Jesus Comforts His Disciples is the section heading for that passage Al just read from John 14. Don’t let your hearts be troubled, he said to them knowing that they’d soon be mourning and grieving and confused and feeling lost without him. Trust in God, my Father and yours, and trust in me.
He’s saying the same to us this afternoon through all the Scripture passages we’ve heard. When we hear Isaiah’s words in the passage Liz read, we hear Jesus and we hear about him. Jesus was The One sent to bind up the broken-hearted, to comfort all who mourn and to provide for those who grieve (Isa 61.1-3). So when Jesus says don’t let your hearts be troubled, he’s behaving like The One Isaiah was inspired to write about. And the Psalmist has words of comfort, too:
The Lord himself watches over you!” (Ps 121.5)
They are God-given and eternal words of comfort.
So were Paul’s words in the passage from Romans that Deb read.
Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. (Ro 8.34)
That means Jesus himself was praying for Dave as he went through all he suffered as his health declined, and for Mary and Stephen and Auralyn, and for us as we go through times like this. That’s stretching it a bit you might say! How can he be praying for all of us and billions of other people besides and all at once? Because he is raised to life and glorified and at the very right hand of God the Father in the Glory of Holy Trinity which means he now transcends time and space and mere numbers—the things that keep us so tethered to and entangled with the things of earth. He can now be to Dave and Mary and all the rest of us as if you and I were the only person on earth.
It’s a mystery, but not to be dismissed because of that since
Mystery is not the absence of meaning, but the presence of more meaning than we can comprehend. (Eugene Peterson in The Unnecessary Pastor, Eerdman’s, 2000, quoting Denis Covington, Salvation on Sand Mountain, New York: Addison-Wesley, 1995, pp. 203-4).
Paul goes on…
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? (Ro 8.35)
No.
…neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Ro 8.38-39)
Not even death can separate us! Compelling words of comfort inspired by and from Jesus himself. There are more in the Gospel reading. Trust me, he says, because
In my Father’s house are many rooms. (John 14.2)
Trust me, because
…if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going to prepare a place for you. (John 14.2)
Here I can’t help thinking that Dave would probably have to be restrained from immediately helping Jesus prepare by embarking on some sort of renovation project in his room, sitting cross legged on the floor or in other people’s rooms around him. Dave was a man who, I discovered when he was clearing out his garage to move to the island, owned 16 tape measures! There was never any question that Dave could measure up!
Above all, Dave was a man who loved Jesus.
Trust me also, said Jesus, because when it is time,
I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. (John 14.3)
Can you imagine? Taken to be where Jesus is. Comforting words, indeed. Jesus goes on…
You know the way to the place where I am going. (John 14.4)
Dave did. Mary does. Thomas, that’s Doubting Thomas in the Gospel passage, didn’t at first. And in this, the comforting words of Jesus gently, but pointedly, bring us to, and remind us of, the most important decision we ever have to make in our lives. It has to do with what happens when we die. Where has Dave gone? Where do we go from here? Do I know the way to the place Jesus is talking about? Some of us do. Some of us knew once but have forgotten about it or grown careless and have set off down some other paths looking for a better way. Some of us find it hard to admit it when we’re lost and we don’t know where we’re going. Us guys, they say, tend to be particularly reluctant to ask for directions. But Thomas wasn’t afraid to ask, God bless him.
Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way? (John 14.5)
Trust me, Jesus says, when I tell you that
I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (John 14.6)
Well that’s a bit narrow, you might say. Exclusive. Yes, but so is the Father’s love for each of us as it is expressed in this one man, Jesus. Not so much narrow, as exclusively and wonderfully focussed—from which, as we heard in Romans 8, nothing can separate us. Nothing. So, really! Says Jesus.
Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, trust also in me. (John 14.1)
In closing. Here’s a home truth about Jesus. What's The Way to that home place with all the rooms Jesus has gone on ahead to prepare? "I am" he says. I am also The Truth and The Life (John 14.6). Since Jesus rose from the dead and was taken into heaven, his heart still beats here on earth—in his body, the Christian Church. The only way to one of those rooms runs through it, his truth is proclaimed and celebrated in it, his life fills it to the brim with light and love and Dave Hoose worshipped and found his way in it. I know he hopes that all of us will also trust in Jesus and do the same.
Gene+
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