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Love
Teaching Text: John 17: 1–5
After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed:
“Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.
Themes
Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:
A Living Communion
The Rich Welcome and Deep Belonging in the Heart of Christ
Formation
Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:
Sermon Summary
A wedding photo, twenty-two years old:
There’s a shot across the room at our wedding reception where my dad and I are giving each other thumbs up. It could be nothing really. The simplest gesture… My dad is crying, which I had not seen him do for most of my life… My father would be dead in six months. Things were culminating. Things were changing forever. There was celebration. There were tears. There was a kind of grief at an era’s ending. And the picture shows a thumbs up.
A simple moment holding layers of story. That’s John 17.
Jesus goes to prayer, as His custom was. But this prayer gathers threads from across the ages. And it opens with: “Father, the hour has come.”
The meal is done. A betrayal is underway. Soldiers are coming. Agony, a false trial, a cross. All ahead.
But “the hour” means more than this one night. As far back as we have record, this hour has been on its way.
The Garden. God makes garments of skin and clothes ashamed, hiding people. Tender and brutal. Something dies. God covers them, and there is a cost.
Abraham. A farmer walks out of Ur into the dark desert, toward a nameless, unseen God. God will pass healing through relationship. Through promises kept.
Jacob. On the run. Wrestles God. Gets a new name.
Moses. A shepherd in hiding becomes a liberator. Slowly. Almost against his will. And still, a lamb is slain.
The Prophets. The nation can’t carry its vocation. God never gives up. The best kings and prophets keep speaking a secret: a Servant who will be a light to the nations. Pierced for our transgressions. By his wounds we are healed.
Hundreds of promises, all sketching the same face. All showing the fountain in the heart of God.
Then in John 17 the curtain is pulled back further. We hear the conversation in the heart of the Trinity.
Most of us piece God together in fragments. (Ask the sheep in The Sheep Detectives: a shepherd, a lamb, invisible, made of bread.) But is there a better place to learn God’s heart than listening in on the Son praying to the Father?
God’s heart is to share God’s eternal life with us.
Eternal life is to know God. Not just later. Right here, now.
Jesus is finishing the work that has been in God’s heart from forever past.
So what does that mean for us?
Bring this into the moments you question God’s care.
Jesus asks for something he doesn’t get. Jesus experiences the Father turning away. How committed is God to healing the world? To healing your soul? This committed.
See the pattern for how God heals the world, and where we join in.
Faithfulness. Sacrificial love. Integrity.
The commitment in the heart of God is our salvation. And it is our call to join in the renewal of all things.
Is God’s heart showing up in ours? Our time. Our money. Our energy. How we pray. How we live.
God keeps promises. God will finish what God started.
Not so life gets a little better. So we share in the life of God. In actual choices.
Pray. Communion.
Direct Quotes
I like to imagine Abraham, looking every bit the madman, staring out into the frightening void of the dark desert. Feeling a pull, a powerful tow toward a nameless, unseen God. Behind him, all the might of the city, the walls of the grain storehouses. From the towering pyramid shaped temple he can hear the drums, screams, and pagan chanting. In his gut, the doubt, the conflicting emotions, the fear that everything he has believed until now is wrong. The city represented safety, comfort, the known. In front of him, the desert representing death, darkness, mystery, and the unknown. Then the resolution, the determination, the trust, followed by the first step, away from the city, away from Ur. The first step of faith into the unknown, into the arms of God.
— Mark Sayers
This ‘eternal life’, this life of the coming age, is not just something which people can have after their death. It isn’t simply that in some future state the world will go on for ever and ever and we shall be part of it. The point is, rather, that this new sort of life has come to birth in the world in and through Jesus. Once he has completed the final victory over death itself, all his followers, all who trust him and believe that he has truly come from the father, and has truly unveiled the father’s character and purpose—all of them can and will possess ‘eternal life’ right here and now.
— N.T. Wright
The greatest issue facing the world today, with all its heartbreaking needs, is whether those who…are identified as “Christians” will become disciples—students, apprentices, practitioners—of Jesus Christ, steadily learning from him how to live the life of the Kingdom of the Heavens into every corner of human existence.
— Dallas Willard
“So god is a big invisible lamb beaver made of bread?” “Yes, and they eat him on Sundays.” “Poor God.”
— The Sheep Detectives
Three Questions for Personal Application
Where am I questioning whether God really cares?
Name the place where God has felt distant or silent. Then remember that Jesus prayed for a different cup and felt the Father turn away, and God’s commitment didn’t waver. Ask God to meet you there.
Do I know God, or only facts about God?
Jesus says eternal life is knowing the Father and the Son. Think about whether your faith is built on fragments, or on time spent in his presence. What would it look like to listen in on his heart this week?
Is God’s heart visible in how I actually live?
Look honestly at your calendar, your spending, your prayer life. Where are faithfulness, sacrificial love, and integrity already showing up? Where is God inviting you to join his work of renewal?
