well as a Jew, so expulsion from the synagogue resulted in the persecution of Jewish Christians.  Under these circumstances some were tempted to acknowledge Jesus as a great teacher, but to deny his divinity in order to avoid persecution.  John stresses that believing in Jesus’ divinity is essential for disciples.

During Jesus’ prayer, he refers to “the glory that I had with you before the world began.”  This recalls the very beginning of John’s account of the Gospel where Jesus is presented as the Word that existed before all of creation: “...and the Word was with God,/ and the Word was God.”

Jesus wants his glory to become visible so that he can give eternal life.  He says, “Now this is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ.”  John is reminding his fellow Jews, who truly understand that Jesus had come from the Father, to remain faithful in their witness to the true identity of Jesus Christ.  We must be faithful witnesses, too.