RBWords

     The overall purpose of the Farewell Discourse(s) at the Last Supper, as I mentioned early, is to help both the disciples at the supper (the proximate audience) and future generations (the remote audience) to make sense of what is about to happen (in the story, for the proximate audience) or make sense of what happened years ago (the remote audience in need of information for preaching and teaching).  Scripture scholars far above my pay grade write big commentaries on the Farewell Discourses, but I hope to simply reflect on "themes" that appear in a kind of spiraling way.  Each of the four chapters seems to have its own identity while sharing important themes.  Since Jesus is talking to the disciples, the tense confrontational quality of previous chapters ("the Book of Signs") is replaced by poignance and assurance.

     Today's passage builds on Jesus' comments after Judas leaves the supper (13:31-38).  Jesus is about to "go away."  He is going to "prepare a place" for the disciples.  The Johannine use of "misunderstanding" once more shows up in Thomas who thinks Jesus is referring to a geographic location.  (Indeed, how many of us tend to think of heaven that way!).  The "way" is not a road but a person.  The place is not a location, but a relationship.  It is faith in Jesus that will sustain the disciples in the journey ahead.  Further on we will see how the Spirit will come to assist them in the task.  There is a challenge to some traditional understandings of eternal life here - white robes and golden harps or an everlasting country club in the sky.  The disciples had to let go of their more political notions of the "kingdom," and so do we.  Yes, Jesus is "going away" and we must not allow his physical absence to mean he is no longer "present" to us.  As long as we believe in him, he has assured us that he will be us and we in him.   More of this to come as we move forward!   AMEN