Lectionary Commentaries for May 17, 2026
Seventh Sunday of Easter

This text is a prayer of Jesus, and it comes near the end of the lengthy Farewell Discourse (13:31–17:26) in the Gospel of John. While Jesus admonishes simplicity when he speaks about and models prayer in Matthew 6, this prayer is thick with theological symbols, recapitulating many themes encountered throughout the Fourth Gospel. Alan Culpepper names chapter 17 as “theologically … one of the most important chapters in the Gospel.”¹

It may not make for the best sermon on how to pray. Instead, it may be better preached as a window into the heart of Jesus displaying for all disciples the intimate bonds of love that connect the Father, the Son, disciples from age to age, and all flesh, being caught up in the life of God now and forever.

The homiletical question, then, becomes: How does this prayer of Jesus for his disciples shape and inform the lives of those who continue to follow him?

Living between times

In the narrative time of the Gospel, Jesus is at the table with his disciples. (We may have forgotten this because they entered the Last Supper scene all the way back in chapter 13.) But in the theological time of the text, a post-resurrection Jesus speaks a prayer over his disciples from age to age (future disciples enter the prayer at 17:20).

The verb tenses alternate between future and past in the prayer, making it hard to distinguish between the words of the pre-resurrection Jesus in the narrative time of the text and the post-resurrection Jesus in the lived time of the hearers/readers.

As an example of this slippage back and forth between tenses and times, in verse 4 we have a declaration of Jesus having finished the work that the Father gave him to do, though in narrative time, “It is finished,” doesn’t come until 19:30.

In the contemporary life of discipleship, we, too, live our lives caught between the pre-resurrection and post-resurrection realities. How would the disciples around the table hearing this prayer understand words like “Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed” (17:5), where they sat in that moment—before betrayal, before trial, before crucifixion, before resurrection?

How do we hear the promises of Jesus spoken in this prayer where we sit now? Alternating between future and past tenses in our own life, the pre-resurrection prayers and post-resurrection promises also catch us up in a spiral of time akin to “eternal life.”

Eternal life, now

Eternal life plays a significant theological role throughout the Fourth Gospel. But our contemporary theological notions of what eternal life means can become unhelpful when overlaid on John’s much richer understanding of the term.

As Mary Coloe explains it, “As Son, he reveals God’s love for the world and God’s desire to draw all into God’s own eternity life, which is to participate in the very being of God.”² (She uses “eternity life” to emphasize a different quality of life, rather than simply the elongation of it.) Or, in the words of David Ford, “I have read the whole Gospel as an invitation to enter into a relationship of trusting Jesus, with continuing ‘life in his name’ involving an ongoing drama of desiring, learning, praying, and loving in community, for the sake of God’s love for the world.”³

John uses other language that may also be helpful in preaching depth into the notion of “eternal life,” like “abiding” in Jesus (see John 15). Jesus’s preaching of “eternal life,” “abiding,” “dwelling,” et cetera is an intensely relational life of love that disciples are invited into now, not just in the hereafter.

We’ve often mistakenly allowed “eternal life” to relativize our experience of the here-and-now, diminishing its significance in a life of abiding in Jesus. But Jesus’s words offer another relativization: that of identity, not of time.

Ford points to the use of “authority” [Greek exousia] in 17:2 and its relationship to the same word used in 1:12: “he gave the power [exousia] to become children of God.”⁴ Our identity as children of God, afforded by the authority of the logos in the primordial words of the prologue, is the marker of our lives bound up in eternal life with God, now.

Abiding in Jesus is not biding our time until we can escape our life in the world. When we preach “eternal life” in the Fourth Gospel, we need not diminish our relationship to the present time, as that life begins now with a new identity and profound intimacy of relationship with God.

Authority over all flesh

Verse 2 reads, “You have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.” But the word for “people” here, in the Greek, is sarx (“flesh”).

