Homily 688 – 1^st EC
Holy Transfiguration Orthodox Church, Ames, Iowa
May 24, 2026
Epistle:  (44) – Acts 20:16-18, 28-36
Gospel:  (56) – John 17:1-13

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, One God.

This passage of the Gospel is really quite challenging to keep track of when we hear it.  It seems to me at least to bounce around, back and forth, and we are the object of the dialogue, not participants in it.

Jesus speaks to the Father.  Abbreviating quite a bit, the confusing parts:  At that time, Jesus, lifting up his eyes to heaven, said, “Father, the time has come! Glorify your Son, so that your Son may also glorify you … ”

In my protestant evangelical background, glorify means the same as praise.  Praise your Son, so that your Son may also praise you.  That doesn’t sound like God, though.  God doesn’t need our praise.  The Son doesn’t need praise from God – although the Son was given that at His baptism.  This is my beloved Son, in who I AM well pleased.

What we miss in most translations is that “to glorify” in the Greek is a word that has the implications of revealing.  Reveal your Son, that your Son may reveal you.  Revelation.  Apocalypse.

Just like the revelation of St. John.  It wasn’t revealed to St. John.  It wasn’t Apocalypse to St. John.  It was revelation, it was apocalypse, to us – through St. John.  When we look at the book of Revelation, the Book of Apocalypse, whatever you choose to call it, it isn’t the future being revealed.  It is God.  It is us.  It is the Son.  It is the Church.

Glorify means to reveal.  It makes our understanding of what happens to saints a bit different.  We say that the saints are “glorified”.  Again, not that they are praised, although we do that.  But what the Church does when it glorifies something is to reveal it – and that revelation is truly what that being is.  The essence.

Christ goes on, using the same word – but I’ll substitute the word “reveal” here.  I have revealed you on the earth!  I have accomplished the work which you have given me to do! Now, Father, reveal me with yourself with the revelation I had with you before the world existed.

In this statement, this prayer, we see that Christ, along with the Father, is revealed to us in the crucifixion and the resurrection.  And in that, Christ tells us, is eternal life.  Christ says “That they should know you, the only true God, and him whom you have sent, Jesus Christ.”

That knowledge, intimate knowledge, knowledge of the essence, is what eternal life is.  It is more than intellectual.  It is a merger of sorts, with our being and God’s being merged together, yet without the loss of our own essence, but sharing the essence of the Other.

Jesus was that – two natures, one person.  We are similar, although by our nature we are more limited in our participation.  We don’t participate in the essence, the uncreatedness, of God.  Rather, as St. Gregory Palamas reminds us, we participate in the energies, the activities, of God.

Now, in the passage, it gets rather crazy.  Christ knows the Father, the Father knows Christ, the Father knows us, the Father gives us to Christ, Christ gives us back to the Father – it’s a bouncing ball of enormous repercussions.  Further, it is with a purpose – that we may be One.  In the same way that the Father and the Son and the Spirit are One.

To understand this, and why I suspect this passage is preparing us for Pentecost, we need to go back in the history of the Church all the way to the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32.  In that great monologue from Moses to the children of Israel entering the promised land, he makes a passing reference to the dispersion of the sons of Adam.  That is a curious phrase.

That happened at the Tower of Babel, if you recall, by the confusion of the tongues.  It was our inability to communicate that tore us apart as humanity into tribes.  In the song, verses 8 and 9 of Chapter 32, God assigns angels to protect the nations – the tribes – except for one.

That one is the tribe that is the inheritance of Jacob.  You may remember Jacob and Esau, the twins born to Isaac and Rebekah.  Jacob, who obtained Isaac’s paternal blessing and Esau’s birthright.  Jacob, who wrestled with God, and was then called Israel.

Now, in the song, Israel, the Children of Jacob, the descendants of Jacob, were not given an angel to protect them like the other humans that were scattered.  They were protected directly by God Himself.  The text reads:  “When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the angels of God.  But the Lord’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage.”

As we approach Pentecost, we find that Babel is reversed.  The scattering of the languages goes away in the Holy Spirit, and we become what Christ is praying for – we become One, as the Son and the Father and the Spirit are One.

We are now part of the protection of God Himself.  We, the ones connected to Christ’s body, the Church – we are the ones that God has reserved to Himself.  We are the Lord’s portion.

All of this diversity, over thousands and thousands of years of our human history, serve one purpose.  To bring us to God.  And, as an aside, to bring us to each other.  To connect us in a way that we have never been able to experience before.

That oneness, that togetherness, that intimacy – that is the joy of Christ, that He asks to be made full in us.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Glory to Jesus Christ!