“Following The Way”
John 14:1-14
Jesus’ disciples were anxious and scared.
Just a few sentences before our Gospel Lesson for this morning Jesus said to them: “I will be with you only a little longer.”
And the disciples cannot imagine life on earth without Jesus.
They are afraid for their future.
They have left everything to follow Christ.
They have left careers, homes—everything they owned in order to be with this guy, learn from this guy, follow this guy—and now He is telling them that He is going away.
What are they going to do?
Who will they follow?
Who will show them the Way to the abundant life they have been experiencing ever since they started hanging out with Jesus?
And so Jesus does what Jesus always does when people are afraid or anxious.
He gently spends time telling them: “Don’t worry. Everything is going to be alright.”
“You’re not going to see me with your eyes much longer, but I will be with you.
And you are going to do great things.
And I will still be leading you.
And you will still be following me.
I won’t leave you alone.
I won’t let you get lost.
Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me.”
And then He talks about His “Father’s house.”
His Father’s house…
…that’s an odd thing for Him to say.
The only other time Jesus has ever used this expression is when He was talking about the Temple in John Chapter 2.
And the point about the Temple is that the Temple was the place where heaven and earth met.
It was the place you had to go to be with God.
But Jesus isn’t referring to an earthly Temple like He was in John Chapter 2.
“In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you.
I am going there to prepare a place for you.
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.
You know the way to the place where I am going.”
Hold on.
Wait a second here.
Thomas, never one to keep quite when things aren’t making sense speaks up: “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
And to this Jesus says something very profound.
He says, “I am the way.”
What in the world did Jesus mean by that?
Suppose we are in a strange town and we stop and ask someone for directions.
The person we ask may say something like: “Take the first right and the second left.
Go past the park and the Burger King.
Then take the third right and the road you want will be the fourth one on your left.”
We’ve all been in situations like that.
And if you are anything like me, you will be lost before you get half-way there.
But suppose the person you ask says instead, “Follow me. I’ll take you there.”
This is what Jesus does for us.
If we allow Him, Jesus takes us by the hand and leads us.
He guides us everyday.
If we follow Him we will have found the key to this human experience.
And we will be in the Father’s house.
And I don’t mean just after we die—I mean right here and right now.
Jesus is the embodiment of it.
Soon after our passage for this morning Jesus says that after He is crucified, raised from the dead and Ascends into heaven—in other words—after He “goes away” Jesus will not leave those who believe in Him as orphans or alone.
What in the world?
He has just said He is going away, now He is saying that when He does go away He won’t leave the disciples alone.
Instead, He says “I will come to
you.”
“If anyone loves me…My Father will love them, and we will come to him or her and make our home with them.”
“In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you.
I am going to prepare a place for you.”
Could it be, at least while we are still living on this earth, that the many rooms in the Father’s house are you, me and everyone else who believes?
Later in 1 Corinthians 3:16 Paul proclaims: “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?”
And later he writes: “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you?”
So, could it be that those who believe in Jesus Christ are the place where heaven and earth meet?
And that means you, and you, and you and even me!!!
And collectively we are the very Body of Christ!!!
We are the many rooms in the Father’s house.
God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit make their homes in those who will believe.
The truth, the life, through which we know and find the way to God is Jesus Himself.
“If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well,” Jesus said to the disciples.
“From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”
Then, Phillip said: “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”
Jesus answered: “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.”
And in John 10:30 Jesus says: “I and the Father are one.”
God has come to us in human form.
His name is Jesus.
He came to us because God so loves the world.
“And whoever believes in him will not perish but will have eternal life.”
And they will know and embody the way, the truth and the life!!!
Because Jesus lives in those Who will believe.
In 1 Peter Chapter 2 we are told “you…like living stones are being built into a spiritual house.”
“Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God.”
How does that make you feel?
In Acts Chapter 9 we find that the earliest name for us—even before we were called Christians—was “those who belong to the Way.”
“Those who belong to the Way.”
I like that.
I love to think that I—Ken Sauer—with all my faults and foibles is “one who belongs to the Way.”
I belong to Jesus—The Way.
Do you?
And because I belong to the Way my future is secure and is already underway.
Because I belong to Jesus, I know the Truth—at least about Jesus being Lord—and have life.
And Jesus assures me that His return to the Father makes it possible for me to be included and actually participate in the relationship that Jesus and the Father share.
And trusting in Jesus, I need not let my heart be troubled.
Now that doesn’t mean that those who trust in Christ don’t get sad.
Jesus’ heart was troubled when He saw Mary weeping at Lazarus’ tomb.
As a matter of fact, we are told that “Jesus wept.”
Jesus was sad when He realized that His time had come to be arrested and crucified.
He was sad when He declared that one of His own would betray Him.
But these examples point to His disturbance in the face of the power of evil, death and the brokenness of humankind, of those He loves—that is you, me and everyone who has ever lived.
Can we get just a little bit of a grasp of how much God loves us?
If we can we are on the WAY---we are experiencing the TRUTH—and if we will accept Christ’s love for us—we find Life.
And then, we start doing some of same types of things Jesus did while He was on this earth…
…because let’s face it—He actually is still here.
He lives and dwells in the rooms of those Who believe.
And if we love Him—we follow The Way.
And the Way of Jesus—is the Way of Love.
The Way of Jesus is that He washed His disciples’ feet and told us to follow His example.
He fed the hungry, and involved His followers in the distribution of the food.
He loved the strangers.
He welcomed the sinners.
He treated the “nobodies” with dignity and with great respect.
When asked what it means to fulfill the greatest commandment to love God and neighbor He lifted up as an example, a hated man of another race and religion.
He loved the lowly.
He ate in the homes of the lonely.
His closest friends were hated people—tax collectors and the like.
He ate and hung out with prostitutes and all kinds of other people living at the “underbelly of society.”
He was God; but He was the most Humble person in the room.
He was the Creator of the Universe but looked down on no one.
He was the most powerful Person to ever walk the earth, and yet He was homeless.
He healed the sick and raised the dead.
And He is still doing these things today.
Is He doing it through you?
There is no greater privilege.
There is no other thing that is REAL Life.
No one comes to the Father but by Him.
Praise God.
Amen.