That’s a more expansive term than words that designate humans only. And while it’s translated “people” here, we might play with this language a bit to see what else “authority over all flesh, to give eternal life” might mean, especially if we are helping others to expand their notion of eternal life to encompass relationality and abiding in the life of God. Our ecological kin are also implicated in this heaven/earth, divine/flesh dwelling in the here-and-now intimacy of being caught up in the life of God now and forever.

Take courage

Just prior to the start of this passage, Jesus says to the disciples, “The hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each one to his home, and you will leave me alone. … In the world you face persecution, but take courage: I have conquered the world!” (16:32–33).

Before we get to the theological richness of the prayer, we begin with stark words of the present situation. And as the final words of Jesus before the passion, this passage reaches a theological climax just before a plunging descent into betrayal and arrest, trial and crucifixion in the very next chapters.

At the very end of the prayer, not included in this day’s Gospel reading, Jesus ends with the comforting words, “I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them” (17:26).

Notes

1. R. Alan Culpepper, The Gospel and Letters of John (Nashville: Abingdon, 1998), 219.
2. Mary L. Coloe, John 1–10, Wisdom Commentary (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2021), 461.
3. David F. Ford, The Gospel of John: A Theological Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021), 337.
4. Ford, The Gospel of John, 334.

Every now and then a church decides to go on a retreat together to a favorite lodge or conference center. Some churches may even have a space of their own for such things. The agendas might be quite different. Maybe there’s a need for the church to incorporate new members and build community among themselves. Others might want to plan for the coming year, or focus on a mission project. Whatever the reason, retreats are times to assess the impact that something new is having or will be having on their lives together. 

On retreat is where we find Jesus’s followers at the end of this passage from Acts. They’ve been instructed to go from the Mount of Olives back to Jerusalem and retire to “an upstairs room.” It is quite possible that this is where they celebrated the Last Supper. This is where we find them “united in their devotion to prayer” (verse 14). They certainly have a lot to pray about! For one thing, there is a crisis in leadership. Judas’s violent death (verses 18–19) needs to be addressed and someone elected to fill his position. 

The larger issue here is that what they’ve experienced through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus has shattered conventional categories of discernment available to them. The “something new” that impacts them is no less than an inbreaking of a new age on earth. They wonder: “How are we to live in this new age? How will we help others to understand and participate in it?” 

At this point in the narrative, the only thing they are sure of is that they have received divine instruction to wait, and as we all know, waiting can be hard spiritual work. Specifically, what they are waiting for is a promise to be fulfilled. Before he mysteriously departed from them, Jesus had said, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.” Power to do what? “Be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all of Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” 

As they waited, they may well have remembered another ascension and transition of leadership. What about the time when Elijah was taken up into heaven (2 Kings 2:1–14) and his mantle fell at the feet of his disciple Elisha? Elisha might have been concerned with what they are wondering now. Elisha had prayed that a “double portion” of Elijah’s spirit would be granted to him. Indeed, when he saw Elijah ascend, the Spirit did come and animated Elisha’s ministry. Now, since they had witnessed the ascension of their Lord, the disciples wonder: 

• What will happen when we pick up the mantle of ministry that Jesus left to us? 
• Will the power that came to Jesus come to us as well? 
• Will we be ready to receive it? 

To create space for this power, they are going to have to let go of some cherished notions. For example, consider this exchange: The disciples had asked, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” (verse 6). To be fair, these disciples are trying to come to grips with life at the dawn of this new age. What will it look like? How will God’s reign be organized? What will be our place in it? Will it look anything like the restoration of the Davidic throne? 

First, they are told in no uncertain terms, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority” (verse 7). In other words, “This is not your concern.” Then, to imagine the future, they are going to have to let go of the images of kings and kingships from historical memory. They must not expect that the Resurrection includes restoration of some golden age from the past. A glorified Jesus will not return to finally drive out the Romans, divest the religious authorities of their power, or overthrow the rich and powerful. This will not be the content of their witness! Giving them a place of privilege in a new and improved monarchy is not going to prepare them for ministry in this new age; nostalgia is not going to transform them into the witnesses they must become. 

