John 14:1-14
It’s Mother’s Day, so it won’t surprise
you to know that I’ve had my mother on my mind.
She’s living in Jefferson City, in a senior living community. And, like so many other people right now, she’s
basically stuck in her apartment. She
goes to the store from time to time, or goes to see my sister who also lives in
Jeff City; but she can’t interact with other people at her complex, and none of
us can go inside to see her. We talk on
the phone, and she’s fine … at least as “fine” as anybody can be, in this
situation.
But thinking about your mother also
takes you back in time. Yes, that tired
and grumpy little boy is me, and the date stamp on the photo tells me I’m 20 months
old. At various points in her life, my
mother was a teacher of English and speech, even travel geography later on; teaching
is absolutely her passion. But when my sisters
and I were little, she spent most of her time working at home, raising us. My memories of childhood are largely memories
of my mother being there, guiding us, narrating life day by day.
I don’t know whether your parents used catch
phrases as they raised you, but my mother certainly had one. Whenever we kids would leave the house to go
do something, my mother would smile and say, “Learn something, love somebody, and
have a good time.” That may seem precious
as you hear it now, but for an impatient little boy, trying to get himself out
of the house, it wasn’t precious; it was mostly annoying. I couldn’t see what her phrase had to do with
going to baseball practice. Of course, she
sent us out with that advice in other, harder times, too – when we’d leave to take
a big test, or sing a solo, or sit on the bench at the basketball game … again. Growing up, I didn’t always see how it
applied or why it mattered. But my mother
was saying, “Trust in this. Commit
yourself to this. In everything life
brings, no matter how rough things seem, you will come out better if you use the
situation to learn something, love somebody, and have a good time.”
Fast-forward a few years, and Ann and I
had our own kids. I know I didn’t use my
mother’s words exactly, but I think I passed on the same call to Kathryn and
Daniel, inviting them to see everything as an chance to learn, to love, and to
find the blessing in the moment. So, I
guess I’ve ended up practicing my mother’s mission statement. Turns out, she was right even if I didn’t
always understand why she said what she said.
Trusting even when we don’t understand – that’s
a good way to capture what it means to be a follower of Jesus, too. I hear that message in the Gospel reading
this morning, even though the word “trust” never appears. Instead, the word we hear is “believe.” You know, like the word “love,” the Greek word
for “believe” has a range of meanings in Scripture. Sometimes, it just means affirming something
to be true. But more often, it means to trust
– placing deep, abiding trust in a reality that guides your life, the thing you
give yourself up to.
Today, we hear Jesus using “believe” that
way at the Last Supper, his parting shot to his friends. He’s trying to remind his friends of deep
truths they’ve known and lived for years, and then commission them to carry on
once he returns to the Father. But first,
he has to stop for a little remedial teaching along the way.
He starts off saying, don’t be afraid: “Believe
in God, believe also in me” (John 14:1).
Trust this path we’ve been taking together. Even though I’m about to leave, I’m leaving to
prepare a place for you, with me, in my Father’s house. I’ll bring you there, too, he says, because,
after all, you know where we’re going and you know the way.
The room falls silent until Thomas says what
the rest of them are thinking: Um … “we don’t
know where you’re going; how can we know the way?” (14:5). And Jesus assures him, yes, Thomas, you do
know. “I am the way, and the
truth, and the life. No one comes to the
Father except through me. If you know
me, you know my Father also.” (14:6-7)
And Jesus is probably expecting some collective sighs of, “Oh, yeah, of
course, that’s right.”
But then Philip takes the risk to say what
the others are thinking: Look, he says, just
“show us the Father, and we will be satisfied” (14:8). And Jesus puts his farewell on hold again to go
back to the basics: He asks Philip, “How
can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” Where
is your trust? “Have I been with you all
this time …, and you still do not know me? …
Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? …
Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me…. [Because, in fact,] the one who believes in me”
– the one who trusts in me with everything he’s got, the one who gives herself
up to follow this path – they “will also do the works I do and, in fact, will
do greater works than these….” (14:9-12)
I imagine the disciples sitting there,
dumbfounded. Even after following him three
years – even after watching him restore sight to the blind and raise the dead –
even after all this, they’re still trying to understand what he’s
talking about.
