This Great Family
Our text for today comes from one of the longest lessons that Jesus ever taught during his ministry on earth – what is known as his Farewell Discourse with his disciples. Unlike his other discourses in the Gospel of John, it was not shared to help the disciples understand an event that preceded the discourse. Instead, it is designed to prepare them… and us… for things that have not yet happened. And it contains some of the most wonderful promises that Jesus ever made to his disciples… and to us. This is one of the lectionary texts for this particular Sunday… and, for me, confirmation of the wonder and mystery of a God who knows what is to come and guided the choice of this text long before the events of this week unfolded.
The very first command that Jesus gives is one that we long to hear… but have great difficulty doing: “Let not your hearts be troubled.” Each time Jesus says “Let not your hearts be troubled” in the Gospel of John, he is speaking of the power of death. In this case, he was speaking to his disciples about his own death and he knew that they were disturbed by his choice of topics. They were disturbed… or afraid… or troubled… because they knew only the finality of death. People who died went away… they were no longer present. They did not participate in life… and they did not return. Jesus was speaking of dying and they feared for him… for themselves… for all who believed in him. On the other hand, Jesus knew… as we who live on the other side of the resurrection know… that death could be conquered. Unfortunately, his disciples at this time did not know… and he tried to encourage them.
“Believe in God,” Jesus says, “Believe also in me… or, as the Greek actually translates, “believe into me.” John is the only gospel writer who puts it that way – “Believe into me.” Jesus knew that his disciples believed in God… this all-powerful… omniscient … omnipotent… and omnipresent being they worshipped each week from a distance in the temple… but he knew that they did not yet fully believe in him… God Incarnate. Yet it was this Jesus who would conquer death. It was this Jesus who would rise from the dead to live eternally with God, breaking the power of sin and death over our lives. And it was this Jesus who brought to them the concept that the powerful and distant Creator God that they worshipped wanted them to participate in him… in all that God was… and is… and all that God did… and continues to do. What a different God this was! Not a distant… commanding… demanding awful majesty, but a hard-working companion… co-worker… and friend. While this may have been a difficult adjustment for Jews in first century Palestine to make… it is far more difficult for us to make, for we do not have the example of a collectivist society, where the intertwining... the interweaving of life… and of lives… is a daily reality. Jesus wanted the disciples not only to know him, but to believe in him… and to be in him… to believe into him… such that their lives and his life would no longer be separate and distinct… but interwoven in a tapestry of faith.
Jesus builds on this image with his next statement. “In my Father’s house are many dwelling places.” Houses in first century Palestine were not about buildings, but about family and relationships. Families added rooms… added buildings… to the main house in order to provide separate… but connected… living spaces for their adult children. The hodge-podge shelter that resulted was not an architectural achievement, but a visible illustration of the power of love and family connection. Jesus is not saying that he is building a mansion on streets paved with gold for each of us to live separate and distinct lives in heaven. What he is saying is that God is opening the doors of his own home to us… welcoming us as sons and daughters… and creating for us a space within his own family home for us to share. The emphasis, again, is on the promise of a special relationship we share with God… not a physical place where we will go.
Given the collectivist character of the relationships in ancient Mediterranean societies, however, even more is implied. Collectivist persons become embedded in one another. A unity… and loyalty… is involved that is extremely deep. Since personal identity in collectivist cultures is always the result of the groups in which one is embedded, that too is involved. And there is one final point that must be made with regard to this: John's peculiar idiom – he uses the Greek verb tense that connotes ongoing or continuous action – suggests a long-standing… on-going… long-term solidarity with Jesus… a relationship that can only be compared to family ties of blood.
When Carol, John, Ken and I gathered this week, it was the first time that the four children had gathered with Mom and Dad for almost a decade. Yet, within seconds, we had picked up the threads of conversations long forgotten. We knew the comments that would elicit laughter and those that would touch flash-points of anger. Nothing was sacred and everything was on the table. Why? Because we knew that we were “family” and that, in the sea of changes that transforms life on a daily basis, we would always be “family”… in an unchanging bond of interwoven lives…always apart, but never separate. The mutual indwelling of the three persons of the Trinity with which John begins his gospel is the example of the mutual indwelling that Jesus wanted his disciples to experience with him. “If you know me, you know my Father,” he says. “I am in the Father as the Father is in me.” Or, to quote a modern saying, “we are as close as DNA.”
