Acts 6:1–7
1 Peter 2:4–9
John 14:1–12
From time to time during this pandemic we are reminded of certain people who are affected by COVID-19 more adversely than others. Immigrants and migrants are among them. So also are the homeless. When the rest of us are told to “stay-at-home,” it suddenly dawns us that there are people without a home. Their abiding place is under a bridge, in a makeshift cardboard box, on the street, on or under a park bench. They simply do not belong. At one point some were gathered in an empty parking lot where the places are marked off…There for a while they could be cared for.
Today Jesus is gathered with his disciples at the Last Supper. He is about to leave them and as he does so he reflects with them on what his going will mean. As we listen to him closely we can hear and feel that in some way he has been among us only temporarily and literally without a place to lay his head. We have the feeling that though he will love us to death, literally, he is not at home here. He pitched his tent here we heard on Christmas. But a tent is not a home. It is temporary shelter for a time. Jesus was with us for a time. But now a different time is at hand. It is the time to go home. Today’s table talk is about where Jesus’ heart is and where he is going…he is going home. Jesus has been homeless here among us but the time for his homecoming is at hand.
Jesus may speak of a house. But it is not so much a physical home with rooms. When Jesus speaks of home and house, he is really speaking of the Father. For Jesus home is not some physical place, some permanent residence. Rather what Jesus is speaking about is home as a person, as a relationship. That person is the Father. Jesus is going to the Father; Jesus is going into the intimacy of his relationship with the Father. Jesus is Son and being Son only makes sense if there is Father. Jesus’ identity is complete when his relationship with the Father is clear and at its best. Physically it means being with the Father, living with him. While Jesus is here in our flesh, in our time, he is in some sense experiencing homelessness. He is on mission as he says so often; he is sent, but his sending is at an end and he must go home. It is from that perspective that he is talking to us these days.
The time of his living in a tent is coming to an end. The way home to the Father will mean the destruction of the tent. His death will mean the end of his homelessness among us. It will look like the end. And the disciples feel that the end of his flesh is upon them, a flesh that they have come to know and love because he awoke something in them. And so they are afraid, sad and feeling adrift. They felt at home with him and now they are afraid of what it might mean if the relationship ends with his death. They understand his death as the end of the relationship they have with him. It seems that this relationship was only for a time. Like most of the characters in John’s Gospel, they are locked into certain limited perspective about Jesus, about what he was doing. They see but don’t see.
Philip gives expression to their and perhaps our lack of understanding. They really don’t know who Jesus is. In simple human terms they have not looked at the son and said “Oh, you look just like your father” or, “Oh, you talk just like your father did.” When they hear Jesus, when they look at him, when they see his works, they don’t see beyond them to their real source and energy and spirit, his Father.
Today Jesus makes it very clear that when they experience him they are seeing the face of the Father. When they take in his words, when they begin to follow his patterns of behavior, when they appropriate his values and priorities, they are in effect experiencing the God and Lord whom they have worshiped in the temple and listened to in the Torah and prophets. They are seeing and hearing the God of their ancestors. Perhaps they separated Jesus and made him a stand-alone man of God. But Jesus is insistent he is not a stand-alone man from God. When you see him you see the God he calls Father.
You and I struggle along trying to find a map that shows us the way to this God. But Jesus comes as a gift from the one we are seeking. He brings not a map but himself. He says I am the way that you are looking for. Walk in my way and you too will find your real heart. Get involved in the works you have seen me doing and you will discover your true self; you will find yourself in the relationship that feeds and nourishes you. Do the work of washing each other’s feet and you will know that you are not some stand-alone, isolated individual but that you are abiding in true love, the love of the Father and the love of the Son. You will find your identity. You will be at home.
Jesus must leave and go to the home of the Father. Only then is the story of his relationship of love for the Father and the Father’s reciprocal love complete. Only when he is lifted on the cross and ascends to the Father is his mission complete. But then and only then is it possible for him to complete and fulfill our own identity also. He goes into the Father so that we too can go home to the Father. For, whether we like to hear it or not, we are perhaps more homeless than he is. But his time in his tent here was precisely to complete our identity by bringing us into the circle of his love, making us his friends. And we are his friends if we do his work of loving in the world we live in.
Jesus says that we will do greater works than he. Sounds strange, but is it? He is with the Father; we are here on this earth in this time. We who are his friends are living his life, his way now in this time. We are his face in the 21st century, in a time of pandemic and uncertainty. He is abiding in us and our believing in him is our abiding him. In this way we reveal here and now, as he did once before, that we are not alone, that we are bound by a love that is mutual, that looks outward. We are doing the great work of making him and the Father seen and heard now. That is our work of making new. He is at home; we are here. We are still on pilgrimage living the way. This is our work; it is a work only we can do.
When we do it faithfully to the end, then we too will go home to rest in the Father’s heart along with his Son. What matters now is that we recognize where works of the Father’s love are happening now. What matters is that we are part of the mystery of our God and Father loving the world in the 21st century. Only we can do that great work.
~Prior Joel Macul, OSB