by Clint Schnekloth
Gospel Reading: John 13:31-35
For Sunday, April 28, 2013: Year B—Easter 5
John chapter 13 begins with Jesus washing his disciples' feet. It then includes that terrible, bone-chilling, moment when Jesus is indicating who will betray him even while he serves him. The disciples don't get his drift—but the reader does, and we watch Judas sent out to do his dirty deed, done dirt cheap, while we remain (in terms of the text and narrative structure) with Jesus and the faithful disciples.
Then we hear this next word, "Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him." What does this mean? How can this possibly be the moment of glorification?
Glory in Glory in Glory
The next sentence in the gospel may be one of the most enigmatic, yet crucial, sentences in all of John. Jesus says, "If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once." This is the kind of sentence only a phenomenologist can love—or even comprehend.
What these mysterious discourses in John reveal so poignantly, is the "you-can't-look-at-him-ness" of Christ's presence and absence. Because the excess of who Christ is in his glory cannot be regarded, is difficult to look at, it is perceived in a negative mode, as if impossible to perceive, or follow. Like the sun, you can only look at it by not looking at it. So Jesus says, in his moment of glorification, that he is going away, and the disciples cannot follow. Like those who bathe in the sun, turning their faces to it while closing their eyes. But, on the other hand, as we will see, although they cannot follow him, they can follow him. In other words, the absence they are being prepared for is precisely the correlate to the surplus of what they are commanded—to love one another. Jesus goes away--and the neighbor arrives.
The Love Command
"Christ's departure allows for performing of the instructions in full responsibility, but the instruction to love has the disciples do the very thing that Christ accomplished; the disciples become the actors of charity, no longer passive and obtuse spectators of Jesus."[1]
So this withdrawal, this absence becomes a new kind of presence— presence not as idea but actual practice/praxis. Christ going away manifests ‘distance’ (you will look for me, Jesus says, but where I am going you cannot come) but then makes space for apostolic repetition, where the disciples, now friends of God (John 15:15), can accept and live into the command to be Christ in the world inasmuch as they "love one another."
The Hardest Question
In this brief chapter, John takes us from a foot-washing, through betrayal, through a phenomenological analysis of glory, and concludes with the command to love one another.
The parallels are clear: Jesus in his presence washes feet; Judas in his absence scurries around in betrayal; Jesus in his absence sets up the free command to love one another; the presence of our neighbor leads us into space for apostolic repetition.
The question becomes: How does the iterative description of glory in John draw readers into a new kind of presencing as practice/praxis?
[1]Jean-Luc Marion, ‘The Gift of a Presence’, in Prolegomena to Charity, p. 141.
Clint Schnekloth is the Lead Pastor of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas. He has written extensively for Augsburg Fortress, including the Seasonal Essays for Sundays and Seasons and the baptismal resource Washed and Welcome. Visit Clint at www.clintschnekloth.com.
