John 14:1-14
1 "Do not let your hearts be
troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. 2 In my Father's house there are
many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to
prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come
again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. 4
And you know the way to the place where I am going." 5 Thomas said to him,
"Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?"
6 Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one
comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you know me, you will know my
Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him." 8 Philip said
to him, "Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied." 9 Jesus
said to him, "Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do
not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say,
"Show us the Father'? 10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father and
the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but
the Father who dwells in me does his works. 11 Believe me that I am in the
Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of
the works themselves. 12 Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me
will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than
these, because I am going to the Father. 13 I will do whatever you ask in my
name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If in my name you ask
me for anything, I will do it.
As I sat on a metal folding chair at
the edge of the football field, I remember thinking to myself how hot the sun
made my feet feel in the cheap, black shoes I was wearing that day. Around 400
of us were taking time out of our last, full day of class to rehearse walking
in a straight line. We were the graduating class of 2002. As my feet slowly
roasted in the South Alabama sun, I was thinking about how much I couldn’t wait
for all of this to be over, all of this ceremony, all of this pomp and
circumstance. I just wanted to get through graduation, get my diploma, and
start living the life I had mapped out in front of me. I had a job and a
scholarship to a technical school all lined up. The only thing in my way was
time. I had lived the previous thirteen years of my life reading, writing,
solving math problems, and learning names and dates just so I could be free
from the bondage of bells and wide-ruled paper. I can remember thinking about
how much I just wanted to blink and have a week pass, so I could be considered
an adult—a working, self-sufficient, life-laid-out adult.
Eventually, those few days did pass,
and I graduated. Life, however, did not exactly go the way I had planned it. I
was told I had “worked myself out of a job,” and since the job I had was the
only reason I had chosen to go to the technical school that awarded me a
scholarship, I found myself in a dire situation. Just a few days after wanting
to get on with life, I found myself wishing life would reverse itself, or at
least stop while I picked up the pieces and tried to figure out what to do
next. I was afraid I had wasted the past years of my life; I had no “plan B”
and no idea what to do next. I can honestly say it was one of the scariest, most
troubling times of my life.
Those are the most troubling times
in our lives aren’t they? Those times, those seasons when it seems like
everything is spinning out of control. We can’t sleep; it seems like no matter
how hard we try, we can’t “right the ship,” we can’t get back on track. Those
times are especially frightening when everything up to that point has gone
smoothly. Things are most troubling when everything has gone according to our
plans, and everything seems as if it will continue on as if it were fixed on a
rail, but something—something covert, unseen—upsets everything, and before we
have time to even begin to comprehend what’s happening, our world is turned
upside down and our plans are little more than smoldering ruins. If you’ve been
there, then you can understand where these followers of Jesus are in chapter
fourteen of John’s gospel.
The first words from Jesus in the
passage before us in verse 1 give us
some sense of the situation: “Do not let your hearts be troubled.”
Why are their hearts troubled? After all, as nice a saying as this may be for
fortune cookies and Precious Moments figurines, it is a saying from Jesus to
his disciples in a real context, so why are their hearts troubled? What exactly
has taken place to cause Jesus to speak these words of comfort and blessed
assurance to his first followers? Well, let’s take a look at the story just
before chapter fourteen. Up until about chapter eleven, things were on a pretty
steady arc: Jesus had been moving about Judea performing what the Fourth Gospel
refers to as “signs.” Jesus has healed the sick, given sight to the blind, and
even raised the dead, and it’s that last sign (raising Lazarus from the dead)
that changed things. We’re told in chapter
11, verses 45 and following that the chief priests, Pharisees, and the
whole Sanhedrin plotted to kill Jesus after he raised Lazarus from the dead.
From there we’re told in chapter 12,
verses 27 and following, after Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, that
Jesus tells his disciples about his being “lifted up,” that is his crucifixion.
Then, in chapter 13 Jesus tells his
disciples that one them will actually betray him, turn him over to those who
want to see him lynched. As if that wasn’t enough to trouble the heart of an
ordinary disciple, we’re told that the de facto leader of the disciples, Peter,
will deny Jesus—not once, but three times!
The powerful religious institution
is plotting to kill Jesus. Jesus himself seems to be predicting his own death
at the hands of those who want him dead. The most resolute, steadfast,
rock-like of the disciples will eventually deny having ever known the one he
has claimed he would die for. That seems like enough to frighten these first
followers of Jesus. That seems like enough to trouble their hearts, especially
when they may have seen the outcome entirely differently. They may have had it
in their minds that this sign-slinging Messiah was marching into Jerusalem to
put things the way they ought to be. They may have viewed the coming messianic
age as one where they’d install (at the very least) a reactionary movement that
would resist the polytheistic oppression of Rome, a sort of “Occupy Judea”
movement. But when the authorities are really out to get you, when your Messiah
isn’t calling for arms and action, but a cross and forgiveness, when your
exemplary peer is predicted to fall short…your heart will at the very least be
“troubled.”
