This passage we have heard today is taken from what we have come to call “The Farewell Discourse“, this long conversation in John’s Gospel that Jesus has with his disciples right before being arrested and put to death (chapters 14-17). Of course, everything that Jesus said during his life is very important, but one can’t help thinking that, surely, what Jesus said right before dying must have been extra important. In this, it is as it is with any of us: We certainly love to remember conversations we had with people we loved and who have passed away, but surely we replay in our minds with more attention what we shared with them in the last months, weeks or days, when everything became so much emotional and intense. For this reason, if you have time, I would encourage you to read this whole discourse at home, but still this short extract can give us a good sense of what it is all about: From now on, as he knows he will only be with them for a very short time, Jesus only focuses on reassuring his disciples, strengthening them and showing them his love. And what we hear is not only true for them of course, it’s also true for us. Actually, we often read this passage when there is a funeral because it’s so comforting to hear those words Jesus speaks to us when death is near.
Jesus talks about what is going to happen next and I find it remarkable that he does not dwell on his own suffering, or even on how his disciples should remember him, rather he talks about what he is going to do for his disciples: He is going to prepare a place for them in the Father’s House. There are so many different opinions, ideas and testimonies about how the after life looks like…when I go in a bookstore I am always amazed at the countless books published on the topic of life after death! Sometimes as Christians we don’t know what to think or to believe about it, how to picture it. Yet in Jesus’s words, life after death is very simple: It’s about being with him, with the Father and with one another and to enjoy perfect peace and perfect love.For this reason, when we love Jesus, when we believe in God, we do not need to be scared. Personally, I really like it that Jesus compares life after death to moving to a new house. Because when you move to a new place, everything is rearranged, but nothing is lost and even if it’s a place miles away from where you used to be, it’s still your home. Indeed, as we noticed, we often read this passage for funerals and one of the things we also say at funerals is that Life is changed, not ended. We don’t know how to describe it, the only thing we can infer from Jesus’s words is that everything is different and yet everything is familiar. And there is nothing complicated to accomplish to get there. Today, we often speak about spiritual life as finding one’s way, and sometimes it feels like we may spend our lives trying to find our way. But Jesus tells us that we don’t need to find our way! He himself is the way. He says that he himself takes us where we need to be, we don’t need to figure that out. And Jesus does not theorize about God, but he himself shows us who God is. We don’t need to try to figure God out, as the disciple Philip seems to think, Jesus tells us everything we need to know.
Now the only thing the disciples need to do is to trust Jesus, to believe, as John repeats over and over again in his Gospel. And this is the only thing we need to do as well. Maybe sometimes we wonder about this trust. In asking us to trust, is Jesus asking us to do something very simple, or is it something difficult? To me, when I hear that I just have to trust, I find it easy, but in everyday life, it can be a hard thing to do. My idea is that maybe trust is easy to start with but it has become increasingly difficult for us. When we are a child, we have a tendency to trust everybody and then, when we grow up, we know better and we do not trust that easily, we have learned to protect ourselves, we don’t want to be disappointed, hurt or taken advantage of. And maybe it’s a good thing, because sadly it is sometimes true with people: we cannot always trust them. But Jesus asks us to believe in him as we believe in God. Jesus does not disappoint, or hurt, or take advantage of us.On the other way around, Jesus literally says in our reading today that he would do anything for us. But again, we just have to trust, we just have to believe in him.
So how do we do that? How do we come to trust and to believe? Well, I think we would lose a lot of time waiting to “get it” or waiting for something very special to happen. I think the only thing we need to do is to walk with him, because he himself tells us that he is the way. The way, the truth and the life. So we walk with him day after day, and sometimes also night after night, in times of doubt, anguish, fear, we walk with him rain or shine and we do not let go. To be able to trust Jesus or to believe in Jesus, the only thing we need to do is to trust Jesus and to believe in Jesus. It isn’t about self persuasion though, it is about living with him, getting to know him better, letting him showing us who God is.
In those few weeks after Easter, we reflect on what the Resurrection is about. Well, I think this is really what it’s about: It’s not just about believing that two thousands years ago Jesus’s tomb was found empty and the he appeared to some of the disciples. What the Resurrection means is that Jesus is still with us today and every day. Jesus is very near us, we meet him in every moment of every day. I was reading recently a book by a Christian author who spent some time living in a monastery. And one of my big take away from the book is how she describes the fact that the monks pay attention to everyday life, to all the little things we generally do not care about or find annoying. They say that there are all an opportunity to learn how to love and to meet God and so everything can be very precious and beautiful when you think about it. Your life does not have to be extraordinary to live life in an extraordinary way. To me, this has something to do with this passage too: When Jesus says that he is the life, maybe it means that he is like the Father, the author of life, the creator of everything, but maybe it also means that he is in very little things that are close to us, the joys and the beauty but also the trivial, the boring, the people we take for granted, the pain we may meet in our body, the things we can’t help obsessing about. Maybe this coming week we could all pay more attention to what is the closest to us, without judging first if it’s pleasant or unpleasant, how it can be changed or avoided but first to think about how we can meet in them the Risen Christ.