Jesus makes another point when he says in our text, “I am the way.” Well, of course, Jesus is the way – Jesus is God… God Incarnate… the only God that we will ever know in this life. But this “way” is not an exclusive destination… it is an inclusive path… a pathway to a relationship with God that becomes more familiar the more we travel along it… a journey we are all invited to share… just as the two disciples shared the journey to Emmaus with Jesus. This is the very heart of the Gospel of John – that, in Jesus, the Incarnate One, we have the opportunity to see…and to know… God in a way that was never possible before God’s incarnation. The Son’s unique relationship with God the Father makes this possible.
And finally, we come to the works that Jesus does and how those works reveal the nature of the relationship that he has with God. At first, Jesus tells the disciples to believe in his relationship to God simply because they know him. But, if that is not possible, then they are to believe in his relationship to God because of the works that he is able to do… works he could not do if he were not one with God. But, in sharing this, Jesus emphasizes not his own superiority, but the relationship that he desires with his disciples… that they might be so close to him that they, also, could do such works as these. If they were embedded in Christ in the way that he, Jesus, is embedded in God, they would be able to do the works that he does… not because they themselves would gain supernatural powers, but because their intimacy with the Godhead would allow the power of the Godhead to flow through them… just as Jesus’ relationship with God allows God’s power to flow through him.
Thus, Jesus’ promise that “the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do” is bound by two qualifiers. The first is this: that the one who believes in Jesus has a relationship to Jesus that is equal to Jesus’ relationship to God …a mutual indwelling that allows for intimate knowledge of God… and a sharing of all that the other has through this intimate bond. The second is that this intimate relationship… this mutual indwelling … would be revealed to others in the types of works that the disciples would desire… works that would glorify God… and not works that would give glory to the disciples themselves. Once again, the emphasis is not on what the disciples will be able to do, but on their relationship with God. As in the secular world, it is not what you know, but who you know that determines what you can do.
All of this, of course, begs the question: What is our relationship with God? A relationship of the intimacy that Jesus talks about in this discourse is not a casual relationship, but one that is at the very center of our lives. Just as intimacy in marriage is built over years of shared experiences, so intimacy in our relationship with God is built through years of seeing God in every part of our lives… knowing God in everything we do… of sharing our joys and our struggles with God through a prayer life that builds a natural dialog between intimate partners… a dialog that often does not need words to be understood... a dialog that shares both laughter and tears.
A relationship of the intimacy that Jesus talks about in this discourse is one that takes hard work… work to establish such a relationship in our lives… work to increase its intimacy… and work to sustain it so that it is there for us in times that challenge our faith. If there is one truth I would share about Dad’s life, it is that he actively sought an intimate relationship with God. Every morning began with reading the Bible and prayer. Every evening ended with reading the Bible and prayer. With those two activities as the bookends of his daily routine, is it any wonder that his relationship with God was deep and intimate? Is it any wonder that that relationship sustained him during the final two weeks of his life, when every moment brought a new challenge?
But this sermon is not about Dad… it’s about you… and me… and our relationship with God. Would we classify our relationship with Jesus Christ as an intimate relationship? Do we know that Christ indwells us as he indwells the Father? Do the choices we make in our lives each day glorify God? Does the intimacy of the relationship we have with Jesus Christ sustain our faith in times of trouble? What can we do today that will improve the intimacy of that relationship? Are we willing to do it… for the sake of having a new and deeper relationship with God? And, will we, as a community of faith walking this path together, encourage each other in this quest? I hope so. For, if we do so, I am convinced that we, as a church, will grow in our faith. As our faith becomes deeper and our intimacy with God increases, we will gain confidence in our relationship to God… confidence in his love and care for us… confidence in his power such that whatever we ask in the name of Jesus our Savior, he will provide… so that our lives and our works will glorify God. Amen.
John 14:1-14