In the aftermath of this world-unraveling,
Jesus tells his disciples, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe
in God, believe also in me.” Now, telling first century Jews (really,
most people in the first century) to “believe in God” would be like telling
people to believe that the sun comes up in the morning. Believing in God
(whether it was YHWH as a Jew, Zeus as a Roman, Ra as an Egyptian, etc.) was
practically involuntary: gods seemed to occupy every square inch of life. Their
temples were city centers; their names were carved everywhere; their images or
symbols were on money. These first disciples would likely go on believing in
God if Jesus had proven to be just another short-fallen redeemer. That’s why
the difficult exhortation in Jesus’ words of comfort is “believe also in me.” “We
can believe in God. God, as far as we can tell, hasn’t changed. But believing
in you may be difficult, Jesus. After all, you’ve told us you plan to die. That
isn’t what we had in mind for a messiah.” Can’t you hear the disciples thinking
this?
Jesus, though, doesn’t really give
them the chance to express any sort of doubt in the comforting power found in
believing in a crucified Christ. No, instead he promises them something: “In my Father's house there are many dwelling
places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place
for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will
take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the
way to the place where I am going." Great. Jesus is going on ahead
of them, and they know the way to the place he’s going…or do they?
Thomas (the mouthpiece for the rest
of us in the Fourth Gospel, the one who says what the rest of us are really
thinking) says in verse 5, “Lord, we do not know where you are going.
How can we know the way?" Turns out they don’t know where Jesus is
going. They don’t have a clue now since their plans have been torn apart by all
of these recent revelations. “Where are you going with all of this Jesus? Give
me a sign! Show me the way!” How many times have you found yourself shouting
that at the ceiling? That’s where these disciples are: they’re clueless as to
where Jesus is going now. They have no idea what’s around the bend, what’s
waiting for them on the next step in life’s journey.
To quiet their troubling hearts,
Jesus tells his disciples words that, up until now, we’ve heard as describing
the exclusive, VIP status of those bound for glory: "I am the way, and the
truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know
me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen
him." In this “I am” statement of Jesus, he says to his disciples,
“You want to know that way? I am the way. There’s no other way, so you won’t be
lost or confused on the journey so long as you follow me.” In a way, that’s
what Jesus has been telling his disciples from the very beginning. You see,
throughout the gospels Jesus is constantly calling people to himself with two
simple words: “follow me.” “Follow me; because I am the way, I am the way to
know God, the way to know truth, the way to life.”
But it’s hard to follow someone when
we don’t know exactly where they’re going. We are fine with following someone
if we have an idea of the destination, if we’ve been there before, or if we’ve
been assured it’s a place that can be reached fairly easily and once we’re
there it’ll be sunshine, cake, and dancing. But if we aren’t sure of the
destination, if we’ve never been there before, or if we’re told the route is
dangerous, difficult, or long, we aren’t so ready to put one foot in front of
the other for the journey. Philip gives a voice to such a truth in our nature
in verse 8: "Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied."
What he says is essentially, “Lord, show us where all of this is heading, show
us God’s grand plan, and we’ll be satisfied with following you; we’ll be
satisfied with all of this stuff you’ve told us about crosses, death, and
denial. Just tell us where we’re headed. We’ll leave the way up to you, but we
want to know the destination.”
Jesus is understandably a bit
disappointed with Philip. After all, Philip has been following Jesus, the Way,
since way back in chapter one. He’s one of the first disciples Jesus calls to
follow him on the way. The rest of our passage this morning is Jesus’ response
to Philip’s request to see God. Essentially, in verses 9 through 14 Jesus tells Philip, “You want to see the
Father? Look at me. I am the Father and the Father is me; we’re the same. What
I do, I do because the Father, God, lives in me. So follow me, because I’m the
way and the destination!” These are some of the most theologically thick verses
in all of Scripture, because it is in these verses that we hear Jesus declare
his unity with God: Jesus isn’t just a prophet pointing to God; Jesus is the
fullness of God. You want to see God, to know what God is like: look at Jesus! You
want to know where all of this going, what all of this means: look at Jesus! You
want to know the way to God: look at Jesus! You want to know God: know Jesus!
That’s what Christ is saying to his
disciples then and now. Where’s God going with all of this? What’s the meaning
behind life’s ups and downs? What’s the right path? It’s all Jesus! And don’t
think that’s some simple, watered-down, Sunday School answer to the depth and
vastness of life. Far from it! Really look at Jesus. In the words of Cynthia A.
Jarvis, Minister at the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill in Philadelphia,
“What we know of God in Jesus Christ is that God has chosen not to be God
without us. In this is love (1 John 4:10), the love that is God.” [1] When we see Jesus, the Way, the
Destination, what we see is the God who has walked through every dark valley
before us. We see in Jesus the God who has wept when sin and death has taken
one we’ve loved. We see in Jesus the God who has rejoiced when we’ve conquered
that obstacle in our lives that has been holding us back. We see in Jesus the
God who has faced every fear that could possibly ever trouble our hearts
because we see a God who in contradiction to his eternal glory, died.
We see in Jesus the God who has
overcome all that could ever attempt to overtake us when that same Jesus, that
same God triumphed even over death. When we see Jesus, we see the Way: the way
to salvation, the way to freedom, the way to peace, hope, and joy. When we see
Jesus, we see the God who is love. So may we follow the Way, and in following
the Way may we be satisfied.
[1]
Cynthia A. Jarvis, “Fifth Sunday of Easter, John 14:1-14: Homiletical
Perspective,” Feasting on the Word. Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville, KY
(2010) p.471.
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