Perfect as One

(Garden of Gethsemane)

What fear must have gripped his cosmic heart, what grief must have stung his sensitive longing at the betrayal of a friend, what very human thoughts must have dashed through his mind, this young man, barely 30, who knew his destiny, his pending tortured death, before his friends and followers?

Sometimes the anticipation of what lies ahead is more gripping and unbearable than the actual event itself.  The mind can possess your heart in a way that even the heart can't recognize its own oppressor.

Yet, even then, in his own darkest moment, as he wept in the garden before his arrest, he prayed for his friends.  In those moments, as they slept away the wine of their last supper together, he thought of them, "those whom God had given" him, he said.  His fears for them, his deepest concerns for them, was that the "cunning one," the  anti-christ would trick them, steal away their faith, their hope, their love and their very souls.  

He lived and breathed in perfect communion, "as One," he said, with our creator.  He, like Adam, the first man, walked this garden of life, in perfect intimacy with our creator.  His journey here was to open our hearts and our minds, our souls, to the truth that our creator made us out of love and for love, a truth that had been stolen from us by the lies of the anti-christ force that had taken the whole world captive.  He came to free the world from that prison, in which it languished fearfully captivated by a lie.

His message is simple really.  There is no difficult theological underpinnings to this knowledge.  We are made of God, in God's image, to create, to evolve into our adult spiritual selves, and the only way to do that is with God's love, which is the ultimate wisdom.  Wisdom knows that love is the rocket fuel for our souls - not an ordinary wisdom, not an ordinary love, but a wisdom from the most loving source, that opens us into our divine nature to be the ultimate beings of love and creation.

His last prayer, offered to God, in this garden, is recorded in the Gospel of John, Chapter 17*.

"Father, the hour has come,

Glorify your son so that your son may glorify you

as you have given him authority over all flesh

So he may give life everlasting to all you have given him.

And, this is the life everlasting

so that they may know you, the only true god

and he whom you sent,Yeshua the anointed.

I glorified you on earth

by completing the work you gave me to do 

and now glorify me, father, with yourself,

with the glory I had with you before the world was.

I made your name known to the people

whom you gave me from the world.

They were yours and you gave them to me

and they have kept your word.

Now they know that all you gave me comes from you.

Because the words you gave me I gave them.
And they accepted them,

and they knew the truth that I came from you

and believed that you sent me.

I ask for their sake

I am asking not for the sake of the world

but for the ones whom you gave me

because they are yours.

And all that is mine is yours and yours is mine

and I am glorified in them

And I am no longer in the world

but they are in the world

and I am coming to you.

Holy father, keep them in your name

which you gave me

so they may be one as we are one

When I was with them,

through your name I kept those whom you gave me.

I guarded them and not one of them was lost

except the son of perdition

so that the scripture be fulfilled.

Now, I am coming to you

and these things I say in the world 

so my elation be fulfilled in them.

I gave them your word and the world hated them

since they are not of the world

as I am not of the world.

I do not ask you to take them from the world

but to keep them from the cunning one.

They are not of this world as I am not of this world.

Sanctify them in the truth.

Your word** is truth

As you sent me into the world so I sent them

into the world.

And for them I sanctify myself 

so that they also be sanctified in truth.

I do not ask for them alone

but for those believing in me through their word

that we may all be one

as you, father, are in me and I in you,

that the world may believe that you sent me.

The glory you gave me I give them

so they may be one as we are one,

I in them and you in me

so they may be made perfect as one,

so the world may know that you sent me

and loved them just as you loved me.

Father, where I am I want the ones you gave me 

also to be with me and see my glory,

which you gave me since you loved me

before the foundation of the world.

.

Just father, the world did not know who you were,

but I knew you

and these ones knew that you had sent me

I made your name known to them 

and I shall make it known

so the love with which you loved me

maybe in them and I in them.

*   Translated from the Greek, in which the original Gospel of John was written, by Willis Barnstone.  (The Gnostic Bible, edited by Willis Barnstone and Marvin Meyer, p.90  92)


**  From the Greek "logos" is often translated as "word," and represents the masculine principle of wisdom governing the universe, which is "scientific logic," according to Deacon Thaddeus Pijacki. In Hebrew, wisdom is often personified as Sophia in the feminine principle. Her mystical  "wisdom is an inner understanding that transcends logic and allows meaning to surface for love, courage, beauty, suffering, new life and other abstract realities beyond explanation by Logic," Dr. Pijacki  wrote.