God and Jesus glorified simultaneously
Through Jesus' death and resurrection, God's glory is revealed to us
May 6, 2007 -- Fifth Sunday of Easter
By Fr. Michael Stubbs
We need to pay special attention to Sunday's gospel reading. It is so short, you blink your eyes and you will miss it.
The reading consists of only five verses, yet the verb "glorify" occurs five times in its first two verses. Clearly, John's gospel wants to emphasize glory. In fact, Raymond Brown called this second half of John's gospel dealing with Jesus' death and resurrection "The Book of Glory" because of the theme of glory which pervades it.
The gospel reading begins with Judas leaving the room where the Last Supper is taking place. That little action starts the chain of events which includes Jesus' betrayal, arrest, trial and execution as a common criminal. On the surface, it would look as though Jesus suffers the deepest shame and humiliation.
At the same time, John's gospel insists that here lies Jesus' glorification. It is a paradox. Contrary to all appearances, what looks like shame is actually glory. The five-fold repetition of the verb "glorify" in Sunday's reading underlines the gospel's insistence on that point.
John's gospel maintains that in his death and resurrection, Jesus glorifies God and that Jesus himself is also glorified. Both glorifications occur through Jesus' death and resurrection, which are so closely linked that they are seen as one event. It is not as though Jesus glorifies God first by his death on the cross on Good Friday, and then God later reciprocates by glorifying Jesus in raising him from the dead on Easter. Both God and Jesus are glorified simultaneously by Jesus' death and resurrection, which are different aspects of the same process. It is all part of a package deal.
John's gospel draws attention to the unity of this event by announcing that the hour for it has arrived. Jesus begins his monologue with the adverb "now." In the next sentence, he uses the adverbial phrase "at once." We might ask, which is it? Has the action begun, or is it still in the future, even if it is the immediate future? Similarly, Jesus first uses the perfect tense, "is glorified," indicating an accomplished action whose effects remain in the
present. He then uses the future tense, "will glorify." Is the action already accomplished, or does it lie in the future?
In a sense, it is both. John's gospel is announcing an event which is just beginning to unfold. By declaring that the event is already accomplished, the gospel emphasizes the immediacy of the future event, and its certainty.
We do the same thing in colloquial speech. When we proclaim that someone is history, we are anticipating what we firmly believe will happen to them in the future. Similarly, if we answer a request for immediate action by saying the word, "presently," we mean "after a little while," even though the word "presently" originally meant "now." The word "presently" has been used so often as a way of putting off a person that it has changed in meaning. "Presently" has less to do with the present than with the future.
In any case, John's gospel wishes to pull us into that event. It is a past event, in the sense that Jesus' death and resurrection are already accomplished. But through our faith, we can enter into that event. It can be an event that is just starting for us now, an event which holds a bright future for us. And through our faith, we will see God's glory revealed to us.
(Fr. Stubbs, a priest of the Archdiocese of Kansas City, Kansas, has a master's degree in theology from Harvard.)
|
