Seventh Sunday of Easter in Year A (Ormseth11)

God can be counted upon to “keep” the creatures of God’s creation. – Dennis Ormseth reflects on Jesus’ Farewell Prayer.

Care for Creation Commentary on the Common Lectionary 

Readings for Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year A (2011, 2014, 2017, 2020, 2023)

Acts 1:6-14
Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35
1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11
John 17:1-11

On this Sunday, the church takes note of Jesus’ ascension to the Father (actually celebrated on the previous Thursday) and recalls Jesus’ prayer for the church in view of the new mode of his presence as universal, that is, at the right hand of God. The significance of the Ascension is, as Gordon Lathrop writes, that . . .

“While the world sees Jesus as dead and gone—’withdrawn’ in that sense—the faith of the community sees Jesus as with God. Jesus’ meaning and presence therefore is universalized, is everywhere, as God is, and at the same time, God’s glory is accessible in Jesus. It is this which the community knows, not the calculations of times and seasons (Acts 1:7)” (Proclamation 6; Interpreting the lessons of the Church Years, Series A, Easter, p. 57).

As anticipated in our reading of the Farewell Discourse of the previous two Sundays of Easter, Jesus is now “at home” in “the Father’s house”—namely, in the whole of the creation!

The manner of Jesus’ “Farewell Prayer” suggests the same situation: Jesus looks to heaven and addresses his Father directly. The prayer itself clearly relates to the Farewell Discourse in a way that is similar to the connection between the Song of Moses (Deuteronomy 31:30 – 32:47) and Moses’ farewell speeches and is deeply grounded in the narrative of the Gospel. As Gail O’Day observes, the prayer echoes with “themes from all of Jesus preceding discourses. . . . The Jesus who speaks in this prayer is familiar to the Gospel reader as the incarnate Logos, the Son of God the Father” (see Gail O’Day, The Gospel of John, The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. IX, p. 787, for a detailed list of verse-by-verse references to texts read during the Year A Easter Season). But it also bespeaks an intimate relationship between Father and Son that clearly anticipates the Ascension. Indeed, as Raymond Brown suggests,

“[t]he Jesus of the Last Discourse transcends time and space, for from heaven and beyond the grave he is already speaking to the disciples of all time. Nowhere is this more evident than in xvii where Jesus already assumes the role of heavenly intercessor that I John  ii 1 ascribes to him after the resurrection.”

Quoting C. H. Dodd, Brown concludes, “the prayer itself is the ascension of Jesus to the Father; it is truly the prayer of ‘the hour” (Brown, The Gospel According to John XIII-XXI, pp. 747).

In striking contrast with this heavenly, filial intimacy, however, is the provocative proclamation represented by the church’s reading of Psalm 68 this Sunday. The God whom the psalmist bids “rise up” so as to “scatter his enemies” presents a much more vigorous and earthly presence: “As smoke is driven away, so drive them away; as wax melts before the fire, let the wicked perish before God.” The joyful righteous “sing praises to . . . to him who rides upon the clouds.” The God whom the church relates to the ascension of Jesus is the God who is “father of orphans and protector of widows. . . in his holy habitation” and who “gives the desolate a home to live in.” This God “marched through the wilderness,” when “the earth quaked, [and] the heavens poured down rain.” With “rain in abundance,” he restored the heritage of the people “when it languished.” Like sheep led into green pastures, the people (“your flock”) “found a dwelling in it; in your goodness, O God, you provided for the needy” (68:1-10). This is the ancient god of the mountains who created and now saves Israel. As Warren Carter writes,

“The language attesting God’s cosmic reign and identity as divine warrior reflects early Canaanite religious claims. God’s identity as ‘the one who rides upon the clouds’ (68:4, 33) derives from Ugaritic descriptions of Ba’al, the storm and fertility god (68:8-9) who battles (68:17) and defeats the evil and deathly powers that would prevent such life (68:20) and who is enthroned king”  (“The Season of Easter,” in New Proclamation, Year A, 2002, p. 67).

And yet, this God is also familiar to us from the story of Jesus’ way through Galilee. Readers will recognize the God of Sinai, but also the God of Zion, who provides water not only in the wilderness, but also at the well of Jacob and in the pool of Siloam in the city of Jerusalem. This is the God whom Jesus made present on his way through the land to his confrontation with the false shepherds of his people. There is even a bit of wildness to this God, we would suggest, a wildness that Jesus would have encountered and indeed embraced in his sojourn in the wilderness. Just so, the ascended Jesus has good reason to be absolutely “at home” with him; this God has been with him all along the way.

Thus the Farewell Prayer of Jesus, so important for those whom he leaves behind—yes, ironically, it is the “left behind” for whom Jesus prays—is richly significant for the creation over which he now rises. There is another very striking aspect of this God with whom Jesus is now “at home.” This “rider in the heavens, the ancient heavens” is full of creative power:

Ascribe power to God,
whose majesty is over Israel;
and whose power is in the skies.
Awesome is God in his sanctuary,
the God of Israel;
he gives power and strength to his people.

Thus the reading of this psalm makes the connection so essential for care of creation. Jesus is the servant of Philippians 2 who did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself; now he is “highly exalted” so that, in the company of the creator God of Israel, at his name “every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth.” This is the Word who glorified the Father “on earth by finishing the work” that the Father gave him to do; the glory he had “from before the world existed” has now been restored (John 17:5). And in light of our reading of the Lenten and Easter lectionary, it is the servant of God whose work was to do his Father’s will in faithful obedience to the rule of the servant of creation, who now ascends to his Father and regains access to the Father’s creative power. Nevertheless, their mutually shared glory and equality means that the exalted Jesus will still do for the creation what God knows the creation needs, not what Jesus might have found from time to time more desirable and “wise” from a human point of view. The powers available to him as Son of God (remember the temptations in the wilderness?) will still be under the discipline of this rule of the Servant of creation.

We see an indication of that in the Farewell Prayer: with the reading of this prayer, we “overhear” Jesus’ conversation with the Father in which he asks that with the name (17:6) and the words (17:7) of the Father which Jesus has given to his disciples (later in the prayer he will add the glory (17:22) and the presence (17:23) of God as well) that the Father will protect or “keep” them in the world. As Warren Carter comments, in this prayer of Jesus, John identifies three “crucial but related affirmations about the church as an Easter people:” “Originating with God” and in God’s purposes, and “commissioned to mission in the present,” the church will be “kept by God in God’s future” (“The Season of Easter,” in New Proclamation, Year A, 2002, p. 72). The second reading reminds us that this is true even though they experience the “fiery ordeal” of opposition and harassment from that world. For “after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, support, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the power forever and ever. Amen.” (1 Peter 4:12). The Father, it seems, like the Son, is also one who can be called upon, and counted upon, to “keep” the creatures of his creation. And together, they will do this forever.