This is Love

A sermon by Jamie Howison on John 17:1-11

When I was serving as the Chaplain at St John’s College out at the University of Manitoba, I was approached by my Lutheran chaplaincy colleague with an offer. The Lutheran Synod was bringing the writer and theologian Robert Farrar Capon to Winnipeg, to speak at their clergy conference. They had an extra day in Capon’s schedule, he explained, and wondered if maybe I was interested in having him do something at St John’s. Well, Fr. Capon was one of my great influences, and a writer whose work had deeply impacted me, so I was very interested. I also knew that Capon was an extremely gifted and accessible speaker, so without delay I agreed. The College would host a lecture in the early afternoon on a weekday, holding it in the Café where students could sit comfortably at tables and soak up this man’s considerable wisdom. But aside from me, who on that campus would even know who Capon was? I needed a hook, to draw students to the event.

So I turned to my friend, Steve Bell, whose reputation as a singer-songwriter and recording artist would seal him as a draw. I asked if he might offer a twenty-minute set of songs as a warm-up to Fr. Capon’s lecture—the pay being a great dinner at the College with the Capons and a small group of other folks—and he quickly agreed.

It turned out to be the right way to go. Steve helped draw a crowd to fill the Café, and then Fr. Capon launched into a 70-minute lecture in which he held those folks in the palm of his hand. I could talk about that lecture at length, but today I really need to reflect on one of the songs that Steve offered.

The song was “This is Love,” drawn from what was a very soon to be released album, Romantics and Mystics. It was my first time hearing the song, and I remember just being so struck by its power. The song is based on what is known as Jesus’ “high priestly prayer” from the 17th chapter of the Gospel according to John, a portion of which we heard proclaimed here tonight.

Jesus’ prayer extends for the full length of that chapter—again, we only read the first section today, as portions are always read on this final Sunday in Eastertide int the three year cycle—and as is typical when John offers long portions in which Jesus speaks, it does twist and turn quite a bit. The original Greek doesn’t translate easily to simple English. One sentence we read today had 47 words, one comma and two semi-colons:

Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me.

The prayer has often evaded me for that reason. It is long, it builds sentence upon sentence, and takes somewhat awkward turns—in English, at least—that mean it requires a level of focus and concentration that far exceeds what is required by, say, the Lord’s Prayer, which is both elegantly simple and spiritually robust.

But that day back in 1997 in the College Café, I heard textures of the prayer I’d not heard before. The opening stanzas of Steve’s song set the tone:

Father just before the hour comes

That was set aside to glorify Your Son

With a glory from before the world began

With a glory given to no other man

Protect the ones You’ve given me to love

I so desire that none of them be lost

They’ve yet to understand the mystery

Why the Son of God would wash another’s feet

And then to the chorus:

But this is not the same

It’s a different thing

Altogether

This is not the same

It’s another thing

All together

This is love

This is love

So yes, it is an improvisational take on the prayer from John 17, but the song held me that day… and still does. It reaches its pinnacle at a final verse:

Here’s something that they won’t like (and “they” is the disciples)

Someone’s coming to take the life

No one has to look farther than me

I am he

Some will trust in the things they think they know

They should think again and let them go

Put away the sword and get behind

And let me die

Put away the sword and get behind – which is a clear reference to that scene in the Garden of Gethsemane when Peter draws a hidden sword and lashes out at the servant of the high priest—And let me die…

And then the chorus is repeated, so that the song closes with “This is love, This is love.” I was, on that first hearing, just swept up in the power of the song. In a sense, what the song did was to give me the high priestly prayer of Jesus anew. Fresh, compelling, and powerful.

Of this long prayer in John 17, N.T. Wright goes to some length to emphasize just how powerful is its content. In his John for Everyone commentary, he writes,

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.

“The relationship between Jesus and the Father,” Bishop Wright adds, “though it seems extraordinarily close and trusting, is not designed to be exclusive. We are invited to join in.”

And I do see that, and I embrace that. But sometimes it takes the insight of our poets and songwriters and composers and musicians to really bring it home, setting such a truth deep in our imaginations. This is why we need such folk in our churches; not as complimentary or incidental to what we do in our Sunday liturgies or in our own prayers and devotions, but as those who give us voice, deepen our understanding and engagement, and perhaps even set free our own poetic imaginations to join in the creation of a new song, a new poem, a new insight. Sometimes it is in the midst of such creativity that we most fully experience the truth to which Bishop Wright points: “We are invited to join in.”