Jesus' Prayer in John 17 -- A Question

The gospel I chose for April 24/25 was Jesus' "High Priestly Prayer" from John 17. One disciple who listened responded with the observation that "Today's reading in John seems to me uncharacteristically redundant (e.g., "those whom you gave me" is used at least 3 times) for Jesus whose prayers seem generally more concise."

I tend to agree. The "redundancy" of this passage makes it very difficult to read aloud -- there is the tendency to think one is repeating lines. The repetition of thoughts seems overbearing and heavy.

So, what is going on here? Was John weaving his own agenda into Jesus' words, if John even "heard" Jesus pray this prayer (there are several times in the Gospels where Jesus was "praying alone" and yet the supposed words of his prayer are recorded i.e. in the Garden of Gethsemane)? Is John just being John: wordy, theological and yet precise? Is something "lost in translation"? Would this make more sense if it were in a poetic format?

I suspect it is some of all of the above. The message that I get from John 17 is that there is a big need to understand a longing for unity, for "oneness" and for how later disciples are connected to early disciples who were to dwell in Jesus as God came to dwell in Jesus. There is no doubt in my faith that an early issue for the church, maybe about the time John was recording his Gospel (some decades after Jesus), was unity along with a proper understanding of God's work through Jesus and Jesus' work thorugh the disciples.

Reading this section of John through the eyes of first century Sunday School faith would led me to believe that John is doing some heavy duty theological instruction along with the story. In context, this is not so long before Jesus dies, so the message might be that I'm leaving you now, so I want you to have all of this stuff straight about God and Me. John would have seen it in the sense that Jesus has left us now and he would have wanted us to have had all of this stuff straight.

John is always a challenge to read. He always seems to be talking in abstractions. This section is no different. But perhaps we get the picture if we simply see in John the longing for the love of God in Jesus and the power of the spirit for the spreading of the good news to the ends of the earth.