Tag Archives: Farewell discourse

Questions and more Questions

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Our gospel text for the 6th Sunday of Easter comes from a section of the “Farewell Discourse” that focuses on Jesus’ departure and discusses the disciples’ relation to Jesus and their conflict with the world. Our gospel pericope falls at the end of this section.

“I will be with you only a little while longer…Where I go you cannot come. And now the questions come:

Peter (13:36–14:4): “Master, where are you going?” (13:36). Peter has sworn he will follow Jesus anywhere, yet his denials lay just ahead and in vv.37-38 Jesus predicts just that but also predicts that Peter would follow him in death: “though you will follow later” (v.36)

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Peace

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What kind of peace do you seek? Merriam-Webster defines “peace” as tranquility, quiet, freedom from disturbance, harmony and similar expressions. Today, let us take a look at what Jesus might mean when he says, “my peace I give to you.”

In today’s Gospel, Jesus speaks some of His most tender and reassuring words: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.” These words are not merely poetic or comforting—they are a divine promise, spoken on the eve of His Passion, when chaos was about to unfold.

Jesus knew His disciples would be shaken. He knew fear would grip them as He went to the cross. And yet, He says: “Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.” Why? Because the peace He offers is not the fragile, fleeting peace the world gives. The peace of Christ is rooted not in circumstances, but in His presence and victory over sin and death.

We might ask ourselves: What kind of peace do I seek? Is it merely the absence of conflict? The comfort of routine? Or is it the deep, abiding peace that comes from knowing I am loved and held by God—even in suffering?

Jesus’ peace is not a promise of a smooth life. It’s a promise of His presence in the midst of life’s storms. That’s why He could say with such confidence: “I am going away and I will come back to you.” He was preparing them not only for the cross, but for the resurrection, and the coming of the Holy Spirit.

Notice, too, His obedience: “The world must know that I love the Father and that I do just as the Father has commanded me.” Peace and obedience go hand in hand. When we surrender our will to the Father, even if it’s difficult, we receive a peace that cannot be taken away.

Today, let us invite Christ’s peace into our hearts. Not a peace that depends on everything going well, but the peace that flows from trusting in the One who has conquered the world.

May we, like Jesus, live in obedience to the Father’s will, and so be signs of His peace to a troubled world.

Amen.

Image credit: Christ’s Final Address to the Apostles | Bona Duccio di Buoninsegna, 1380 | from the Maesta Altar | Siena, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo | PD-US

An Ongoing Conversation

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Our gospel text for the 6th Sunday of Easter comes from a section of the “Farewell Discourse” that focuses on Jesus’ departure and discusses the disciples’ relation to Jesus and their conflict with the world. Our gospel pericope falls at the end of this section.

Our gospel drops us onto the end of an ongoing conversation. We need to “catch up” on the conversation that occurred  before the events of Jesus’ arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane. Judas the traitor has left the Last Supper, or as St. John describes it: has left the light (13:1). Jesus then turns to his closest disciples, those who have followed him for about three years. Various disciples — Peter, Thomas, Philip, Judas (not Iscariot, possibly Thaddeus) — carry the discussion forward by the questions they pose. This enables us to break down the whole conversation, hopefully to see it in content and more clearly, by dividing it according to the characters who ask the leading questions. (Neal Flannigan, John, The Collegeville Bible Commentary)

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Setting the Context

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Our gospel text for the 6th Sunday of Easter, Year C, is a portion of the much longer “Farewell Discourse” in the Gospel of John (chapters 13 thru 17).  In other words, we have but a few verses which are an integral part of a much larger passage. The setting for this gospel falls between the account of the Last Supper and the events that will unfold later resulting in the arrest of Jesus. Lets provide some context: the larger Discourse can be outlined in a number of ways, though three main parts are fairly clear:

  • The first part (13:31-14:31) focuses on Jesus’ departure and discusses the disciples’ relation to Jesus and their conflict with the world. Our gospel pericope falls at the end of this section.
  • The second part (15:1-16:33) develops these same themes, moving from the relationship of Jesus to the disciples, using the figure of the vine and the branches (15:1-17), to the conflict between the disciples and the world (15:18-16:15), and on to a promise to the disciples of joy in the future after the sorrow of this time of separation (16:16-33). 
  • In the third major part Jesus prays to his Father (17:1-26). 

Throughout, the overall theme is the Father’s presence with the disciples and the Son’s and Spirit’s roles in mediating his presence. As a way of establishing a context lets first consider a wider view of at least a portion of our passage by considering the text surrounding Jesus’ departure (13:31-14:31).

Image credit: Christ’s Final Address to the Apostles | Bona Duccio di Buoninsegna, 1380 | from the Maesta Altar | Siena, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo | PD-US

In just a few words

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There was a website called “twenty-twowords.”  The original idea was an on-going challenge of expressing yourself on some topic in 22 words or less. There were different categories, like “my life so far” or “which Star Wars character are you and why.” You have to answer each one with only 22 words. One of my favorites, in the category of “describe your greatest experience,” was, “I am in a hospital. A nurse hands me a screaming baby and I sat there, looking down, and said, ‘Hello son.”

Today’s gospel carries a message of the greatest challenge. Jesus’ response runs 33 words in English, but the effect is the same. For in these 33 words he leaves his disciples and us with as clear a summary of the Christian life as one could possibly want.: “love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

In his book Surprised By Joy, CS Lewis describes being at a very proper English tea, standing there with an overly filled cup, when, quite by accident, someone bumped into him, causing the jostled cup to spill some of its content out.  Later, when reflecting on that most ordinary of things, he noted that life is that a lot like that.  If we want to know that with which we have filled our life, we only need to be jostled by life to see what spills out. Would that I could tell you that every bump in the road reveals an outpouring of love from the teacup of my life.

