Today’s gospel reading contains some very familiar words. There are at least three phrases I have heard so often they stand out as if they are in bold print.
The first is right at the beginning: “Do not let your hearts be troubled…in my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.”
It is perhaps the most often chosen of all the possible readings for funerals. It contains Jesus’ assurance that there will be something more, that death is not the end. It is an important saying. On any given Sunday morning, there are likely several of us gathered here whose hearts are troubled by the fact that God’s gift of mortal life does not last. Staunch Christians though we are, still when we lose someone we love, or face such a loss, there comes a hole in the heart that feels huge. And so we cling to Jesus’ promise that there will always be a place for us, that even when this life is ended, we will still be together with God. The root of the word here translated “dwelling” is the Greek “meno” which is used over and over in John’s gospel and is most often translated as “remain, stay, or abide.” Jesus is preparing for us places where we may abide in God. It speaks to an intimate relationship promising that just as we are together today, so we will always be together in Christ – for all eternity.
The second familiar saying here is “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
This saying has, for me at least, some negative baggage, for it is often been used to exclude persons whose faith is not the same as ours. To use it that way is to remove it from its context, to twist and distort its meaning.
Remember that at this point in John’s gospel things are coming to their climax. Jesus has shared the Passover meal with his disciples. In an extraordinary act of love, he washed their feet. Judas left the table, consumed with his errand of betrayal. And Jesus has reminded his disciples that soon he will be going away. Thomas, the courageous one who is willing to give voice to the fears they all hold, speaks up and says: “Look, you haven’t told us where you’re going, so how can we know the way?” In this quiet moment with his closest friends, Jesus says an extraordinary thing: “I am the way.” We do not hear his statement’s full power because we think his “I am” is simply grammatically correct. But listen closely. Jesus has just pronounced the unspeakable name of God. Remember Moses talking with God before the burning bush? God told Moses to go and speak to the pharaoh on behalf of his people. Moses asks, “Who shall I say has sent me? By whose authority do I speak?” And God replies, “I am who I am. Tell them I am has sent you.”
Throughout the gospel of John, Jesus reminds his disciples that he and the Father are one. God is not sub-divided. The Trinity is an image of ONE God. Thus Jesus says: “I am the bread of life; I am the light of the world; I am the good shepherd; I am the gate to the sheepfold; I am resurrection; I am life; I am the true vine; and I am the way.” Jesus IS God.
Baptized into the Body of Christ on earth today, we belong to Jesus Christ. For us, members of his body, he is way, life and truth. We belong to Jesus, but Jesus does not belong to us. We may share our truth and our understanding with any who will listen, but we do not control this truth, nor do we have the authority to place limits upon it. Jesus said, “I have other sheep not of this fold.” God can call whomever God chooses, in whatever way God chooses. “for God so loved the world that he gave his only son…” What God did in Jesus Christ, God did for the world – the whole world. It is simply arrogant of us to assume that we may define the outcome of God’s choice.
Philip provides the other reality check on this saying. Jesus says “No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father.” Philip seeks understanding through sight. “Show us the Father….show us…let us see with our own eyes.” It is an audacious question. No one can see the face of God and live. Remember again Moses, who once made a similar request. God stuck him face forward in the cleft of a mountain and passed by. All Moses could see was the glory of God, shimmering all around. God is too much for us – too holy, too powerful, too infinite, too full of life for us to be able to see. So Jesus asks, “Have I been with you all this time, and still you do not know me?” Jesus is the human face of God. Jesus is all of God that you and I can comprehend. Jesus in NOT ALL of God. Jesus is ALL you and I can comprehend. Jesus is God’s self-expression for us, God’s Word incarnate, God in flesh briefly among us as one of us
Which brings us to the very last sentence of this reading, also very familiar, and also often pulled out of context: “If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.”
This saying has provided for many a rather insubstantial theology of prayer – if you pray correctly “in Jesus’ name” there is here a presumed assurance that the prayer will be effective.
Always, there is danger in removing a statement from its context.
Hold that thought while we back up a little bit, for this is a rich passage and we’ve only scratched the surface.
In the beginning Jesus said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.”
So I ask you – what would untrouble your heart? The world offers many answers to that question. My heart would be untroubled if only I had more money, if only I could lose weight – or gain weight…if only I had a better job, if only I could retire, take a vacation, see my dead mother again…if only I didn’t have cancer…if only someone would love me more…
I could go on and on. But look closely at this gospel reading…Jesus has only ONE answer to the question of how to untrouble your heart: Believe, said Jesus. Believe in God. Believe in me. This believing is not a cognitive act. It is not an intellectual assent to a set of ideas, or principles. It has nothing to do with memorizing the Ten Commandments or the Apostle’s Creed.
This believing is an act or state of being. To believe is to abide in God, to abide in Christ Jesus, to be in loving, intimate relationship with the one who created you, redeemed you, and sustains you. But Jesus, being human, knew in his own heart how difficult it is to have such a relationship with one you cannot see, touch, taste, or feel, and so he said: “…if you cannot believe me, believe because of the works – because of what I have done.”
What works did Jesus do? He fed people, he listened to them, he allowed them to love him, and he loved them in return. He brought people healing and wholeness, not so much by particular acts, but most often by being with them, by saying their name, by touching them, by inviting them to love and be loved.
After he was raised from the dead, Jesus greeted his disciples early one morning on the beach. As they shared a meal, he asked Peter, “Do you love me?” When Peter said he did, Jesus replied, “Feed my lambs.” Again and yet again, Jesus posed the question and Peter answered. Each time, he was told “Feed my sheep, tend my sheep.”
Jesus, the good shepherd who loved and cared for his flock, passed that responsibility to those who love him. We, the Church, the Body of Christ, are to feed, to heal, to love, to do the works that Jesus did and more, because we are more. We are many, we are not just in
So, let’s consider again this last statement: “If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.” This is not a promise for a parking place, or an A on a test without studying, or a stock portfolio always ahead of the Dow Jones average. This is a promise that if we, Jesus’ disciples, we the Church, if we will abide in God, we will do two things: we will seek to glorify God in response to God’s saving love for us, and we will desire the things that God desires, because those are the things that will make God’s kingdom manifest. Jesus said, I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
When we pray in Jesus’ name, it is not a magic formula for getting a prayer answered. It is an articulation of our heart’s desire – which is also God’s desire – that the kingdom might be visible on this earth, that all people will be made whole, know love and live in peace. In the power of the Spirit, in the power of the risen Christ, God has promised that those things we ask, will be.
The familiar words that stand out in today’s gospel reading are very important, but they are not meant to stand individually. They are meant to be together, for together they are the key to understanding the sum of Jesus’ words.
The theme that ties these sayings together is “believe.” In this context, believing is an act of total trust, a willingness to do and to be in ways that the world, indeed that we ourselves, may not always understand. Believing in this way is not something we do alone, as individuals, with our brains and our intellect. It is rather something we do together, as a community or Body, and we do it with our hearts. Believing is the exercise of faith that we cannot explain.
Grieving the death of his son, Harvard professor Nicolas Wolterstorff said, “Faith is the footbridge that you don’t know will hold up over the chasm until you’re forced to walk out onto it.”
This is what it means to follow Jesus: to step out on the footbridge over the chasm, to be light where there is dark, to be bread where there is hunger, solace, where there is pain, love where there is fear. We do these things not as a list of accomplishments but rather as evidence of our identity as Christians and because, above all else, these are the ways in which we learn to love one another as we have been loved.