Behind the right door

I have spent a fair bit of time lately with the words of John’s Gospel, particularly Chapter 14. It is one of the those passages that we often hear at a funeral, or when there has been a tragedy of some kind and the world has seemingly changed in significant ways, personally and corporately. But I think we spent too much time about the personal comfort we can expect to get from God when things are hard and not really look at what is being said.


This is an important moment before everything that is going to happen with Jesus actually takes place. The Disciples are getting ready to face what looks to be the end of everything. It is going to be the worst time of their lives and they are not going to get what they were hoping for in Jesus becoming Messiah. I was the worst of times. So Jesus reminds his followers in this moment of some very important things:
(1) they are reminded that they are not alone.

(2) they are not forgotten, that God is with them so they need to keep believing.

(3) they are reminded that Jesus is coming back to them and that they can trust and rely on him.


We need to hear that in this moment of the life of the Church. The Church is not alone. We have not been abandoned and worse we have not been forgotten by God. Jesus calls on his followers to calm their lives. “Don’t let your hearts be slackened and wobbly; keep them still. Continue believing and participating with God. Keep on participating and trusting me. Redouble your trust because of what is to come. The way ahead is harder, steeper, deadly. Trust me when I say to you that I am working to bring you back to the Father. So don’t allow your lives to be shaken so badly that you cannot hear God speak to you. Calm and quiet yourselves. This is preparation for the main event – the Supper of the Kingdom of God.


We struggle with what to do with our institutions, our buildings and our budgets. We work tirelessly to try and prop up that which is falling down wondering when God is going to make things like they used to be… back in the ‘good old days’. We need to learn again to trust and to rely on Christ. We need to stop looking at the loss of buildings and institution as defeats or worse death. We are not called to build any structure or institution but God’s kingdom. We are called by God to go into his world and to help in its transformation into what it is – God’s.
This means that we cannot afford a church life that is six days invisible and one day incomprehensible. We live in a day and age where the pace of change and upheaval move at an astonishing rate. We cannot, for the sake of the world around us, be anything more than ministers and stewards of change. With great hope the Church can be more than this because of Jesus, but we cannot settle for less. We cannot be satisfied with less and still believe that we can claim that we are being faithful to a God who is moving and working to make all things new. We live in a world that needs to hear of hope and of life when there is so much that speaks death, destruction and decay. We need to tell and show the world who God is in the power of the Spirit. What we do and who we are is what we do and who we are because of Christ. We are his people, his holy nation. And we serve him as his royal priesthood.

We have been with him and now it is coming our turn to go and shine for the kingdom, having been made God’s own. Let us go and show and tell; in Jesus’ name.