John 14:1-12 (NRSV Updated Edition)
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”
Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, but if you do not, then believe because of the works themselves. Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.
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"Christians are saying something essential when they assert that God has been revealed in the figure of Jesus. God is known, no longer unknown, no longer hidden, no longer mysterious. God is fully present in Jesus, not partially present, but fully, completely present as Colossians 2:9 asserts, “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form.” In the fourth century Athanasius, the great proponent of Nicene orthodoxy put it this way: the only difference between the Father and the Son are the terms ‘Father’ and ‘Son.’
"A large swath of American Christianity derives its understanding of the character of God by taking all references in the Bible to God and seeking then to delineate certain major characteristics of God. [...M]any popular Christian confessions have a doctrine of God that is like Samsonite luggage: unzip your doctrine of God, put in all of the adjectives and nouns you want, zip it back up and then you have a doctrine of God. This is opposite of the way the early church came to frame its doctrine of God. The early Christians urged people to unzip their theologies, empty out their suitcase and replace it with one article: the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus was (and is) the name by whom God is known."
- Michael Hardin, The Jesus Driven Life, pg. 94
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"To me, the dynamic core of this passage leaps out here in verse 9, not back in verse 6: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” Here the irony becomes nearly unbearable (to me at least), as we contrast this statement with the conventional interpretation of verse 6. Jesus says in verse 9 that the invisible God has been made visible in his life. “If you want to know what God is like,” Jesus says, “look at me, my life, my way, my deeds, my character.” And what has that character been? One of exclusion, rejection, constriction, elitism, favoritism, and condemnation? Of course not! Jesus’s way has been compassion, healing, acceptance, forgiveness, inclusion, and love from beginning to end — whether with a visiting-by-night Pharisee, a Samaritan woman, a paralyzed man, a woman caught in adultery, or a man born blind.
"But our conventional interpretation of verse 6 seems to say, “Forget all that. Forget everything you’ve seen in me, the way I’ve lived and treated people, the way I’ve accepted prostitutes and tax collectors, the way I’ve welcomed outsiders and rejects. Forget all that. Believe, instead, that God will reject everyone except people who share your doctrinal viewpoints about me, because I won’t let anyone get to the Father unless they get by me first by joining my new religion.” It makes me want to cry, or groan, or scream.
“If you have seen me, you have seen the Father,” Jesus says, but our conventional interpretation of John 14:6 turns this all upside down: “Reinterpret me in light of your old tribal, chauvinistic, exclusive, elitist views of God and religion. In place of circumcision and dietary laws to exclude the outsiders, now substitute mental markers or belief markers about me.” Once this alternative understanding hits you, once you see it, it’s truly heart-breaking that John 14:6 can be used the way it so commonly is."
- Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity, pp. 223-24
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"And Phillip ... says to him, “Lord show us the Father and we'll be satisfied.” So the more mystical Greek cultured disciple, ... and Jesus again brings him straight down to earth in a very straightforward way, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father?'” In other words, Philip is talking as though the Father is someone else, someone outside, that there is a 'big God' out there who is somehow independent from Jesus. And Jesus is saying, “No. No longer any 'big God' out there. The only access to the Father is through me.
"In other words, it's as you learn to give yourselves into the midst of death, giving yourselves away for others, doing what [Jesus does]. As you are able to stand up for the truth in the midst of all the turbulences of life and not be run by it and not be frightened by it. As you're able to become aware that you are receiving life already in the midst of all this. In that degree you've known the Father already, it is [Jesus]. The only access you have to the Father is in [Jesus]. There is no other 'extra' out there, if there were we would be what is called a 'bi-theistic' religion, a 'duo-theistic' religion, instead of a monotheistic one, but we aren't.
"The wholeness of the Father is revealed in Jesus, there's no extra. And Jesus is pointing this out, “Don't get distracted, it's all at this level, it's by allowing yourselves to be turned into a new brotherhood, sibling-hood, of equals that you are going to discover what it is to share the Father. In other words, it's by becoming me that you're going to discover the Father.
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"“Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.” And I think this is one of the most wonderful things, it shows that Jesus is doing exactly what [he's] saying, “Yes I'm going to an occupy that space of death to detoxify it, to remove it's shames so as to make possible for you to be no longer run by fear of it. And because I'm going to do that, it will become possible for you to do greater and more extraordinary and more wonderful things than I. I have opened up the space and you'll be able to occupy it, and because you occupy it you'll be able to run with it and make new things open up, new ways of being, that will be far greater than what I have actually done here.”
"In other words, Jesus knows perfectly well this is not really about him, this is about him losing himself so as to become us, and in doing so opening up the possibility for us to become something so much more than we could imagine. So I ask you to share this joy, the joy of the discovery of the risen Lord in this Easter season, coming back to us and just reminding us what he has been opening up for us, and how much freedom we have to move forward in new and interesting ways."
- James Alison, from video "Homily for Fifth Sunday of Easter Year A" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLES8KoZhI8)
[Source of quote from Brian McLaren's "A New Kind of Christianity", and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/easter5a/]
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