Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to comm.church for more information.

We are working our way through the back half of the gospel of John this year. And last week, we started John 14. Today, we're gonna finish off that chapter. But let's look back quickly before we keep moving forward. As last week, we came across one of Jesus' most famous phrases, I am the way and the truth and the life.

No one comes to the father except through me. Now as I said last week, this is one of my favorite passages, one of my favorite lines from Jesus anywhere in the gospels, but it is also one that sometimes, unfortunately, gets weaponized in ways I don't think Jesus intended. Now you can go back and watch last week. If you missed it, all of our services and our sermons are available on our podcast and our YouTube channel archive. But last week, we had a very long conversation about definite articles and then another one about divine titles.

Now if a long conversation about the word the does not sound particularly interesting to you, that is fine. The short story is that the Greek language uses the definite article in a very different way than we do in English. In fact, Greek has more than 20 different definite articles, and they are all used all over the place. And what that means is that you can't automatically necessarily read all the weight of the English article back into the Greek. You have to suss that out from context.

And, unfortunately, what happens is that as English readers, we often put the emphasis in the wrong place in this saying. Jesus says, I am the way and the truth and the life, and we all hear the, the, the. Another way to say that would be Jesus is comparing himself to every other way and truth and life. And while there is an element of that here, he is certainly not saying that he is a way and a truth and a life among all the others available to us. To get hung up on the significance of the the is to miss the depth of what Jesus is saying.

See, all of these ideas, way and truth and life, they are divine names that come from the Hebrew scriptures. And Jesus is saying, I am way, and I am truth. I am life. All of them with capital w, t, and l out front. And so as I said last week, this makes Jesus both at the same time more expansive and inclusive all at the same time, also expansive and welcoming.

Because it's not so much no one gets to God unless they go through me as if Jesus is the jealous gatekeeper for God. Instead, it's more like Thomas, my friend. No one who has ever found their way to God has ever made it there in any other way but me. Jesus is not the way to God. Jesus is God.

And that means Jesus is the way of God walked out in front of us. Jesus is the truth of God embodied in human history. Jesus is the life of God. The same life that beats in your chest, but now incarnate in the world inviting you back home. There is no other way but Jesus, and that way is at work in 10,000 places in every single one of our lives, drawing us toward the divine right now.

Now what's fun about all that is that that line in verse six comes in response to a question from Thomas in verse five. And today, gonna get two follow-up questions to work our way through together. So let's pray, and then we'll dive back in. God who has become a way for us, might we notice you today surrounding us, guiding us, gently inviting us first to discover and then to walk in the way. Would you slowly and carefully and consistently shape and then reshape our hearts So that we might come to see you less as a means to an end and more as a path that we can trust ourselves to.

Might your way become ours even when the path seems obscured. Would your truth become ours, particularly when we lose sight of what grounds us? Would your life that animates and sustains us even now course freely through us and then out to a world that desperately needs fresh breath to fill dusty lungs. We trust you. And therefore, we trust ourselves to the self giving way of Jesus this Lenten season, knowing that in our failures, you stoop to list us, and in our best moments, you celebrate alongside us.

In this, we know that we are truly safe. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen. Just at the back, I'm getting a bit of an echo if here if we can kinda clean that up. I appreciate it.

Thanks, guys. Today, we are in the second half of John 14, and we get two follow-up questions to the one that started it all at the start of the chapter. If you recall, Jesus says, you know the way to where I'm going? And Thomas replies, actually, no. We don't know what you're talking about.

We have no idea what the way is. And Jesus says, I am the way. Now to be fair, we spent an entire week talking about the nuance of this statement, so I'm gonna give the disciples here a bit of a pass for not getting it right away. We are gonna find two more disciples today struggling to make sense of Jesus' words. And so we need to talk about knowing God and discerning love and good works and then good asks.

But we might as well jump in and read a bit. If you remember last week, Jesus ended with verse seven saying this, if you really know me, you will know my father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him. But Philip, not wanting to be outdone by Thomas, jumps in and says, Lord, show us the father and that will be enough for us. Now, look.

I really do not wanna pick on the disciples here. They are reacting in real time. I got to spend years in seminary preparing my responses to Jesus. But I don't know if you remember the moments in the show with the Simpsons when Lisa says, it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. And then the camera jumps to Homer's head and he thinks, what does that mean?

I better say something quick. And he blurts out, takes one to know one. That's kind of what it seems like is going on here. Jesus says, guys, if you've seen me, you've seen the father. And Philip responds, that's cool and all, but can you just show us the big guy?

