March 8 2026
John 14
One of the more annoying aspects of our modern life is having an e-mail account. I mean, most of what comes through on my account is nothing that I am at all interested. It seems that I spend more time unsubscribing to stuff I never even asked for in the first place. Well, one of those daily e-mails that I decided to keep, is an e-mail that gives me a word of the day. Now, I thought I had a pretty large vocabulary, but every day I find I am learning words that I never knew existed. What has also happened since learning all these new words, is that I have become aware that there still more words that I feel our language is in need of. I came to this conclusion after we had been out driving one evening in the snow. Can we all acknowledge that driving home with the snow blowing right at the windshield, the road hidden somewhere under all of the icy mess with no edge lines in sight, that this is one of the most stressful experiences, bar none? Yet, this is not the situation that demands its own word. No, I want a word for the feeling that comes over you as you finally pull in the garage, and you enter your home and when you at last are sitting your own couch, safe and warm at last, and you slowly exhale as all of the tension begins to leave your body. I so want there to come across my e-mail, a word which carries the full weight of that experience. Just what do you call it when every fiber of your being realizes that the stress and danger are behind, and you fully relax because you have at last made it safely home?
Well, perhaps such an experience is just too wonderful for us to put into a single word, even if the need for one seems so apparent. I mean, if we did have such a word which could describe the warmth and joy that floods over you as you open the door to home after a perilous trip to get there, I believe that John would have used that word here at the beginning of the fourteenth chapter of his gospel. When Jesus tells his students that they were not to be troubled, the way that he eases their hearts is by speaking to them of finally making it home to our Father’s house. Jesus is here calling his friends to remember the wonderful future that lay ahead of them. They were to allow this most glorious of experiences, this arriving safely home after a perilous journey, to be central in their hearts and minds. You see, when we decide to follow Jesus in doing good we can expect that we will experience a peace beyond our comprehension, the peace of home where the tensions of life in the world disappear forever.
Well, we are considering this peace as we are going through this season of the church year called Lent. Lent is a time when we remember that it is the cross which leads us home. So in these messages, called Good Expectations, we are figuring out the connection between the cross and God’s desire for us to be good people. You see, Jesus has come from the Father to be for us the living word of judgment who decides and defines what exactly it means to live the good life. This good life is found in the very first teachings of Jesus, as recorded in the fifth chapter of Matthew.There we hear of the blessings of God. It is the middle of these blessings, verses six through eight in the fifth chapter of Matthew, which give us the clearest teaching on the goodness of God. To be good according to our good God means that we are people who hunger and thirst for righteousness, that we are known as being givers of mercy and we are people who live solely for the honor given to us by God. Now it is these three blessings which counter the three criteria used by the people of the world to make their life decisions. As found in the second chapter of First John, these three are, the desires of the flesh which constitute our appetites, the desires of our eyes which correspond to a person’s lusts and longings, and the pride a person has in their possessions. Following one’s appetites, lusts, and pride is the very source of the evil of our world. This evil is to be countered by the very goodness of heaven found living in us here on earth. This is a goodness which comes to life in us when we hear and obey the blessings of God
So during this season of Lent, we are preparing ourselves, once again, to travel with Jesus to Calvary, to look again at the cross, and say with confidence that what Jesus has done for us is indeed, good. Our assurance that the cross is indeed good is found by what occurred on that Thursday evening before the crucifixion of Jesus. On that evening Jesus spoke of loving his own all the way to the end, all the way to the cross. And just as Jesus first loved us, with this strange, cross-shaped love, we too are called to follow him.
So what Jesus is doing on that Thursday evening of Holy Week, is teaching his disciples how to love as he first loved them. As we read of this story in the thirteenth chapter of John, Jesus saturates this holy evening with the overwhelming love of heaven. Jesus, we are told, loves these who were his own all the way to the end, to the cross and beyond. This is a subtle nod to what makes this special love of God called agape, so very different from any love ever experienced here on earth. You see, agape love is a love given to us without measure, an endless outpouring of goodwill toward those who experience such love. It is this reckless love given with total abandon, this is how Jesus loved those he called his own, even Judas who would sell Jesus out for thirty pieces of silver. You see, agape love is a freely given love that has no expectations on those to whom this love is shown. It is this agape love, as witnessed on that fateful evening, which finds expression through giving ourselves in service to others.
Well, this endless well of agape love within Jesus compelled him to rise from the table, in order to serve the disciples he is eating with. Now even though John does not record the communion meal shared that evening, we should make no mistake John expects that we will know that the bread has indeed been broken and the cup has also been shared. What John is concerned about though is not so much the meal itself but rather John wants us to know the meaning behind the mystery of the elements. So as we watch Jesus wash the disciples feet, make no doubt that this action does indeed point us to the cross. John echoes the truth found in the second chapter of Philippians, where Paul tells us that Jesus set aside his glory in heaven, to be born a servant, the one who serves each one of us when he is broken upon the cross. This is what we are to remember as Jesus states that the bread is broken, that this is his very body broken. What John wants us to know is that this act of Jesus, this allowing his body to be broken, this is the act which is very much like the washing of the feet of the disciples, for this brokenness is the very means by which the pollution of the will be cleansed from their hearts.
You see, our world is polluted by all of the lives in the world who are controlled by their desires. Our world is dominated by people who are consumed by their appetites, people chasing after the lusts of their eyes and those who take great pride in their possessions. It is these desires of the flesh which become the very criteria that is used to judge others. When someone is encountered who proves to be of no help to satisfy one’s appetites, or if someone no longer gives someone any pleasure or if perhaps, one does not contribute to an increase in a person’s status before others, then it is far too easy simply to write such people off as being of no use to them. These people who end up being found to be of no use are the ones who Jesus calls, “the least of these”, in his famous parable of the sheep and the goats found in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew. The least-of-these are those who have been found to be not worthy of being loved solely because they have been found to be of no use in bringing satisfaction to the cravings of people driven by their desires.So they easily become judged as those who are less-than human. When people are held to this standard then it is easy for people to treat these less-than humans with contempt, seeing them as not worthy to be given even the basics for life.
This judgmental attitude towards others, this is the pollution, the dirt, that clings to us as we work and live in a world dominated by the desires of the flesh. So, we are right to wonder just how Jesus will cleanse such behavior from us? The answer is found in what Jesus says about the bread, that the bread represents his body, a body which is broken for all people. Jesus is broken because he has forever united himself with the broken and hurting of this world, so that their brokenness leads him to be broken on the cross. The reason for this is as we learn in Isaiah, the fifty seventh chapter, that our God resides in the highest heaven and also with the lowly and the broken. These who have been crushed by the world, these are the ones Jesus judges as being worthy of his service. You see, Jesus does to these hurting and suffering people exactly what he would want done to himself, offering them life, for this is the very definition of righteousness. In doing so, Jesus has forever judged every broken and crushed person to be equal to him. This declaring by Jesus that we, the broken, are indeed equal to him, this is the way Jesus serves us, the service which cleanses us from judging others according to their use in our pursuit of our fleshly desires. Now, every hurting person we meet must be seen by us to be Jesus, the one who first served us on the cross. As we serve Jesus who is seen in the faces of all the hurting people of this world then as Paul tells us, in the eighth chapter of Romans, this sin of the flesh has been condemned, no longer living in us.
So when we know that each of us has been called an equal to Jesus by Jesus himself when he was broken upon the cross, then when we next hear about a home that Jesus is going to go and prepare for us, it begins to make much more sense. You see, if we have been judged by Jesus to be his equal according to the flesh, then it must be also true that we are equal with Jesus according to the Spirit. The Spirit is our God who draws near to us in order that he might bring to us to the very life and love of heaven. This life that is ours through the Spirit is as Jesus tells us, marked by an overwhelming sense of peace, that same sense of when we safely arrive at home after a difficult journey. This life of peace which is experienced in the very midst of the worst this world has to offer, is solely ours because Jesus who is our equal in our brokenness, now desires that we would be equal with him in his wholeness.