What they can expect is that the power they will receive is not some version of the power that an ancient king of Israel had. Rather, it will be a power that will animate a movement out of their hiding place and into the world. It will be a dynamic movement that extends and expands what God did through Jesus’s ministry and will be doing through the risen Lord. How and when that power will come, they do not know. They only know to wait with faith and trust.  

Churches (at least the ones I have been a part of) often do not have special services that focus on Ascension Day, leaving us to wonder what it means to the life of faith. Ascension means that Jesus’s time on earth, including the appearances of his resurrected form, have concluded. What’s left in the wake of his departure are promises: (1) the promise of his return—its time, place, and manner are retained in the mind of God; and (2) the promise that the same Holy Spirit that descended on Jesus at his baptism (Luke 3:22) will descend on them in like manner and equip them for ministry in Jesus’s name. 

Worship on this day is prayerful preparation for the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The disciples faithfully waited with anticipation for this promise to be fulfilled. What about us? Do we really expect God’s Spirit to come? Or are we too comfortable living in the fading shadows of a past golden age? Let the Spirit come into your midst, let it open your eyes to the future where new shapes of ministry will appear, and let it empower you to embrace what is to come. 

While Psalm 68 is fraught with interpretive difficulties—several one-of-a-kind words, obscure allusions, unknown geographical locations, and a less-than-clear structure—its general character and movement are clear enough.¹

As Konrad Schaefer helpfully suggests, Psalm 68 “is a hymn to God’s power and majesty. … The overall impression is of a triumphal parade which culminates in Zion.”²

The celebration of “God’s power and majesty” explains why the lectionary associates Psalm 68 with Acts 1:6–14 and the Ascension of the Lord; however, this association also invites careful attention to one’s interpretive conclusions and hermeneutical directions, so that this portrayal “of a triumphal parade” not be allowed to serve as warrant for an unfaithful triumphalism.

Verses 1–3 introduce the cast of characters—God, of course, but also God’s “enemies”/“the wicked” (verses 1–2; see also verses 12, 14, 18, 21–23, 30) and “the righteous” (verse 3; see verses 7, 10, 25-27, 35). Verses 1–3 also anticipate the basic “plot” of the poem: Along the way of a journey that moves from Egypt through the wilderness (verse 7), including Sinai (verse 8), toward and into the promised land (verses 10–16), ending at Zion (verses 17–23), God does indeed scatter God’s enemies. With their well-being secured by God’s powerful leading, God’s people celebrate in the Temple on Mount Zion (verses 24–27).

Along the way of the journey, the victorious God of Israel has appropriated functions that the Canaanites attributed to one of their gods, Baal—namely, the bringing of rain that yields agricultural productivity (see verses 8–10; and note that it is God, not Baal, that in verse 4 “rides upon the clouds,” and that in verse 33 is the “rider in the heavens”).

Along the way of the journey, the God of Israel has also bypassed another desirable location, Bashan (verses 15–16), in order to take up residence in Jerusalem on Mount Zion. Given the character, route, and destination of this “triumphal parade,” the people of God may have been tempted to conclude something like this: Our God is better than your gods, because our God has defeated, scattered, and displaced your gods; and our God now lives in Jerusalem, which just happens to be our place—in other words, God is on our side!

In the presence of this sort of conclusion, the praise invited in verses 4, 32–35 (and note that the invitations to praise bracket the portion of the psalm that rehearses the “triumphal parade”) would amount to little more than an ideology of proud, prosperous, and powerful people who are attempting to give divine legitimation to a status quo that benefits themselves. What is to prevent Psalm 68 and its rehearsal of “a triumphal parade” from being appropriated as a crass, self-aggrandizing triumphalism?

It is at this point that verses 5–6 become so pivotally important. Immediately following the initial invitation to praise, verses 5–6 make it clear that the God of Israel, the sovereign (see “King” in verse 24) enthroned on Zion, is not merely a mighty warrior who scatters his enemies for the fun of it, or for the thrill of the battle, or for the purpose of just showing off.