And all jokes aside, this is where it does start to feel at least a little bit like Jesus is right on the verge of getting annoyed here. Because he responds, do you know me Philip? Even after I have been among you for such a long time, anyone who has seen me has seen the father. How can you possibly ask, show us the father? Don't you believe that I am in the father and the father is in me?

The words I say to you, I do not speak on my own authority, rather it is the father living in me who is doing this work. Now, we're gonna keep going here in a little bit. We'll make our way toward the end of the chapter, but there are a few things here already that I think are worth talking about. And the first thing that jumps out at me from this passage is something that is going to be very familiar to us at Commons. It's Jesus' affirmation that he is the lens through which we come to understand God.

Intellectually honest, spiritually passionate, Jesus at the center. We say that all the time. Those are our guiding values here at Commons. But that third value is exactly what Jesus is reminding us of here. Jesus is not just the center of our worship.

Jesus is the center of our hermeneutic. In other words, Jesus is how we make sense of the divine. And notice Jesus' words here, if you've seen me, you have seen God. That's very pointedly not if you've read your Bible, you know God. Or if you keep the law, you know God.

Or if you are really confident about your interpretations of scriptures, then you know God. It's if you have seen and watched me, then you know God. Now, it's good to read your Bible, and it's healthy to follow just laws. It's okay to be confident in your convictions, but all of that is still always like seeing through a glass darkly when it comes to who God is. It is only in Jesus that we begin to see God clearly.

Now does that mean that as Christians, we know God perfectly? Of course not. We are all of us here are still searching and grappling and wrestling with our conceptions of God. We all carry doubts with us, That we carry baggage and hurts and assumptions with us all the time. And there are many things that we will probably never fully understand about God, at least not in this life.

But everything we need to know about God, at least in order to uncover the way and then follow it through the world, all of that is present in Jesus. In fact, all of that maybe even better said given the context of John 14 is Jesus. And, if that feels familiar, that's probably because that's exactly how we started the last series just before this one. Remember, we talked about disarming the Bible and we began that series by affirming the definitional quality of God is love. God is not some balance of love and justice, or love and holiness, or love and wrath.

No. God is love and therefore, God acts in whatever way is most loving. So sometimes love requires justice. Sometimes love requires compassion. Sometimes holiness or maybe intimacy.

Sometimes judgment, but sometimes grace. God is love and so our understanding of God is filtered through that lens. That's the Christian presupposition. The next question though, which is where things get tricky is, what does love look like exactly? And I think we all recognize that what feels like love to one might not to another.

I tweeted recently that Rachel and I had celebrated our twenty second anniversary. Yay us. By the way, she's not here today. Her field hockey team is in the playoffs. She's playing right now.

Go Rachel. But, absolutely, there have been moments and months, maybe even years. Okay. Maybe not years, but there have certainly been times when Rachel and I have not seen eye to eye on love. And that is within a committed relationship that has survived, sometimes even thrived through twenty two years.

So even if we all agree God is love, all of us still struggle to consistently name love for ourselves in the world. And that is where Jesus waves the flag to say, hey, guys, over here. God may be infinite and expansive and too large to make sense of at times. There will always be some mystery to the divine. But what you need to know about God, what divine love looks like embodied in the human story, I am that way.

Follow me. In fact, if you've seen me, if you've watched me, if you have observed how I move through the world with grace and peace, then you have seen the very heart of God that sits beneath and then becomes the lens through which we make sense of this long messy journey that we call faith. This, by the way, is not unique to John 14. It's fundamental to the entire structure of the gospel of John. We did a series about a year ago called the old songs.

And in that series, we looked at some of the hymns that are embedded throughout the New Testament. One of those was the prologue of John. A section I mentioned very briefly last week. I'll do the same here again. You can check out the sermon in the archive if you want to dig deeper.

But John opens this very gospel with this line. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. There was a lot going on there. There are echoes of Genesis and creation. There are appeals to Greek philosophy.

But ultimately, John is rooting the presence of Jesus in the world in the divine creative urge. Everything that God has ever wanted to say through creation and history and scripture and spirit, all of that now reaches a climax in Jesus. The Word of God which helps us to make sense of all of the words about God that we have. That's the claim that Jesus is reiterating here. Now, that's pretty bold even for Jesus, but he's not done yet here, not even close.

So let's pick up with him where we left off in verse 11. And remember, he's still talking to Philip here. Believe me when I say that I'm in the father and that the father is in me, or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves. Very truly, tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I have done, and they will do even greater things than these because I am going to the father. K.

