John 14. 1-21 Getting to know God

Trinity Sunday

As Jesus headed towards  the Cross, talked about going away, his followers hearts were troubled... 

And in the context of that troubling change, Jesus called god “Father” 12 times, and another four times “my Father” in this reading.  In fact John refers to god as “the Father” 118 times in his Gospel – far more often that any of the other gospels.  He is giving us a hint about what God is like.    

The father
This, a "good good Father", is the nature of God. 

1. As Father, God is the source of life, the creator and ruler of all things.  We often say “well done” to a mum who has just given birth; but in other societies it is the Father who gets the credit! And it is the father who rules over his household and his children. 
2. As Father, God is to be respected.   In Malachi 1. 6 God asks “If I am a father, where is the honour due to me?”   Father, then emphasises the dignity and majesty of god and his right to our worship and obedience.  Jesus lives in submission to his father (verse 10).
3. As Father, God provides for us and looks after us.   Jesus teaches us when we pray, to start by calling god “our Father”  because you trust him to act like a good father (Luke 11.  2-12) .  The father gives what we ask in Jesus name (Jn 15. 16; 16. 23)  
4. As Father, God is a nurturer, who wants us to grow and become strong.  When Guillemot chicks are a few weeks old they have to jump from the ledge where the have hatched, high on the cliff, into the sea. Their wings are not properly formed.

Image:  DickDaniels. Creative Commons SA3

On “Scotland's wild heart” this week, one wee bird couldn't do the jump, and its father flew up, and coaxed it, until it made a wee jump, and landed down a ledge, where other birds began to attack it, until Dad fought them off. That process was repeated until the chick got to the water.  Fathers do that.  The protect their children; they encourage their children to take new steps, to grow up.  God protects us.  God calls us to take risky, sometimes frightening steps.  Sometimes we need to get out of our comfort zone, off the we ledge where we have been safely fed the odd fish by Mum or Dad, and jump in the water where we learn to fish for ourselves.  And we need to jump to get there, even though we cant' fly.  Our nurturing Heavenly Father coaxes us, encourages us, to get there.  I need that from my heavenly father.  

We need to wrestle with this and come to a place of understanding and being reconciled to the father heart of god.    He does have the end of time in his hands (Jn 14. 1);  he does have the authority to command;  but he is reliable, generous, loving and good.  God wants us to be able to come to him in submission; in obedience and respect but in intimacy and absolute confidence and faith. Jim Graham  used to say about this chapter, that kids going to the seaside don't ask if Dad has packed their clothes, remembered his wallet, got their passports.  He is Dad; they trust him.  The only thing they want to ask is “Did you bring the bucket and spade?”

For some of us, the way we understand “Father” is marred by the parenting we have received, from abusive fathers, harsh fathers, unreliable fathers, or absentee fathers.  We need to cuddle up lose to our heavenly father and let him love us.   


The Son
Jesus shows us sonship. He relates to his father. Jesus' sonship was not like ours.  He relates to the Father in a unique way as “his father”.    Jesus is not the Father. Jesus calls both the Temple and Heaven “My father’s house” (v 14, cf Jn 2. 16); and because both of them are “His Father’s House” Jesus has the right to clear people out of the one and prepare places in the other.   He is the only-begotten of the father.  (John 1. 14)  And that claim, to call God not just the Father but “my father”, was for the Jewish leaders, a claim to equality with God, that got Jesus into trouble (John 5. 8) 

So Jesus also shows us the father.  That is what he says: “He who has seen me has seen the father; I in him and him in me....  (v. 9).  There is a close, mysterious unity between Jesus and the Father.   Jesus as the unique son, shares the father’s God-nature.   

HE is the way, the truth and the life....  Jesus is looking towards the cross.  Eh knows his road is going to take him to crucifixion and death.  And eh knows that that road will lead to eternal life in God's  true presence.  So as he looks to the cross, Jesus promises hope for a future with God: “in my Father's house are many rooms, and I am preparing a place there for you...”

The disciples aren't too excited about that.  They don’t want to know about Jesus going away... “We  don't know where you are going so how can we know the way to get there....”   But Jesus replies, that He is the way, the truth and the life.  He travels the road to the cross, dying and rising again; and walking with him we experience dying and rising again: new birth; and that new birth is the way to get into God's presence in a living relationship.

Some of us want to have the truth first to know what God is like, then find the way.  But Jesus is the way first, then the truth and the life.  Yo will never really know God, until you journey along the Way; until you come to him through Jesus!  When we have that new birth, we know what God is like, and we are fully alive.   So Jesus opens the way into God's presence, reveals what God is like; and he and gives us new life.  And you want to get to the Father, to know that you have a place ready for you – get to know Jesus.  You want to be really alive with the life of God, get to know Jesus.  He is the Way the Truth and the life.  

And Jesus, God the son has the authority (verses 12-14) to equip us to take part in his works, to empower us to do the works he has been doing.  The “greater works” refers to the scale  of the works: through us, Jesus intends to go global!  .

And he has the authority  to answer our prayers; to give us whatever we ask for in his name. That means when we pray as his representatives.  Prayer is an awesome privilege and one that we need to take seriously.  When we pray we are being like Jesus: he prays for us to receive the Spirit. 

The Holy Spirit.   
Jesus will ask the Father to give us another comforter or advocate, the same as Jesus.  Greek has two words for other: "Allos" means "another of the same" and "heteros" means another - different.  The word here is "Allos": another of the same.  

An advocate is literally “one called alongside” and the word was used in the Greek world, of the one who stood beside you to speak on your behalf.  Jesus does that for us in heaven; and the Holy Spirit does it from within our lives. He applies in our lives the work of Jesus, to have us declared “not guilty”; he assures us that we are in that sonship place with our heavenly Father (Romans 8. 15f)  The Greek word for adoption to sonship is a term referring to the full legal standing of an adopted male heir in Roman culture.

He empowers us – to do the things Jesus did and greater things.  The Spirit comes because Jesus has gone to the father. He enables us to do the things Jesus did, and to do them with  global scope. 

He enables us to pray, in Jesus' name.    Paul says that the spirit helps us when we don't know how to pray as we ought, groaning inside us with groans too deep for words.(cf Romans 8. 26f)

He teaches us.   Jesus says the Spirit will not speak on his own authority but will constantly be pointing to Jesus (Jn 15. 26; Jn 16. 13-15)

The whole business of going away, will leave the disciples bereft: like orphans   The word refers to a child without a father – but also to a student without a master, a disciple without a teacher.  But in his going away, Jesus is commencing a “round trip" (like the "Flying Scotsman" did last Sunday evening on the "Fife circle"): he is coming to them, in the resurrection; in the coming of the Holy Spirit; and in the clouds at the end of time.  

Image: G Lilly.

And in promising to ask the Father, to send the Spirit, Jesus shows us the relationship between himself, his father, and the Spirit.  Three persons who love each other, dancing together. Three persons, one God.  So if your heart is troubled, the Father loves you; the Son opens the way to the Father, and the Spirit comes to make you God's Son. 

© Gilmour Lilly May 2016