(4/8/26) John 14:1-14
Thomas! One day I want to do a whole study of Thomas - what a practical fellow! 'Okay, look Jesus, this is all great stuff, but if nobody else is going to say it I'm going to say it: we don't know where you are going, so we don't know the way.'
I'm not a think-on-my-feet guy (writing, y'know?) so I totally get the other ten guys standing around, taking a minute to process all this. Honestly - good job Thomas. I have always read this passage like Jesus is going to heaven, and I can still read it like that, but I am not sure it's quite as obvious as all that.
So the author tells us Jesus says:
- believe in God
- believe also in me
- there are dwelling places in my Father's house
- if there weren't, I wouldn't have said I was going to prepare a place
- if I am going to prepare a place then I will come again and get you
- you know the way to the place where I am going
For the moment I'm going to carve off that first chunk. We're not way off from the crucifixion, and there are all kinds of hints dropping by this part of John, so it's not a huge surprise that the disciples might be getting uneasy. And of course Jesus dying - well we know the story now, but the idea of an absent messiah - one who was going to leave them behind to do all the long work - probably wasn't top of mind, so to speak. So I get the first exhortation, from that perspective, and now I'm going to ignore it for a minute, because I think Thomas is latching on to the next part.
And what a next part, in this translation (NRSVue). Let's do this thing in logical propositions:
(A) In my Father's house there are many dwelling places.
(B) I go to prepare a place for you.
(C) I will come and get you.
(D) The place where Jesus is going.
So Jesus takes these and says:
If (A) were not true, then would I have told you (B)?
And if (B) then (C).
And you know the way to (D)
My engineer brain is screaming! I am clear on (A). Are you telling them (B)? And is (B) actually related to (A)? If (B) then (C), sure. But, seriously, is it (B) and (C) or not? And if it is (B) and (C) then why don't you just say '(A) (B) (C), pick you up at (A).' The whole thing seems unnecessarily complex.
The whole incarnation was messy, and Jesus loved not giving straight answers. But, frankly, I'm wondering what the point here is. These are Jesus' closest disciples; most of them would die horrifically, one of them was going to be executed a bunch of times, even the unnamed followers in the background probably have a much-shorter-than-normal life expectancy. If there is anyone for whom Jesus ought to prepare a place, it is these people. Why not just say it? 'Don't stress when it gets pretty bad; my Father has a bunch of places and I'm going to my Father to prepare them. Then I'm going to come get you.'
I wish I had an answer, but I don't. There's an alternate rendition in the notes which is more linear, "...for I go to prepare a place for you," and maybe that's the right one, but this more indefinite statement was the one preferred by the translators and so I am inclined to puzzle it out. Maybe some day I will come back to this with a brilliant solution but for today I am going to leave it hanging. Please share any insights over email or whatever, I'm not that hard to find.
In the meantime I take solace in the fact that Thomas was comfortable enough to ask Jesus a question in the middle of this extraordinarily dense lecture. I often think of Jesus having these big spiritual sermons, talking from the pulpit or the hilltop or the front of a big hall, places I wouldn't think to interrupt with a question; but here Jesus is talking about these really big and serious things - literally, incredibly dense verses that I memorized as a child - with his friends.
- 'Hey Jude. Can you pass the fish? Don't let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. Mm, this one's extra crispy, nice job.'
- 'Oh no, you don't want that salt, it's got in the water and tastes like sand now. In my Father's house there are many dwellings. Wouldn't I have said something if there weren't?'
- 'Good one, Bart-man. I'm going to prepare a place for you, and then I'll come get you. Anyway you know the way to the place where I am going. Red night coming on, anybody up for sailing later?'
So at this point if I'm Tom I'm thinking, and probably not even consciously - okay, Jesus, you are like 30 or 33 or something, you've got a lot of years, and going to the Father is a long way off; do you mean like we are going to the temple? That sounds like a way you might say that. Anyway; you're also going to prepare a place for us? I wonder if someone gave us a deal on that swank hotel in Jerusalem. Maybe we're going back to Bethany? Oh I hope we get to visit Martha! Wait, what do you mean we know the way? Just a second here, don't run off until we know how to find you!
And Thomas, in classic Gospel fashion, interrupts this discourse to ask. And Jesus humors him with the completely non-answer: "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."
So: are we going to Bethany, or what? Channeling Tom I'm now very confused, and frankly have no idea where to go from that answer. Thank God for Philip changing the subject:
'Hey I want to see the Father! I haven't seen him yet!'
Oh Philip. Philip was the third evangelist in John (1:45), he was calling Jesus the consummation of the "Law and also the Prophets" right from the beginning. And now Jesus jumps right on him. "You still do not know me? ... Do you not believe...?" And this last one had to really sting: "Believe me...but if you do not, then believe because of the works themselves."
Channeling my inner Phil: like, seriously Jesus? I have been with you every day, I have given up everything, I could have a good job and a nice house and three kids and a dog, but here I am trying to learn from you, the Messiah who I remind you I recognized before most of these other folks. What do I care about works? That's Nathan's thing, I believed in you right from step one. I just said I want to see the Father, to shine like Moses and to hear the whisper like Elijah and to conference like Abraham. Why are you jumping down my throat about this? Okay okay, I've seen the Father in you, sure, but you know what I meant.
And now, after all that, Jesus loops back to the beginning of the dinner [okay it probably wasn't really a dinner, but still]. These apostles and disciples were shortly to be left on their own. They might have been scared, they might have scattered and gone back to their old jobs, they might have been unsure what they were meant to do and they might have been uncertain what was in store for them. They might have chased some brilliant theologian in the hope of seeing the Father, maybe even gone to seminary; they might have even stopped believing in Jesus and decided maybe the miracles weren't all that important anyway, and made their peace with the Romans and settled into a normal life doing normal things.
But - in the end, they did not. These same disciples would spread the gospel over the entire world. They would believe in Jesus, and their hearts would not be troubled, and they would know that they had seen the Father - and they would do even greater works than Jesus had done, and in the end they would meet their demise in broadly the same way he went, and end up in the places that he prepared for them. Twelve perfectly ordinary men, plus uncounted but probably not that many women, men, and children, plus Paul after the fact, to start a movement that even still defines time for our age.
Oh Jesus! That I might have such faith, in desperate times and in awful uncertainty and in fearful indecision and in horrible depravity - that I would be fully sated by seeing you, the Father in you, and that you would come for me. That I would be courageous to follow you in life and in death, and do the work to which you have called me, and you would be glorified in my work so that the Father would be glorified in you. It all feels so far away, so impossible, so unbelievable - I am one tiny dot in a sea of many billions, with so little knowledge and so few skills. Yet: please, Lord Jesus, let it be for me and those I hold dear as this you said to these you held so dear. I can imagine no greater purpose and no greater profit.