Scripture Reflection, April 20: Our Future Heavenly Home

Scripture Readings:
Acts 6:1-7
Psalm 33
1 Peter 2:4-9
John 14:1-12

Click here to listen to the podcast of this scripture reflection.

This Sunday’s Gospel reading, John 14: 1 – 12, offers us an image of our future heavenly home, God the Father’s great mansion, to which Jesus promises to lead us and show us the place he has prepared for us. Also in the Gospel, Jesus affirms that he and the Father share a special relationship. Jesus is in the Father and the Father is in him. Further still, Jesus proclaims that he is the way to the Father. Jesus is both the path and the one who leads us to the Father.

These remarkable revelations take place in the context of a conversation between Jesus and his disciples. While Jesus speaks of these great and theologically rich revelations, his apostles fail to grasp the magnitude of his words. Jesus offers them precious teachings concerning his mission and his relationship to the Father, while the disciples apparently remain dumbfounded. Two of them, Thomas and Phillip, attempt to understand by asking questions, but these only demonstrate the extent of their ignorance. That is, of course, how this story may appear to us who sit atop two-thousand years of accumulated theological reflection and who already know the end of the gospel story.

Jesus was known to give elusive answers, often in the form of parables. These responses have provided Christians with enough material to reflect on and interpret for two millennia, but are certainly far from the straight-forward response the original questioner may have been looking for. When we place ourselves in the position of the disciples, it becomes apparent why they had so much difficulty understanding Jesus’ words. A summary of their conversation could go something like this:

Jesus: My Father has a great mansion with many rooms prepared for you. You know how to get there.
Thomas: Excuse me Jesus; I don’t think I know how to get there.
Jesus: I am the way.

This is where the disciples would probably exchange glances hoping someone knew what that was supposed to mean. So Phillip asks in a different way.

Phillip: Jesus, could you just show us this father you’re talking about?
Jesus: I am who I am talking about. That is, he is in me, and I am in him. If that's too difficult for you to understand just look at the works I can do. I’m telling you, if you believe in me, you can do the things I do and even greater things, because I am going to my Father.

It's no wonder the disciples were confused. Every answer Jesus gives complicates things further. He's going to the Father, yet the Father is already in him. He knows the way, yet he is the way. To expect the disciples to understand these responses is really asking far too much of people who hadn't heard the end of the story yet. And details about the end are precisely what Jesus leaves out in this particular passage.

Even if the disciples didn't understand everything Jesus was saying they probably at least grasped that the Father's house is a very good thing and following Jesus would somehow get them there. But, as the disciples soon found out, following Jesus can be a dangerous proposition. John chapter 14 begins with Jesus telling his disciples, “Don’t let you hearts be troubled” this is followed by the confusing conversation at hand from which the disciples probably only understood that they were to follow him. But by chapter 18 he has been arrested and in chapter 19 Jesus is hanging from a cross. Jesus’ teaching that the disciples should follow him had rapidly escalated to a very hazardous commitment.

The question of meaning is of course tantamount. Can we draw meaning from the experience of the disciples in Sunday’s Gospel? Like the disciples, we too have a relationship with Jesus; therefore we have probably shared similar experiences. What are we to do with a Lord who speaks to us in riddles and in words that can only be fully understood at a later time? What are we to do with a Lord who asks us only to follow, but then walks down a dark and frightening path? When put this way, the bewilderment of the disciples doesn't sound too far removed from the confusion we often face in our own faith journeys.

Sometimes events in our lives only make sense at some later point in our journey. Sometimes our commitment to follow Jesus can get us in over our heads. But this is precisely the way Jesus treated his best friends, why should we expect any different? What is most important is that through all this we are never alone. We already know the way, and to whom the way will lead us. Even though Jesus can make for an elusive and seemingly erratic leader, our hearts can be put at ease with his promise that in the end a place has been prepared for us.

By Jake Kohlhaas

Jake is a Bernardin Scholar at Catholic Theological Union and is currently working as the youth minister for Edison Park Lutheran Church in Chicago