The Seventh Sunday of Easter: The Sunday after Ascension Day
1 June 2025
O God, the King of glory, who hast exalted thine only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph unto thy kingdom in heaven: We beseech thee, leave us not comfortless, but send to us thine Holy Ghost to comfort us, and exalt us unto the same place whither our Saviour Christ is gone before; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.
1 Samuel 12:19-24
Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20
John 17:20-26
Every year in Eastertide we spend a lot of time with the Gospel of John. There are a few reasons for this. Before the 1960s, Eucharistic lectionaries were fixed in a single annual cycle, with only two lessons from the New Testament for most Sundays. This meant that huge swaths of the Bible, especially the Hebrew Scriptures, were never heard at Mass. The reformers of the twentieth-century Liturgical Movement sought to address this problem by creating a three-year lectionary, with three lessons each week, one of which is from the Hebrew Bible, designed to ensure we read as much scripture as possible. The organising principle was that each of the Synoptic Gospels got its own year: Year A is Mark; Year B is Matthew; and Year C (this year) is Luke. Texts from the Fourth Gospel were then interspersed thematically across the three year cycle, and we end up with large bits and pieces of John appearing at important moments every year, especially at Christmas and Easter.
There is more to it, however, than the utilitarian need to fit John in. Week-in and week-out in Eastertide, we spend time with John because the themes of his Gospel – especially those having to do with our ongoing relationship to God in Christ and the ministry to which we are called – are particularly important for us as we forge our relationship with the Risen Christ in our age after Pentecost. Interestingly, these readings from John are not principally Resurrection stories – we do, of course, get them – but the accounts Jesus’ last days in Jerusalem before his Passion. Here, especially in the Farewell Discourse, John spells out for us – in Jesus’ voice – his theological perspective on the significance of Our Lord’s life, death, and Resurrection and what this means for us.
Indeed, over the past seven weeks we have learnt that Jesus is the Good Shepherd and that “my sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand” (10:22-30). We have heard the new commandment: “that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (13:31-35). We have been taught that truly loving Jesus means that we will follow him, that we will keep this new commandment, and that the gift he leaves us is “peace” (14:23-29).
Today, we hear the last section of the Farewell Discourse, the tripartite “high priestly” prayers with which Jesus concludes his speech. The first part is Jesus’ prayer for himself: “glorify thou me in thy own presence with the glory which I had with thee before the world was made” (17:5). In his own words, Jesus asserts what John tells us at the outset of the Gospel, that Jesus, the very Word of God, was with the father “in the beginning,” and that all creation was made through him. Jesus prays that he will show forth the glory of God into the world that he has made.
The second part is Jesus’ prayer for the disciples: “keep them in thy name ... that they may be one, even as we are one” (17:11). Jesus has given them God’s word (that is God’s self expression that John identifies with Jesus), and because of this, the world – that element of civilisation that turns away from the Word of God – has hated them, even as the world has hated Jesus. In his prayer, Jesus does not ask that the disciples be taken out of the world, but that they are kept “from the evil one.” Finally, he asserts that “as thou didst send me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” Just as Jesus is to be a sign of God’s glory, so the disciples are to signs the unity with which they are bound with God in Christ. The disciples are to be united one with each other, as Jesus is united with the Father.
Finally, in the text we heard today, we hear the third part. Jesus prays for everyone else, all those “who believe in me through [the disciples’] word,” that they, like the disciples, “may all be one,” and that “the love with which thou has loved me may be in them, and I in them.” Here, Jesus is talking about us. He is saying that we, who have been brought to Jesus by the works of the disciples, are united together in and through the love we have for each other, mirroring the relationship of Jesus and the Father. All of us who share in the love of God are united as one. We have the power to show forth to the world all that God is and all that God has done in Jesus Christ. The world will see how God loves Jesus, and that Jesus loves his people, and that his people love each other. The world will see us exercising our ministry in the world, proclaiming that God is real, that God is present, that God is active, active in the works of love. In this way, we offer to those who are of the world an invitation into the life of God. It is Jesus’ prayer that we may represent God in Christ to the World, and in doing so reveal God in Christ to the world.
Now, that’s all very easy to say. How do we actually do this? Indeed, how can we? How can we be expected to take on this responsibility? How can we be given the task of revealing and showing and, in some way, representing, standing in for God in Christ, to and in the world? We are busy. We are tired. We have other things to do. It’s all too much. Perhaps we think that we aren’t worthy to take this on. Yet, this is exactly what we are to do, and it is precisely the point. On our own, apart from God, disconnected from the one in whose image and likeness we are made, alone, we can’t. But God’s gift to us and God’s greatest desire for us is that we are one with him and he with us. United with each other, and thereby untied with God in Christ, we become able to do more than we ever could have imagined.
In this morning’s passage from the Hebrew Bible from first Samuel, the people ask the prophet to pray for them “that we may not die; for we have added to all our sins this evil, to ask for ourselves a king.” And Samuel does as they ask, telling them “fear not” and acknowledging that they have indeed “done all this evil.” But he does more than simply pray for them to be forgiven. Samuel prays that the people may be active participants in their own relationship with God. They must “not turn aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all [their] heart.” God invites real, complicated, sinful human beings, with all our flaws, just like us, into relationship with him. Samuel puts it this way, “the Lord will not cast away his people, for his great name’s sake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you a people for himself.” It is, in fact, Samuel’s duty to pray for the people and tell them they must engage in God’s work, and show it forth, to “instruct [them] in the good and the right way.” In turn, our work is to “serve [God] faithfully with all your heart; [and] consider what great things he has done for you.”
In the beginning, in and through God’s very self expression into time and space, we were made in the image and likeness of God. At its core, this means that despite our flaws, our weakness, we have been called into relationship with God, first, in and through creation and, second, through our loving relationships with each other. By fulfilling our human vocations, loving one another as Christ loves us, we are revealing to the world what the work of God looks like. In this we are inviting others into this work, into this relationship, into this unity with us and with God and with Christ.
We have spent weeks with the Gospel of John because in these stories, in and through these words, we learn who we are and who we are called to be, we learn that we have an active role to play in the works of creation, and that we are to do it as one body, united with Christ and with each other.
Andrew Charles Blume ✠
New York City
The Visitation of Our Lady Saint Mary, 31 May 2025
© 2025 Andrew Charles Blume