To me, here’s the importance of that word
we translate as “believe,” the word that means staking your life on
something: You don’t have to understand truth
completely in order to trust in it. At
some point, trust takes us beyond understanding – in fact, it gives us “the
peace that surpasses all understanding,” as St. Paul wrote (Philippians 4:7). Rather than answering every question to our
satisfaction, Jesus plots our course and guides our hearts, showing us the way
even when we wonder what it has to do with the life we’re living now. When my mother would tell me to “learn
something, love somebody, and have a good time” as I left the house for a
baseball game, I thought she was crazy.
I was going off to hit a baseball and win a game. But of course, with those words, she was guiding
me wherever I was going – to the ballpark, or to school, or to my first
job, or on a date, or to my first apartment, or to my wedding. I didn’t have to understand the fullness of
what she was saying in order for it to be true – or for it to guide the way I lived
my life.
Now, hang with me a minute because I think
there’s a connection here to the part of this morning’s reading that some of us
may struggle with the most. It’s John 14:6
– Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” That verse was my greatest stumbling block as
I discerned a call to the priesthood. Growing
up, I’d heard too many folks use it to judge and exclude other people. There was so much I loved about 99 percent of
Jesus’ message, and I hoped seminary would explain how this particular verse
fit with God’s call to love everyone.
Guess what? Seminary didn’t help
much.
Now, you can find all kinds of commentary to
clarify and expand on what Jesus is saying here. I particularly like reading this verse as
poetry, where words mean what they say but also more than what they say. When Jesus says, “I am” the way, he’s echoing God
from Exodus, and the disciples are in the role of Moses before the burning bush.
Moses spoke to God directly, and asked God’s
name, and learned it was, “I AM.” So,
Jesus is saying, I am “I AM,” and of course no one comes to I AM except
through I AM. He and the Father
are one, so he is the way to God.
Cool.
But still, the verse says what it says about no one coming to the Father
but through Jesus. So … what
about good, faithful non-Christians?
Where do they end up in eternal life? It’s the question we always want to ask: Who’s
in, and who’s out?
Here’s what I believe: Jesus Christ is the
ultimate revelation of God for humanity.
Full stop. No other revelation of
God is as full, as complete, as God’s manifestation in Jesus Christ. That’s what I believe to be true.
And here’s what I trust: that Jesus,
the ultimate revelation of God, asks me to follow along the path he marks out. So, I try to do that, living in eternal life
now as a warm-up for the rest of eternal life to come. That’s what I trust, what I stake my life
on.
And, here’s what I don’t know: the answer
to nearly every question that flows from that trust. Will I get a mansion in heaven? I don’t know.
Will I get to sit at the table with all my family and eat my mother’s boeuf
bourguignon again? I don’t know. Will I experience “heaven” as soon as I die,
or do I have to wait for Jesus to come again, or has that already happened and
we just don’t see it yet? I don’t
know. Will non-Christians eventually
come to see what I see and trust in God the way I do, or does a different eternity
await them? I don’t know. Instead, I trust that God is love and
so God will act in love. And I
feel like that leaves room for God to be God and to work out the details as God
sees fit.
Sometimes, our parents know more than we
do. Sometimes they say things that are
hard to hear, or that seem inappropriate, or that don’t make any sense – but still,
they know more than we do. I didn’t know
what my mother had in mind when she sent me off to the baseball game telling me
to “learn something, love somebody, and have a good time” – but I tried to live
that way anyhow. Turns out, it wasn’t
bad advice for the rest of life, too.
By the same token, like the disciples, we won’t
understand everything Jesus is trying to tell us. And I think God’s OK with that, as long as we
keep our hand on the plow, as the old spiritual says, and hold on to the words Jesus
gives us every time we stop and listen.
It’s the divine version of my mother at the back door as I left the
house – not so much giving advice as issuing a call: a call to remember, a call
to trust, and a call to live that trust day to day. For my mother, the call was to “learn something,
love somebody, and have a good time.”
For Jesus, standing at the back door and calling to us as we head out each
day, it’s this: Love God, love neighbor,
and love one another. You may not be
able to explain it, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Just trust it, and it will lead you home.
