John 14:1-14 <\/strong>Scripture taken from the New King James Version\u00ae. Copyright \u00a9 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cLet not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. 2 In My Father\u2019s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. 4 And where I go you know, and the way you know.\u201d 5 Thomas said to Him, \u201cLord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?\u201d 6 Jesus said to him, \u201cI am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. 7 \u201cIf you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him.\u201d 8 Philip said to Him, \u201cLord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us.\u201d 9 Jesus said to him, \u201cHave I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, \u2018Show us the Father\u2019? 10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works. 11 Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the sake of the works themselves. 12 \u201cMost assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father. 13 And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you ask anything in My name, I will do it. The Gospel of the Lord.<\/p>\n HOLY WORSHIP: THE TRUTH<\/strong><\/p>\n Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.<\/p>\n St. John tells us up front in chapter 1 whom Jesus is: The Word made flesh through whom all things were made. From eternity, from before the foundation of the world, the Word was with God, and He was God. John\u2019s opening eighteen verses, commonly known as his prologue (the word before), turn upside down all notions that our limited mortal perceptions matter most. We are not umpires calling balls and strikes when it comes to Jesus, to John\u2019s Gospel, or to what we consider to be rational and possible. God will be God, and we will not. Creatures, including the father of lies, the devil, will never be God.<\/p>\n Within John\u2019s gospel, this text is set at supper at the beginning (after sundown) of Good Friday, the Day of Preparation, when the Passover lambs will be slain. John has already told us Jesus is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world (1:29). Here, at supper, after the Lord has washed feet as the example of His command to love by serving limitlessly, even unto death, as He will enact later the same day, Jesus teaches what is and what will be<\/em>. When Jesus declares that He is the Truth (al\u0113theia), His hearers are limited by their own experience, reason, and bias. Would that more of us Christians (especially those with doctorates in biblical studies) would own their own limited experience and reason, as well as their biases. Jesus is God incarnate, and we are not.<\/p>\n Later that same day, Jesus will have a conversation with Pontius Pilate, Rome\u2019s man in the Holy Land, about whom He is and where He is from. When Jesus speaks to Pilate of truth, the procurator (governor) famously asks, \u201cWhat is truth?\u201d Were it not for Pilate\u2019s limited experience, reason, and bias, he might ask the right question, \u201cWhom is Truth?\u201d But then, Pilate would be on his way to eternal life in Christ Jesus, but, alas, no. Like the father of lies himself, Pilate cannot comprehend whom Jesus is. Unlike the clueless eleven disciples sitting at supper with Jesus, Pilate never heard Jesus teach in the Sermon on the Mount. \u201cEnter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it\u201d (Matthew 7:13-14, NKJV).<\/p>\n Pilate, like any 21st<\/sup> century Bible doubter, is certain he is in control of the conversation with Jesus. It\u2019s unfathomable to many that Jesus is God incarnate, and He is in control even of the hour and the day of His death on the cross for the sin of the world.<\/p>\n An alternate translation for the Greek word \u201cal\u0113theia\u201d really is (in 1960s terminology) mind blowing. Instead of \u201cTruth,\u201d one can hear Jesus say, \u201cI am the Way, Reality<\/em><\/strong>, and the Life (z\u014d\u0113 rather than bios, real life and not just mortal life).\u201d Because Jesus is the Word through Whom all things are made, He defines reality<\/em>. He is<\/em> the Truth. No wonder the darkness cannot comprehend or overcome Him (1:5), for the lie, the ersatz, the phony, God\u2019s ape, can never be God and can only impose a fake unreality upon creation within one\u2019s own experience, limited reason, and biases.<\/p>\n Every mortal has a birth date and a death date. When God in human flesh was conceived in the Virgin\u2019s womb, He took humanity into Himself in order to destroy the power of sin, death, and the devil. When He cried from the cross with His last breath, \u201cIt is finished\u201d (19:30), His saving work was done. Rising bodily from the dead as the firstborn from the dead, Jesus opened the way to Paradise for all who are born again by water and the Holy Spirit (3:5) and trust Him with their dying and living (3:16)! Jesus removes the deadly limits of their experience, reason, and biases. He shares Reality with us, turning our whole lives upside down! He really is the only Way, Reality, and the Life that always is and will be.<\/p>\n This is a wonderful text for reorienting the small mindedness of our unbelief. Reading and hearing John chapters 14-17 during the fifty days of Easter, we now can see what the eleven cannot see (Judas who has gone out into utter darkness). The brevity of mortal life so dominates (lords over) our experience, reason, and biases, that the Holy Spirit must bring us from death to life through our Baptism into our Lord Jesus\u2019 saving death. The Holy Spirit must breathe the Risen Lord\u2019s eternal life into our mortal (dead clay) nostrils and open our eyes to what we could never comprehend until we see that Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! Easter faith declares that death has no more dominion over us. Easter faith declares sin no longer has us paralyzed and unable to lay aside the weight of our sin-sick existence. Easter faith declares that we do not have to forever be seduced by the liar\u2019s question, \u201cHas God indeed said?\u201d (Genesis 3:1)). We can, with the help of God, say, \u201cGo to hell, Satan!\u201d<\/p>\n The small mindedness of unbelief, which is nothing other than living by lies, cannot grasp the Truth, Reality Himself. The small mindedness of unbelief cannot see that God is One and yet three (Father, Son, Holy Spirit). The small mindedness of unbelief looks to this text as a tool for getting what the death-bound, sin-bound, old person wants, namely, my will not God\u2019s!<\/p>\n Holy worship, the sixth of Martin Luther\u2019s seven marks of the Church, is not<\/em> about us and what we like in the way of music, messaging, and mirroring the wider culture. In Holy Worship, the Holy Spirit summons us out of our small-minded, unimaginative, shuffling bovine worlds and into God\u2019s time, where the Law shows us our sin and the Gospel shows us our Savior. Our sinful selves are drowned as we confess our sins, and the new children of God are raised with Christ to life that goes on forever. This new life in which, in the Son, we seek our Father\u2019s good and gracious will… namely, that none be lost, that all be found, that the unbaptized be baptized, and the hungry filled with the true Body and the most precious Blood of the Father\u2019s Son, the Lamb of God, who takes away our sin. So, that we live eternally sharing the life and love of the Triune God, serving our neighbors near and far, and indeed, become what our Father envisioned us to be from before the foundation of the world.<\/p>\n In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.<\/p>\n \u00a9Samuel David Zumwalt<\/p>\n
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