Daily Bread

Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.’ Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.’

This passage from the John's gospel is often read at funerals. It starts with Jesus speaking the opening line, "Do not let your hearts be troubled," and Jesus goes on to explain how he must go away and prepare a place for his disciples.

I have probably preached from this passage fifty times or more, and when I read it I hear compassion and certainty in the voice of Jesus. I also love how Thomas, in typical Thomas fashion, questions Jesus on where he is going, and Jesus replies with one of the most quoted lines from the New Testament, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

For some Christians, this passage has become a proof-text for the view that we will exist in a future 'spiritual' heaven, and certainly in the past I have preached this message, but today, I am not so sure.

Combine this passage with other passages where Jesus says he must go for the Holy Spirit to come, and I wonder if Jesus is using 'place' as a metaphor for a space where humans and God would soon co-dwell with each other here on earth.

Jesus would return by the Spirit, and the only way to the Father would be if Jesus went away so that the Spirit could be sent — and when the Spirit of Jesus came, people would have life in the here and now and forever.

Jesus finished this paragraph by saying that in the same way the disciples knew Jesus, they would soon know the Father, and we must remember that Jesus, the Spirit, and the Father are all one.

This whole text is not about Jesus going to 'heaven' and then taking us to back to 'heaven' to be with him, but about heaven coming to earth — oneness with God in the present through the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit would only come through Jesus providing 'the way'.

Holy God
Thank you that you, Jesus, are the way, the truth, and the life.
Thank you that though your life, death, resurrection,
and glorious ascension, I can know God and be known by God.
May the Spirit of Christ dwell richly inside me,
that I may do the good works you have prepared for me to walk in.
Now and forever.