Notice here that Jesus brings us all the way back now to where we started this series with Bobby in chapter 13. Jesus is going away. And I love this section. I love what we talked about last week. I love where Jesus is going to take us now.

But notice this, it's okay to be sad. Jesus is going away. That's what Lent is about. And here in the book of glory, Jesus is teaching and he is guiding and he's opening the eyes of his friends to understand truth in new and more beautiful ways. All of that is wonderful, but none of it involves avoiding the hard parts of the story.

Jesus is going away. And in fact, Jesus keeps bringing them back, keeps bringing us back to those parts, not because we wanna live there forever, but because properly acknowledging the sad parts of our story is what helps us move through them and past them and eventually on to the resurrection that's waiting for us on the other side. It's okay to be honest about wherever you are today. You don't need to find a smile all the time. Sometimes things are just sad.

And, sometimes it's Jesus who reminds you of that. But, look at what he actually says to Philip here. Believe me when I say I am in the Father or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves. Anyone who believes in me will do what I've been doing and they will do it in even greater measure than me. What is he talking about here?

Is this all just about miracles? Remember, first half of the book of John is sometimes called the book of signs, and there are seven miraculous moments that set us up for the story this year. So, it's certainly one possibility and many make the argument this is about miracles. Although, that does leave us with the question of why we don't see anyone who believes doing greater miracles than Jesus. Now, some will say it's because we don't have enough faith, but honestly, that's not what Jesus says here.

He doesn't say those exceptional and special people that believe just super hard, they will get to do great things. He says whoever believes. So I'm not sure that's what's going on. And besides, there are multiple moments all throughout the gospels where Jesus downplays the significance of miracles. Actually tells us they don't do much for our faith anyway.

In Matthew 12, he says that only an evil and adulterous generation goes around looking for miracles. In Luke 11, the crowds keep looking for a miracle and Jesus does not seem impressed by that at all. In this specific gospel, John chapter four, Jesus scolds a crowd for believing unless they see a miracle. And then later in the gospel chapter 20, he says, look, it's fine to see miracles but blessed are those who don't and yet still believe. So it feels a little strange to me to assume that Jesus is now saying to a friend especially, look, if you can't trust me then just trust the miracles.

I don't think that's what he's saying and here's why. The word here is Aragon, and that's a very different word than what the writer of John uses to describe signs and wonders and miracles. For that, he uses the Greek word semion. Now, semion has a much wider semantic range. It can mean miracle, but primarily what it means is a signal of something greater.

Hence, that translation sign that John loves so much. Eragon is more straightforward. It's the regular everyday normal word that you would use for work and activity and task and occupation. It's whatever you produce at the end of the day. In fact, it is the same word that James will use when he says, what good is it my brothers and sisters if someone claims to have faith but they have no deeds, no works, no arrogance, nothing to show for what they believe at the end of the day?

Can such faith save? Suppose a neighbor is without clothes and food and you say to them, go in peace and keep warm and be well fed, but you do nothing to address their needs. What good is that? What's even the point? Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by Aragon, is dead and empty.

So when Jesus says, Philip, look, if you can't trust me, trust what you see. I don't think he's talking about miraculous moments. I think he's talking about the work, the teaching, the life change, the transformation, the freedom, the understanding, the kindness and goodness and beauty of the way of Jesus that has been walked out in front of him for years now. He says, Philip, look, if it's hard to trust what I'm saying right now, just look at everything we've been through together. The work we've done, and the things that you've learned, the ways that we have left the world just a little bit better than we found it.

Focus on that, and I trust eventually it will bring you back around. And I think that is good advice. Advice I've tried to follow whenever I find my own faith failing me because that happens at times. It was hard to believe. Right?

So when I'm struggling, I come back to the person that Christ is making me. The way that love is transforming me, and I try to lean into the generosity and the kindness and the goodness that I see in Jesus, and I try to emulate that, inevitably I find that way brings me back to the trust that I long for. Trusting the work that God is doing in you right now, that too is sacred stuff. But then, of course, there's another side to Jesus' words here. Right?

If the work is what we trust when our faith fails us, then somehow it is that same work that Jesus trusts we can not only continue but expand on throughout our lives. So, I don't think Jesus is saying, look, if you just believe hard enough, get to multiply fishes and cure diseases and raise people from the dead. Spoiler, you're not the divine son of God. And, there are some perks to that position. Now, Jesus is saying, you get to be part of continuing the work.

