The living room was dark. Bennett had left a lamp on in the study, a small room off the hall that smelled of paper and warm dust. The desk took most of the floor. Shelves went up on two walls, novels mixed with commentaries, a stack of envelopes no one had opened. Six people would not fit it honestly.
Dina was already in the chair nearest the lamp, Bible open, one finger holding the page as if it might turn itself. Willa sat on the low stool with her coat still on. Rae had pulled a dining chair as far as the doorway and sat with her knees almost in the room.
Bennett took the desk chair and did not stand.
Trent came last. He had a man with him, taller, quieter, a jacket still zipped as if he had not decided the room was his.
“This is Bram,” Trent said. “He works with me. I told him we were in John.”
Bennett nodded at the last empty chair, the one from the hall with a coat still on the back. Bram sat. He did not unzip the jacket. Trent took the corner of the desk itself, forearms on the wood, already hunting the first line he could argue with.
“Seventeen,” Dina said.
She did not decorate the first line. When Jesus had spoken these things, he lifted his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you.
“He is not talking to them,” Bennett said. “The hour has come. He said it was coming all night. Now he says it to the Father, and they are still in the room.”
Trent made a sound in his throat. “So we are listening in.”
Bram leaned back until the hall chair complained. “He lifted his eyes in front of them. You don’t do that if you mean it to be private.”
Dina kept going. Authority over all flesh, given so that he might give eternal life to all the Father had given him. Then the sentence that sat under the lamp as if someone had finally written the thing down.
“‘And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.’”
Trent sat up. “There. We can hold that. Eternal life is knowing God. That’s the file.”
“That’s the assignment,” Bram said. He did not sit up. “Know the Father. Know the one he sent. Put a lid on it.”
Dina did not lift her finger. “It isn’t a lid. He doesn’t say they will know him later, after they have died well. He says this is eternal life. Now. And know is not a quiz they pass. It’s who they live with.”
Trent’s jaw worked. He looked at Bram. Bram’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile. They let it sit without agreeing that she had taken the file away.
“Four and five,” Bennett said.
Dina read them. He had glorified the Father on earth, having finished the work given him. Now he asked to be glorified in the Father’s presence with the glory he had before the world existed.
Nobody rushed the before. The lamp hummed. Somewhere in the house a pipe ticked.
“He is asking to go back,” Willa said. “Not as a man climbing. As someone who already belonged there.”
Dina’s thumb found six and stayed.
“‘I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.’”
“Given,” Rae said. “Out of the world. They didn’t volunteer the way we like to tell it. They belonged to the Father first.”
Dina kept her finger moving. Now they knew that everything given to the Son was from the Father. He had given them the words the Father gave him. They received them. They knew he came from the Father. They believed the Father sent him.
Trent’s mouth opened as if sixteen were still in the room. “They received. They know. They believe. That is not a group that failed the quiz.”
“They kept the word,” Dina said. “That is what six said. It does not say they could carry the night yet.”
Bram’s eyes stayed on nine, already waiting.
Trent tapped the desk. “Read nine.”
Dina did. “‘I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours.’”
Trent pointed, sitting upright. “Circle drawn. He prays for us. Not for them. That is as clean as it gets.”
Bram nodded once, still back in the chair. “He names the world so he can leave it outside the prayer. A man should know who he is talking about.”
Rae did not argue nine. She set her pencil on eighteen and left it there like a pin.
Dina read the keep-them sentences without making a doctrine of Holy Father. Keep them in the name given him, that they may be one as we are one. While he was with them he kept them. None lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.
“He is leaving,” Bennett said. “And he is handing the keeping to the Father in front of them, so they will hear who holds them when the room is empty.”
Thirteen she did not skip. He spoke these things in the world so that they might have his joy fulfilled in themselves.
Willa’s eyes stayed on that line. “Joy. In the same air where he has already told them they will be hated. He wants the joy in them, not waiting outside until the hatred is over.”
Dina went on. He had given them the Father’s word, and the world had hated them because they were not of the world, just as he was not of the world.
Trent snorted, not unkindly. “There it is. Separate. Not of the world. Same as him. That matches nine.”
“Keep reading,” Bennett said.
Dina slowed so the request would not slide past. “‘I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.’” Then, again: they are not of the world, just as he is not. Then, “‘Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.’” Then eighteen, the line under Rae’s pencil: as the Father sent him into the world, he had sent them into the world.
Rae turned the pencil. “He will not pull them out. Leave them in. Keep them from the evil one. And then he sends them into the same world Trent just heard him refuse to pray for.”
Trent looked from nine to eighteen as if the page had moved while he was talking.
“That is not a circle anymore,” he said.
“It is still a circle,” Bram said. He still did not sit forward. “He prays for the ones given. He sends the ones given. The world stays the field. It does not get to be the congregation.”
Trent exhaled through his nose. He did not look convinced, and he did not look alone.
Dina’s nail was already under nineteen. She read it once, and then she read it again because the room had gone quiet enough to hear the paper.
“‘And for their sake I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.’”
A car passed in the street. The study gave none of it back.
“Sanctify,” Dina said. “Set apart. He does it to himself first. For their sake. He does not hand them a purity list and wish them luck. He offers himself so they can be set apart in the truth, and he already told them the word is the truth.”
Willa’s voice was almost not a voice. “He is going in with their names in his mouth.”
Bennett did not put a title on that. He looked at twenty.
Dina read it. He did not ask for these only, but also for those who would believe in him through their word, that they may all be one, as the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father, that they also may be in them, so that the world may believe that the Father sent the Son.
Trent sat up again. “There. Unity. If they would just do it, the world would believe. That’s a plan.”
“A plan with an outcome,” Bram said. “Be one. World watches. World believes. I have sat through worse meetings.”
Willa shook her head, almost not. “Look at the as. As the Father is in the Son. That is not a committee deciding to get along.”
Dina read twenty-two. The glory the Father gave the Son, he had given them, that they may be one as we are one. He in them, the Father in him, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know the Father sent him and loved them as he loved the Son.
“He gives the glory first,” Willa said. “Then the oneness. Then the world knowing. The meeting does not produce that. He does.”
Dina found twenty-four. “‘Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.’”
The word desire sat on the desk as if a man had said something a meeting would have edited out.
Rae spoke to the sending still pinned under her pencil. “He keeps them in the world and wants them where he is. Both sentences are on the same page.”
Bennett said, “The last.”
Dina read it. Righteous Father. The world had not known him. Jesus had. These knew that he had been sent. He had made the name known and would continue to make it known, that the love with which the Father loved him might be in them, and he in them.
Nobody turned that into a slogan.
Trent looked at Bram. Bram had unzipped the jacket one inch and stopped.
“He is not done making the name known,” Willa said. “Even after he has finished the work. The making-known keeps going so the love can be in them.”
Dina left nineteen under her finger again, as if the later verses had to come home to it. For their sake I sanctify myself.
Bennett did not close the book. He did not stand. The lamp made a small country of the desk, and six people sat in it without anyone saying they were finished.
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