This is eternal life
Readings: John 17. 1-11
In our Gospel reading today we hear some of what Jesus prayed for his disciples, and for us, the night he was betrayed, and in this prayer we get an insight into how he is praying for us right now, now that he has Ascended into heaven to take his throne at the right hand of the Father. And in this passage we see his heart, his love and concern for us, and we also get an insight into what his whole mission on earth was for.
We’re once again at the Last Supper, the night Jesus was betrayed, and we have moved from the conversation Jesus has been having with his disciples to the moment he turns from conversation with them, to conversation with the Father. And he prays that, in the hours that will follow, he would be glorified, and that he would bring glory to the Father. It’s a wonderful phrasing and concept outside of its context isn’t it. Wouldn’t we want to pray something like that about us, or about Jesus; may Jesus be glorified.
But there’s little getting away from the fact that the glory Jesus is praying for, and the glory he will bring to the Father, is through his suffering and death. The glory is coming at and through the cross. It’s perhaps an uncomfortable idea, the idea that Jesus’ glory, and the way he brings glory to God, is through a violent, bloody death.
But the glory of God in that moment is the revealing of how far he would go to save and redeem us. The glory the cross brings to Jesus and to the Father is that it reveals to us in the starkest terms how far God was willing to go to ransom and redeem sinful human beings like us. God saw what it would take to rescue us, to rescue us even though we didn’t want rescuing, even though we were determined to go our own way, he saw the cost and he paid it in full.
The cross brings glory to God and to Jesus, brings him praise and honour and worship and adoration, because it was not easy, because it was not the simple way out, because it took everything, and he did it anyway. So determined was he to save us, that he gave everything for us. That is the glory of God, and that is what Jesus is about to reveal as he heads to the cross.
But what does the cross achieve, what is it that this rescue, this ransom, has achieved? To give us eternal life. Jesus, God the Son, has come so that we can have eternal life.
We often think of eternal life in terms of length of time. It’s life that doesn’t just go on for 80, 90, 100 years, it goes on eternally. We think of it as life without a time limit, it just sort of keeps on going. But that’s not what Jesus means when he talks about eternal life. It’s not that he doesn’t mean that it’s forever, it’s that he means more than that. Yes eternal life is life without end, that time element matters, but it’s more than just an abundance of time. Jesus tells us today ‘this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent’. Eternal life is about a relationship, it’s rooted in how we relate to God.
All of Jesus’ teaching was to tell us what God is like. All of Jesus’ actions and miracles were to reveal what God is like. And his death on the cross and resurrection were to bring us back into relationship with God. All that Jesus has said and done is bound up with reconnecting us with God, both drawing us back to him, and cleansing us from our sin so that we can come back into his presence. Eternal life is about know God, and knowing Jesus, it’s about growing in relationship with him.
A few years ago I watched the Netflix series The Good Place. It’s a comedy centred on what happens to people after they die, there’s a good place and a bad place. And when you die you end up in one of them. I wont go into the first few series’ I want to leave some stuff for you to enjoy if you are keen to watch it, but what’s striking about this series is that they have no concept of God, and no concept of a Saviour. There are spoilers coming, skip the next two paragraphs to avoid major spoilers for the first few seasons, and the third for minor spoilers for the very last episode.
Because what you find a few series’ in is that no-one is going to the good place, because no-one is truly good enough, everyone is complicit in some form of bad or evil, so no-one is meeting the criteria. Aha you may think, enter a Messiah or Saviour type figure. But no, the solution they come up with is to put those who have died into a place where they can learn to be better and earn their way into the good place. A chance to relive their lives and get the reward.
It makes sense in a bureaucratic sort of way, but it’s also rather depressing, just learn to get better and eventually you’ll pass the test and get in. But this isn’t the Gospel we celebrate, and it isn’t what our God is like, he doesn’t give us more opportunities to prove ourselves worthy, he comes to us to make us worthy, through the death and resurrection of Jesus he deals with the fact that we are not good enough, and makes us worthy. And as we live now in this world following Jesus he renews and restores us ready for the age to come, for heaven.
The second oddity in this series comes at the very end, they’ve made the perfect version of heaven, everything is just as you’d want it. But what they find is that eventually people get bored, there’s nothing left for them to do, they run out of purpose, they reach the end of all that heaven had to offer. And so what they create is a way to die completely, to cease to exist, and once you’re ready you can pass through this door and you’re gone forever.
If our understanding of eternal life is simply life that keeps on going a lot longer than we have it now in this age, perhaps you worry you’ll end up feeling like that, eternity is just too long, what if I get bored, what if I run out of stuff to keep myself entertained? But eternal life isn’t simply about quantity of life, it’s about relationship, it’s about life in relationship with God.
And the thing about God is that he is an unplumbable depth. As one hymn puts it he is ‘a sun without a sphere and a sea without a shore’. We shall never run out of joy and wonder and delight as we grow in the knowledge and depth of relationship with God because he simply keeps on going. There is always more to discover, more to know, more to love and rejoice in. In this life we have merely touched the very tip of the iceberg of all that he is. And so eternal life isn’t simply about continued existence, it’s about a growing and flourishing relationship with the creator of everything.
And what this means for us in the here and now is that, for us who know and love the Father and the Lord Jesus, for us eternal life has already begun, we have started living it, because we are already beginning to grow in the knowledge and love of God and Jesus. Eternal life isn’t something that you’re waiting for, something that will start one day when you die, it has already begun, you’re already living it. Yes when we are raised from the dead we will enter a world that is perfect and complete where pain and suffering and sin are no more, eternal life for us changes when we reach heaven, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t already begun for us now.
As Jesus reaches the end of the section of the prayer we have today he says ‘I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you’. Jesus has gone ahead of us, ahead of us into heaven to prepare a place for us, as we heard a few weeks ago. He has gone ahead so that where he is, we will be.
But he hasn’t simply gone ahead so that we can be with him physically, join him in the place where he is, he has also gone ahead so that we can be where he is relationally, know God as he knows him, come to enjoy the relationship which the Son has shared with the Father since before the foundation of the world. Jesus has come to share with us all that he has, that we shall be physically where he is, and relationally where he is. Eternal life isn’t simply a place we go, it’s a relationship we have.
And so, my brothers and sisters, as we gaze heavenward in these days after his Ascension, as we long to be where Jesus has gone to prepare a place for us, let us know that eternal life isn’t simply a place we go where there is no time limit, but rather it is rooted in our relationship with God, an ever growing depth of knowledge, joy and love and peace in him. For us eternal life has already begun, so let us live like that is true, daily longing to grow in the depth of our knowledge and love for God until at the last, we see him face to face, and enter into our inheritance.
Amen.