We get to be kind and generous and gracious and welcoming. We get to chip away at and then eventually tear down walls. We get to love our neighbor and befriend the stranger. We get to actually see everything that Jesus planted actually take root in the world. So you or I or the person beside us right now, none of us will do more than Jesus on our own, but together, as common church, as the people of God, as two thousand years of followers on the way, Jesus is saying, we get to do far more than we think we can.

One of my favorite mantras that I try to remind myself regularly of is this, we overestimate what we can accomplish in a week and we underestimate what we can accomplish in a year. And I think about that a lot, particularly in the context of church. We, our team here, spend a lot of time getting ready for Sunday every week. And, I spend a lot of my time reading and writing and preparing to make sure that when I stand up here I have something thoughtful and prayerful to tell you about. But sometimes, that can start to make me think that the work of church happens on a Sunday or in my part of Sunday.

And the simple truth is, all of the important parts of our life happen over very long periods of time. Spoiler, marriages don't happen on dates. And church doesn't happen in sermons and Christianity will not come alive for you in miraculous moments. Everything that is good is the long slow work of learning how to love well. And it takes time.

Someone actually sent me a quote of myself this week. I don't remember it, but I'll trust them I wrote it. We need revolutionaries and we need sweeping change and we need an imagination for a world completely reinvented by grace. But that does not mean that all of us are called to lead movements. Some of us are being asked to help our slice of the world be better right now and all of that is sacred and holy work before God.

See, that's the work. And whoever believes in Jesus will do it and together, we will get to see it come to life in an even greater way than he did. That's the story Jesus started. It's the mustard seed that he planted, Which becomes really interesting when you hear Jesus follow this up in verse 13 with this. I will do whatever you ask in my name so that the father may be glorified in the son.

You may ask me for anything in my name and I will do it. Now, again, this is one of those sayings that disconnected from what's come before it can go in all kinds of wacky directions. I mean, do we really believe that we get to just ask for whatever we want and we'll get it? Blank check Jesus, vending machine in the sky god. Short answer, no.

Long answer, of course not. Because this is part of a discourse and has to be read in concert with the conversation. Right? So think about this. Philip asks, hey, Jesus.

Can you just show me God? Jesus responds, actually, Philip, you have seen God in me. And if you struggle to get your head around that, just think about everything we've seen together. Imagine that work unfolding and expanding forever and you getting to be part of it. Look, if that sounds too grandiose, and Philip maybe even that sounds more scary than what I just said, then hear me on this, whatever you need.

I will be there for you and we will do this together. Ask anything really only makes sense in the context of this conversation. Is Jesus saying to Philip, look, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do the work, I'm gonna be there with you, ask me and I'll help. It's why when you go to the mall and you can't find a parking spot and you pray for one, it doesn't help. And the fact that malls are busy places and there's a good chance that a parking spot might open up at that moment, that's not a sign of God's approval.

That's a reminder of the fact that we have a tendency to center ourselves in our perception of the world. And that is ironically precisely what Jesus is at work here inviting us to learn how to pray in new ways to get out of. Look at how this section ends. And Judas, not Iscariot said, but Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world? Jesus replied, anyone who loves me will obey my teaching and the Father will love them and we will come to them and we will make our home with them.

In other words, the reason that Jesus doesn't need to reveal himself to the world is because it's your faith Judas. And your faith Philip, and your faith Thomas, and your faith Jeremy that will do that work for us. Everything you believe is not just for you, it is for the world around you. And all of the work that Jesus is doing in us and through us right now, it is meant to bring the same divine love that is embodied in the person of the Christ to more and more and more of God's good world. Because that's the work that Jesus started, it's the work that you and I get to be a part of, and that is your homework this week.

So, let's pray. God who invites us on this journey toward Easter, but who meets us in the middle right now. Might we remember who we are, where we are, what we are experiencing right now with you. And if we are sad, help us feel it so that we can understand and learn from it, so that we can celebrate on the other side properly. If we are joyful right now, overcome by your goodness, help us to allow that to flow through us to those near us.

If we are convicted of the work that needs to be done, the ways that we can make our small slice of the world a little bit better today, then would your spirit enliven us to begin the work that is in front of us. Not the work that's been tasked to anyone else, but to the small ways that we, like a mustard seed, will plant something good with our lives. And might we trust that that work that you began multiplied, passed out and shared between all of us who follow the way might actually transform the world into what you imagine it could become. God, may our work be part of your work. May your work heal the world.

In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen.