In my Father's house

A word for the week

What happens when the person who was holding everything together is about to leave? That is the ache in this passage, and it is worth feeling, because Jesus speaks these words on the last night of his life, to friends who are about to watch him die and do not yet understand why. Their hearts are troubled, and he knows it, and so the first thing he says is not a command but a comfort: do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. And then, instead of an explanation, he hands them a picture of where all of this is going, and it turns out to be a house.

In my Father's house are many rooms, he says; if it were not so, would I have told you? I am going to prepare a place for you. Sit with the picture before you reach for the doctrine. It is a house. It has rooms, more of them than are needed, and one is being got ready for you by somebody who already knows you. That is how Jesus describes what is on the far side of all this: not a verdict, not a blank. A room in his Father's house. He tells them plainly, in the same breath, that he will come again and take them to himself, and we hold that as plainly as he said it. But notice where the comfort actually sits. It sits in the house, and the welcome, and the fact that he went ahead to see to it himself.

Then Thomas, bless him, asks the honest question the others were probably too embarrassed to ask: Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way? And Jesus gives one of the best-known answers he ever gave: I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. Notice he does not hand Thomas a map or a set of directions. He says, in effect, the way is not a what, it is a who; it is me. You come to God by coming to Jesus, by walking with him, following his way, trusting his person. He is himself the road home.

So the passage does two things at once, and they belong together. It tells you where you are going: a house, with a room in it, made ready. And it tells you how to get there, which is not by working out the route yourself but by staying near the one who is the road. Do not let your heart be troubled, he says to people about to lose him, and he says it to you, in every season when what lies ahead looks dark. There is a place prepared. The way to it is a person. Walk with him, and set your own table while you do.