John 17 – Praying in Jesus

Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that your Son may glorify you. – John 17:1

This seventeenth chapter of John, often called “Jesus’s High Priestly Prayer”, is not so much the highest point in the Gospel, as the deepest. In his 1528 sermons on John, Luther describes the strange feeling that grips the preacher when he tries to see into the depths of this prayer.[i] Although it is simply worded and grammatically clear, for the most part, it remains somehow incomprehensible; it gazes into eternal mysteries that defy explaining.

You could say something descriptive like this about it, maybe: “It shows the deep intimacy and unity of mind and purpose shared by Jesus with the Father.” Such a statement falls quite flat; it is a human statement from the human perspective that does not even come close to the depth, to the glory of this heavenly reality. “If we could but ponder” writes Luther, “the man who is praying and the One who is being prayed to, and know how great the matter is for which He prays, . . . we would mark and feel the power and super-abundance of comfort contained and conveyed in these simple words.”[ii] These simple yet incomprehensible words are so imbued with divine mystery, that when we try to interpret them or tease them out, our language falls short.

Luther says: “There is such power and special virtue in this prayer that I fear we are unable to draw it out. For though it sounds plain and simple it is so deep, rich, and far-reaching that no one is able to fathom it.”[iii] Part of this is that there are so many “handles” presenting themselves here. One hardly knows which thing to grasp first. Yet when one does begin to grasp and grab, one finds that none of them actually give you any real purchase at all. It feels like it may be better almost to be silent and leave this text to stand, so that the reader may meditate on it, and pray from them (more on this directly). Perhaps this experience in itself is an important first encounter with John 17 which prepares the reader for its work upon them. We are not meant to explain it. We are not meant to “grasp its handles.” It is a mystery. It is meant to grasp us. We are meant to receive it (by faith).

John 17 is indisputably one of those “main sites” in Scripture—a “hub” if you like, where the mystery of the Holy Trinity’s creating and redeeming will emerges and is glimpsed in operation. Many teachers over the centuries have observed how we see in it Jesus doing his divine work accordingly in the three offices, prophet, priest, and king.[iv] He acts as a prophet in chapters 14–16, and here in chapter 17 he is performing his ministry as priest and intercessor, in prayer for the world and the church. Chapter 18 begins the completion of Jesus’s prophetic, priestly ministry, as he begins his reign as king: in his passion he will be crowned, and finally, enthroned, lifted up from the earth in order that he may draw all men to himself (John 12:32). Yet Jesus is prophetic, priestly and royal in all he says and does. There on the throne of the cross, we see as we read the Gospels together, he will also pray and prophecy (Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34; Luke 23:34 and 43; John 19:26–30).

As we come to chapter 17:1, Jesus has prepared his disciples for the work he is about to accomplish through his catechesis and comfort (chapters 14–16), ending with that wonderful proclamation that he has already overcome the world (16:33). And now here in this chapter he prays this overcoming of the world, further preparing them and himself for the ordeal of his glorification, now rapidly approaching.

Here in chapter 17, Cyril of Alexandria (among others) observed, we have the “real Lord’s Prayer.”[v] This is the prayer that only he, the Lord Jesus, can pray to his Father. Jesus prays to his Father many times in the Gospels of course (including his prayer in Gethsemane, Matthew 26:26–46), and each of these prayers is special in its own right. But this prayer is unique among them. It is the Lord’s prayer that enables and opens the way for us to pray our Lord’s prayer, the prayer Jesus gave his disciples and us in Matthew 6:9–13, through which we are brought into the midst of this eternal relationship between Jesus and his Father. Here in John 17 Jesus is practicing prayer as he taught his disciples to pray, modelling what it is to live in relationship with the Father.

So how does the Lord Jesus pray here, and what for? Jesus begins this prayer in 17:1 with an inductive overview of the long prayer that will follow in verses 2–26. This first petition encapsulates and leads into it: Father the hour has come; glorify your Son that your Son may glorify you.

In other words, “hallowed be thy name.” Jesus is about to reveal the holiness and power of God the Father’s name as he suffers and dies, in chapters 18–19. He is praying for his and his Father’s glorification through this ordeal. The Father’s name is known and glorified on earth only through the Son. When Jesus is “lifted up” (on the cross), the Father is glorified in him. This is what makes it possible for us to pray that God’s name be honored and lifted up as we pray the Our Father. That is what makes it possible for us to be involved in glorifying God in the world, in liturgical doxology [vi] and in our whole lives, lived as “high doxologies” to God (as Franzmann wrote[vii]).

“Our Father . . .” When we pray those words, morning and night, we are praying only in and through Jesus’s prayer here in John 17. Our prayers “live inside” Jesus’s prayer, as if Jesus’s prayer is the temple, or perhaps the oratory in which we pray to the Father. We pray in Jesus the prophet, who taught us to pray “Our Father . . .” We pray in Jesus as our mediator and priest who has opened the way for us to the Father. We pray in Jesus who reigns as King, both in his death and resurrection, giving us royal access to the Godhead. We pray that in our world, our lives, our vocations and communities, the Father may be glorified, through his Son.

• When we pray Our Father . . . we pray with Jesus that the Father’s will, finally accomplished by Jesus in his words “it is finished” (John 19:29) may be done here on earth as in heaven, here, now, today.
• We pray that God, through his Son would daily give us all we need, not only for our bodies, but for our souls’ eternal salvation.
• We pray like Jesus and in Jesus, for forgiveness, as we forgive our debtors and enemies, that full forgiveness which he, as he prays here in John 17, is about to accomplish through his passion and death.
• When we pray the Our Father we pray with and in Jesus at the table, on the night of his betrayal, as he is about to face suffering and death. And we too are praying for God’s name to be hallowed and his will to be done when our hour comes, bringing us to share in his glory through our crosses and trials.
• For the kingdom, the power, the glory are yours, forever and ever. Can you hear Jesus’s voice speaking here? Father, glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you.

Jesus’s prayer in John 17 does not invite our analysis, so much as lead us into prayer. Behind and around our praying of the Our Father, behind and around all our prayers, all our worship, is this prayer, in which Jesus “prays us to the Father” on the night of his betrayal, even as he intercedes continually for us now, as our advocate at the Father’s right hand.

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[i]Luther’s Sermons on the Gospel of St John. LW: 69:14–16.

[ii] Ibid., 15

[iii] Ibid., 15

[iv] Eusebius, in the fourth century, was the first to put forward this threefold office of Christ (triplex munus) as a dogmatic formula for understanding Christ’s redemptive work. Luther sees the same dynamics at work, as he shows in his 1528 sermons on John (LW 69:13–119) and his 1539 commentary on Psalm 110 (LW 13:228–380). However, he did not systematize this in the way that Calvin later did in his Institutes.

[v] Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on the Gospel of John, Book 11, chapter 9.

[vi] John W Kleinig, The Mystery of Doxology. https://www.doxology.us/the-mystery-of-doxology/

[vii] See Martin Franzmann’s famous hymn, “O God, O Lord of Heaven and Earth,” Lutheran Service Book, 834.