So Jesus, here in the fourteenth chapter of John, is assuring us that he has judged us worthy to live with him forever in his Father’s house. We are to understand that being at home with the Father is just like being there with Jesus around the communion table. The way we become certain in our knowledge of just who our Father is, Jesus tells us, is through the doing the work he desires us to do. Jesus tells us in the tenth verse of the fourteenth chapter of John that it is the Father who abides with Jesus at all times, and it is the Father who empowers Jesus to do the works he is able to accomplish. Jesus goes on to say that we are to believe that Jesus and his Heavenly Father are in constant unity, and if we have any doubt, then Jesus tells us to consider the works that Jesus has done through the Father who abides with him. Now what is even more incredible is that Jesus here, assures us that the works that he does are the very works we too will be able to do. And if that were not enough, Jesus goes further, telling us that we will even do greater works than he did when he walked this earth.
Now, we are right to wonder, just what are these works that Jesus claims we should be able to do? Well, if you are familiar with the gospel of John, you will know that Jesus speaks of working with his Heavenly Father in the fifth chapter of his gospel account. There, beginning at the nineteenth verse, Jesus tells us us that he does nothing of his own accord but he only does what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise. And then further Jesus adds, that as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will. Are you beginning to understand the work Jesus is calling us to be doing now that we have been declared equal with him according to the Spirit? The works we are to do now that the Father lives with us through the Spirit is that we are to be life-giving people. So, when we realize that by being broken for the broken people Jesus has made himself equals with them, now we discover that Jesus, in working with his Heavenly Father, is giving these same people who once despaired of life are now given the hope of new life through the Spirit. This new life expected of us is that we will be those who go and do the very same life-giving work Jesus did while here on earth. Now all those who have been given this new life are to roll up our sleeves and get busy working with our Heavenly Father in bringing life to those who need life. So the very people that the world had so easily written off and condemned, are now the very people who are found to have this amazing privilege of joining their Heavenly Father in bringing life to the world.
Now, it seems appropriate that Jesus would be giving his disciples teachings concerning the new work that he has for them, work that can be only described as good.The disciples now have begun to hunger and thirst for righteousness because they have realized that through serving the suffering, hurting people they will be, in fact, serving Jesus, the one who had first served them by becoming broken on the cross. Yet, on that same night they also discovered that doing good also means that they had to offer mercy and life as God has always been continually merciful to them. Through this offering of mercy and life, we find that we are able to come against the temptation found in desiring what we behold with our eyes. So instead of us letting our eyes lust after worldly pleasures, Jesus is saying that we are to take pleasure in bring life o the world. We are to use our eyes to see where our Heavenly Father is working and then, we must go and work with him in bringing life to the world just as Jesus did while here on earth. When we know the good God expects from us, that we are to work with our Heavenly Father in being life-giving people, then it makes sense that we will need the Spirit to connect us to that ever-flowing stream of life flowing from our Father’s house. The Spirit is our Helper, the one who speaks to us the truth of who we are that we are. We are no longer orphans. No, we are very much, the sons of the Heavenly Father who get up and go to work with him every day, bringing life to the broken and crushed people of this world. And through the Spirit, as Paul explains in the fifth chapter of Romans, the agape love of heaven overflows in our hearts. It is this love, this perfect love shown to us by Jesus upon the cross, this is what removes all fear from our hearts because fear has to do judgment. So when we know that we are children of the Father, children with a certain home waiting for us, then we can be certain that we no longer face any judgment against us. So through his body broken, Jesus has taken away the judgment of the world, and through the shedding of his blood, Jesus has removed the judgment of God. The result of finding ourselves in the absence of judgment is that we now have an abiding peace found in our Father’s house.. Praise God always for this wonderful gift. Amen!
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