Rather, God “fights” for the vulnerable and the dispossessed—orphans and widows (see Psalms 10:14, 18; 82:3; 94:6; 146:9; Exodus 22:22; Deuteronomy 10:18 and often in Deuteronomy; Isaiah 1:17, 23; Jeremiah 7:6), the homeless (see Psalm 113:7–9; Isaiah 58:7), the captives (see Psalm 146:7; Isaiah 49:9; 61:1). As James L. Mays concludes concerning Psalm 68:

In spite of its militant character and victorious confidence, such is not its spirit. There is a self-understanding and self-description in the psalm’s measures that belies such a reading. The uses assigned to the power of the LORD as divine warrior are crucial. The God who dwells in his holy habitation as victor is father of orphans and protector of widows, who gives the desolate a home and liberates prisoners (verses 5-6). …

The song belongs to the lowly, who in the midst of the powers of this world remember and hope for the victory of God.³

To praise the God who is the protector of the vulnerable (verses 5–6) and the provider for the needy (verse 10) means to conform oneself to God’s will or, in essence, to join God at God’s work in the world. The concluding “Blessed be God!” especially invites this conclusion. The verb translated “Blessed” means more literally “to fall on one’s knees in obeisance to”—that is, to submit. Such submission to God leaves no room for self-serving triumphalism.

Rather, Psalm 68 invites the people of God in all times and places to praise God by practicing the same compassion that characterizes God’s activity in the world. Only those who practice divine compassion can rightly claim that “God is on our side.” As Archbishop Oscar Romero once put it: “There is a criterion for knowing whether God is close to us or far away: all those who worry about the hungry, the naked, the poor, the disappeared, the tortured, the imprisoned—about any suffering human being—are close to God.”⁴

In keeping with the triumphal tone of the psalm, the final section (verses 32–35) contains four occurrences of a Hebrew word translated “mighty” (verse 33) and “power” (twice in verse 34 and once in verse 35). Power belongs to God (verses 33–34), but God also “gives power and strength to his people” (verse 35).

Again, as suggested above, this gift of power could be construed in a triumphant manner. But in view of the preceding material (especially verses 5–6, 10), the power given to the people is the strength to “fight” for protection of the vulnerable, provision for the dispossessed, and liberation for the oppressed. Insofar as the “triumphal parade” in Psalm 68 anticipates the Ascension of the Lord, the resurrection power evident in the ascension is the power to do what God wants done (see essay on Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16, Fifth Sunday of Easter).

Notes

1. Commentary first published on this site on June 1, 2014.
2. Konrad Schaefer, Psalms (Berit Olam; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2001), 163–164.
3. James L. Mays, Psalms, Interpretation (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994), 228–229.
4. From a sermon by Oscar Romero, February 5, 1978, quoted in In the Company of the Poor: Conversations with Dr. Paul Farmer and Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez, ed. Michael Griffen and Jennie Weiss Block (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2013), 150.

This selection from 1 Peter continues the letter’s thematic engagement with the rhetoric of suffering. The author expresses joy that the audience might share Jesus’s sufferings (see 4:13). “If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory, which is the spirit of God, is resting on you” (4:14). Appreciating this text requires understanding how its author connects morality to this suffering and its wider context in narratives of persecution and the formation of Christian identity.

The morals of suffering

First Peter 5:6–11 begins with an exhortation to humility under God, with the hope that God will later exalt those in the letter’s audience who humble themselves. Verse 6 echoes the theology found in the Christ hymn in Philippians 2:6–11, where God raises and exalts Jesus Christ after he humbles himself and suffers by “taking the form of a slave” (Philippians 2:7). For the author of 1 Peter, this humility begins a moral posture for resisting temptation. “Discipline yourselves; keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). Alert self-discipline crafts a moral body that resists temptation and withstands suffering. Morality molds endurance.

Not all suffering is moral suffering. Although the lectionary selection stops mid-paragraph at 4:14, verses 15–16 distinguish suffering like Christ from other criminalized forms of suffering. “But let none of you suffer as a murderer, a thief, a criminal, or even as a mischief maker” (4:15). Echoing the author’s earlier exhortation to “honor the emperor” (2:17), 1 Peter makes clear that suffering for criminalized “immorality” is not the same as suffering “as a Christian” (4:16).

