John 14:1-14 Commentary

As I spend more time journeying with Jesus, I’m coming to realize that Thomas’s question, “How can we know the way?” could be read in any number of ways.

There’s the literal reading that sounds a bit like a prayer in the fog: “Lord, we don’t see the road that you’re telling us to take, how can we follow once you’re out of sight?” And there’s the symbolic reading that has the same meaning: “How will we know what to do if we aren’t with you?”

Or could it be that Thomas’s question reflects his own awareness of how much Jesus has changed things? He doesn’t know where Jesus is going because Jesus has been pointing to a different way to live and think about so many things, and Thomas cares to get it right. Maybe it’s not a question of desperation and sadness, but one of resolve and commitment. He asks Jesus to explain more because he really does want to be wherever Jesus is going to be.

Philip’s question reveals a similar desire for clarity and, we might say, simplicity: “Show us the Father”—the “again” is implied because Jesus has just said that they have seen the Father by being with him.

But Thomas and Philip and the rest have missed the point, haven’t they? In trying to get to the simplest point of reference, they have missed the fact that they have actually been on the journey all along. In this focus on the last part (being with God the Father, seeing God the Father), Thomas missed the part that he doesn’t have to know the place where Jesus is going because Jesus promises to come again and take them to himself, so that they will be together. And, Jesus responds to Philip: “You’ve already seen the Father because you’ve been with me. How can you even ask that?”

It’s interesting that what Jesus seems to have meant as an affirmation (the meaning I make from the fact that the verb “know” is in the perfect tense), becomes such a sticking point. They are looking ahead, but Jesus is telling them to look in the here and now, to him. Everything they are looking for is in him, right now, and Jesus promises that it is enough to sustain them even when he is not there among them. The living, loving, ministering, teaching Jesus right there in front of them is their road map for the way to God, the truth of God, and the life with God.

Believing this about Jesus, whether it is based on what Jesus has said or based on what Jesus has done, is the crux that becomes the turning point. Not only will they be with God, but they will be like God, doing the works of God for God through God. Jesus tells them that belief is meant to lead to doing something: seeking God’s face and will, doing and acting on the wisdom we receive from God. It’s the gift of Easter power given to all of Jesus’s disciples and it is wildly more infinite than what we can whittle it down to and make manageable. Thank God for that.

Textual Point

The tenses and moods of the verbs in this passage come to play a role in how we can interpret their meaning. For instance, the perfect tense is used for knowing Jesus and knowing the Father, but the Father and Jesus are described as being united in the present tense. Knowing grows from a starting point, of sorts, and the union of the Trinity is a present reality that does not end. Jesus describes the call to believe in him with a present participle: be believing in me. Then he uses the future tense to describe the works that they will do as they live in that belief. But the asking is subjunctive—it may or may not happen. Belief and works are tied together, but the prayerful act of asking is only a possibility. If Thomas is looking for what depends on him, it’s this act of praying.

Illustration Idea

Part of my work life is spent teaching high schoolers. Their assignments are structured with learning targets that I’m assessing. Learning Targets are skills like being able to identify, analyze, explain, critique, etc., and they take the form of “I can +verb +description.” As a first-year teacher, I was a little shell-shocked by the amount of time I spent with students one-on-one addressing their questions and clarifications about those targets: are they doing it right, what do they have to do (especially the bare minimum to get the full credit), does this assignment count for actual marks/their grade, etc.? Not to mention the amount of time spent repeating instructions in the classroom…

Needless to say, when Jesus says, “How can you say…” I feel it in my bones! The whole point of this shift in education was to help students have clarity about their learning, to assess over time how they are progressing in important skills, and to focus teachers on assessing the appropriate things. But human nature has a tendency of turning anything into a works-righteousness project… I also so deeply resonate with the possibilities of what my students can do if they stop focusing on the minimum requirements in front of them as though they were a checklist and learned from the experience and process laid out before them in the assignment I have purposefully crafted. They are learning so much more than how to show their skills, just as Jesus had shown the disciples more than their future destiny; he had been for them the way, the truth, and the life and the Father—the very things they want to have in the end.