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Love and the Missionary Imperative

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This coming Sunday is the 5th Sunday of Easter in Liturgical Year C. The gospel is taken from John 13:31-35. Previously This love command seems to focus on relations within the new community rather than toward outsiders, a focus that has led many to view John as a narrow sectarian with no concern for outsiders. Such a view, however, misses the larger picture. John is quite clear that this divine love, in which the disciples are to share, is for the whole world (3:16; 4:42; 17:9). Indeed, their love for one another is part of God’s missionary strategy, for such love is an essential part of the unity they are to share with one another and with God; it is by this oneness of the disciples in the Father and the Son that the world will believe that the Father sent the Son (17:21). Jesus’ attention here in the farewell discourse, as well as John’s attention in his epistles, is on the crucial stage of promoting the love between disciples. The community is to continue to manifest God as Jesus has done, thereby shining as a light that continues to bring salvation and condemnation (cf. chaps. 15-16). Without this love their message of what God has done in Christ would be hollow.

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The Commandment to Love

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This coming Sunday is the 5th Sunday of Easter in Liturgical Year C. The gospel is taken from John 13:31-35. Previously Jesus indicated that He would be with them only a short time longer.

34 I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. 35 This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” This is the first of two instances (13:34; 15:12) in which Jesus commanded his disciples to love one another, but only on this occasion did he refer to it as a ‘new’ command. What is new about this commandment? It can refer to something that didn’t exist before. But the command to love one another is not recent. It is found in the Torah (Lev 19:18; Dt 6:4). It can refer to something that existed previously, but was not fully known or understood; e.g., a “new” understanding. I think that it is in this sense that this commandment is “new”.

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Jesus’ Departure

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This coming Sunday is the 5th Sunday of Easter in Liturgical Year C. The gospel is taken from John 13:31-35. Referring again to his imminent departure, Jesus said to his disciples, “My children, I will be with you only a little while longer You will look for me, and as I told the Jews, ‘Where I go you cannot come,’ so now I say it to you” (v.33). 

“My children (teknia)…” This term of endearment expresses Jesus’ love for his disciples and is a poignant introduction to his announcement that his departure is imminent. The term a little longer (eti mikron) is imprecise (cf. 7:33), so they could not be sure how soon this separation would take place, but given the announcement of the betrayal they might suspect that it would be very soon. Jesus seems to refer not just to the time of separation between his death and resurrection, but also to the time thereafter. For he says they will look for him, which they did not do after his death, but which they did do after the resurrection. Just as the first disciples sought him out (1:38), so will they continue to seek for him after his departure. Part of the purpose of the farewell discourse is to tell them of the new ways in which they will find him in the future.

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Remain in His Love

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“As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love.  If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.” (John 15:9-10)

But have you noticed the nature of “love” that is the focus? What is absent in these verses are any words about the disciples loving Jesus or God. Although such images and words are found elsewhere in the Gospel of John. Clearly one of the great commandments is to love God.  But here in the Farewell Discourse, on the eve of Jesus’ departure from their lives in the manner in which they are accustomed, the emphasis in our text is on God’s love for them (us) and their (our) love for one another.

I like this story by Philip Yancy (What’s So Amazing about Grace? 68-69) reflecting on these verses:

Not long ago I received in the mail a postcard from a friend that had on it only six words, “I am the one Jesus loves.” I smiled when I saw the return address, for my strange friend excels at these pious slogans. When I called him, though, he told me the slogan came from the author and speaker Brennan Manning. At a seminar, Manning referred to Jesus’ closest friend on earth, the disciple named John, identified in the Gospels as “the one Jesus loved.” Manning said, “If John were to be asked, ‘What is your primary identity in life?’ he would not reply, ‘I am a disciple, an apostle, an evangelist, an author of one of the four Gospels,’ but rather, ‘I am the one Jesus loves.’“

What would it mean, I ask myself, if I too came to the place where I saw my primary identity in life as “the one Jesus loves”? How differently would I view myself at the end of a day?

Sociologists have a theory of the looking-glass self: you become what the most important person in your life (wife, father, boss, etc.) thinks you are. How would my life change if I truly believed the Bible’s astounding words about God’s love for me, if I looked in the mirror and saw what God sees?

Gail O’Day [John in the New Interpreter’s Bible, 759] remarks: “Jesus reminds the disciples (including the readers) that their place with him is the result of his initiative, not theirs; relationship with Jesus is ultimately a result of God’s grace (cf. 6:37-39, 44).” 

These verses are a reminder that in the reality of the post-Resurrection world, when secular concerns and challenges bring us to the edge of strength and perseverance, we are loved.

Image credit: Duccio di Buoninsegna (1255–1319), “Jesus taking leave of his Apostles,” ca. 1310 | Panel 4 of the Maestro, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Siena | Public Domain

The Glorification of God and Jesus

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This coming Sunday is the 5th Sunday of Easter in Liturgical Year C. The gospel is taken from John 13:31-35. Previously we explored the meaning of “glory” and “glorification” as a prelude to considering our gospel text. Let’s begin:

31 When [Judas] had left, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. 32 (If God is glorified in him,) God will also glorify him in himself, and he will glorify him at once.

The immediate reference to Judas’ departure, like the coming of the Greeks (12:20-23), signals to Jesus that a new stage of the glorification has been reached. The betrayal has begun, and so “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.” These verses are difficult to translate and understand. The verb “to glorify” (doxazo) occurs five times in these two verses. And of those five occurrences the verb appears three times in a form (aorist) that is used for a one-time event in the past – except one one aorist occurrence is connected with “now” (v.31). The next two occurrences are future. There are also the active and passive voices mixed in there along with “him” five times.

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