Given its post ascension placement in the lectionary, it is easy to forget that the hour of Christ’s glory referred to in today’s text is not the resurrection or the ascension. It is the crucifixion. For John, the “it is finished” uttered by Jesus at the moment of his death is the fulfillment of all that he came to do. That having been said, the resurrection and the ascension are not simply icing on the cake. The hour of glory is not a moment in time as we generally understand it, chromos, but rather a breaking in of God’s time, kairos. The Johannine “Farewell Discourse” with its often confusing chronology and excessive use of pronouns (of which no self-respecting composition teacher would ever approve) wreaks havoc on our Newtonian universe of space and time. And so the unity of believers and our common glory, though not yet realized, are none-the-less real and not simply pipe dreams. All that God has promised has been accomplished in Christ Jesus. Consumatum est.
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