To the degree Christianity can be said to have been criminalized under second-century Roman imperialism, Christian “criminals” are the exception to the rule of suffering. It is good to suffer when one does not deserve punishment or prosecution. First Peter promotes a moral politic of good suffering.

One’s suffering must mirror Jesus’s suffering. This appeal to Christ presents Jesus’s suffering as unjust: He was crucified as a criminal who did no wrong. First Peter’s warning against criminals and mischief makers makes explicit the assumption that Jesus’s criminalization is the exception to the rule. Like other early Christian writers, the author assumes that, apart from Jesus and his followers, all other criminals suffer their punishment for good reason.¹

In her essay “Can an Enslaved God Liberate?” biblical scholar Sheila Briggs critiques the rhetoric of slavery and suffering in the Christ hymn of Philippians. She emphasizes how praising Jesus’s divine choice to suffer in slave form ignores the utter lack of agency that characterizes the suffering of enslaved humans. The hymn praises Jesus for choosing what is brutally forced upon others. The hymn lacks solidarity with enslaved people who suffer: Jesus’s humility gets elevated while everyone else remains humiliated. “Christ as divine,” Briggs writes, “was absolutely too worthy to be enslaved.”²

Briggs’s point extends to the 1 Peter’s presentation of good suffering. The author uses the hymn’s rhetoric of humility and elevation in order to present Christ and the “Christians” in their audience as “absolutely too worthy” to suffer. As moral, disciplined people, their undeserved suffering makes them worthy of elevation and power.

Suffering, persecution, and Christian identity

The rhetoric of suffering in this passage tends to be explained as part of a larger narrative about the persecution of the earliest Christians by Rome. Although the author alludes to their potential suffering, the cause and extent of their suffering is unclear. At times, the author speaks in hypotheticals (“If you are reviled…,” 4:14). While it is not impossible that the author is responding to localized experiences of persecution, this suffering could take many other forms. It is important to recognize that Christian persecution was not nearly as widespread or systemic as contemporary martyrdom narratives present it.³

It is not accidental that 1 Peter invokes the term “Christian” (see 4:16) as he discusses suffering and its morality. The rhetoric of suffering became pivotal to the formation of Christian identity. Elizabeth Castelli shows this in her work on martyrdom stories and collective memory, and Shelly Matthews discusses it further in her analysis of Acts’ depictions of the stoning of Stephen.⁴ Christianity is built upon the good suffering that 1 Peter encourages. Its morality distinguishes Christian suffering from that of others. This moral distinction of suffering and persecution lays the groundwork for Christians to claim their suffering is exceptional. Seeing suffering, morally, as a route to power, it leaves little room to consider the suffering of others.

Exceptionalized suffering lacks solidarity with all who suffer. We see this in 1 Peter’s exclusion of criminals and mischief makers from the terms of Christian suffering that get praised and encouraged in the formal lectionary passage. A critical approach to this passage in light of Christianity’s power to inflict systemic suffering demands rethinking whose suffering counts. Instead of moralizing what and whose suffering counts, this requires asking what it means to roar with solidarity for all who suffer.

Notes

1. See, for example, my comments on Luke’s presentation of Jesus’s crucifixion, when Jesus converses with the two criminals beside him. Jimmy Hoke, “Looking into the Lectionary: Reign of Christ—November 23, 2025,” The Presbyterian Outlook, https://pres-outlook.org/2025/11/reign-of-christ-november-23-2025/.
2. Sheila Briggs, “Can an Enslaved God Liberate? Hermeneutical Reflections on Philippians 2:6–11,” Semeia 47 (1989): 143.
3. See especially Candida Moss, The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom (New York: HarperOne, 2013).
4. See Elizabeth A. Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), and Shelly A. Matthews, Perfect Martyr: The Stoning of Stephen and the Construction of Christian Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).