John 14:23-29 (NRSV Updated Edition)
Jesus answered him, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words, and the word that you hear is not mine but is from the Father who sent me.
“I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I am coming to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur you may believe.
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"Our passage doesn't give us a key element that makes it comprehensible, I'm afraid, which is that the immediately before our passage the verse before our passage has one of Jesus's disciples, Judas, but not Judas Iscariot, saying to him: “Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world?” And it's that question that Jesus is answering when he says: “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” That's rather odd because the question is, 'how is that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world.' And the Greek is *to* us, but Jesus's answer is not, “I will reveal myself *to* you,” but “I will reveal myself *in* you.” Effectively, you will have become me, you'll know it and you will be living my life, it will be within you.
"“Those who love me will keep my word and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” This can be read in a moralistic way as if you're saying: if you love me then you will do this, and then my Father will come, but I really don't think that's the meaning. [...] I think that it's in [a] demonstrative sense that Jesus is saying, “This is what's going to happen: in the process of loving me, you will find yourself keeping my word, that's what loving me looks like - keeping my word, and at the same time you'll find that my Father will love you, and we will come to you and make our home with you.” In other words, Jesus will be revealing himself in us as we go through the process of hearing his word, allowing ourselves to be inhabited, indwelt by the relationship between him and the Father. He's, of course, preparing us for the giving of the Holy Spirit. And that I think is a very important point: he's talking about a process of indwelling.
"One of the things that has been going on in John's Gospel as in all the others is our being taken out of top-down God, being-outside God, and into sideways-and-within God. And here this is explaining: yup, you will become a dwelling, the Father and I will dwell in you. It's as your relationship is changed with others around you, you will be loving me, you will be becoming like me in terms of self-giving towards others, and your relationship with others has changed. And that's the sign that my Father and I are dwelling within you. Instead of there being a 'they' who is outside you, who is a wicked and frightening they, who's trying to control you, and an I who is a cowering individualist I who is frightened and constantly in a tug of war; on the contrary: the Father who is pure generosity and love will be turning your I, who is Jesus, into a receiver of grace and one capable of giving themselves away. That's what this is going to look like, and this is a process. And in that Jesus will be revealing himself in us.
"So he's answering Judas not-the-Iscariot's question in a really quite particular way, which is hugely important for any of us to understand. This is the shape of what it's going to look like to know Jesus, to be known by Jesus, to find ourselves becoming Christ."
- James Alison, from "Homily for Sixth Sunday in Easter 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSbKzMnQ7Rg)
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"[I]t is not Jesus and the Father all by themselves who are bringing about the possibility of the fruition of creation, as were by some sort of extrinsic divine fiat. What Jesus is creatively bringing into being is the human possibility of humans themselves becoming sharers in the bringing to fruition of creation. Thus, when Jesus says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, ho who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father” (John 14:12), he is indicating that his going to the Father (ie. his self-giving up to death) is creative of the possibility of those believing in him (and thus believing through him in the nondefinitive nature of death, and in the deathless nature of God) themselves becoming creative participants in creation.
[...]
"By the disciples' loving imitation of Jesus' self-giving, they will creatively make present Jesus' sonship, and thus the diving paternity, in the world which does not know it. Here John engages in an extraordinary repetition of the word 'monē', dwelling [or home], which had appeared before in verse 2, in a way which is completely in line with the “de-sacralization” of this passage and its interpretation as opening up human creation of filiation, and thus of paternity, in the world. Where in 14:2 Jesus had announced that in his Father's house there are many 'monai', mansions, here we are told that it is by a person's loving imitation of Jesus' self-giving that the Father will turn this person into a 'monē', where it is the Father and Jesus who dwell in the person who is creating divine paternity and filiation, and not alone the man who moves to a diving dwelling. So the Father's house now appears to consist in the creation of many dwellings among human beings.
"This brings out the sense in which the Parakletos [Advocate] who will come will be sent in Jesus’ name (Jn 14:7). That is, he will bring into creative presence the person of Jesus through the loving imitation of his disciples. It is not that the Holy Spirit is simply a substitute presence, acting instead of Jesus, but rather it is by Jesus going to his death (and, by giving up his Spirit bringing to completion his creative work - “It is accomplished,” tetelestai - 19:30) that all Jesus’ creative activity will be made alive in the creative activity of his disciples.
"The memory of Jesus here [(he will “remind you of all that I have said to you”)] is thus not in the first place the cure for the absence of the teacher, but the bringing to mind, and thus to the possibility of creative practice, in dependence on Jesus, of Jesus’ creative activity. This is the sense of the peace which Jesus leaves with his disciples: not the peace which is the result of the suppression of conflict, or the resolution of conflict, such as is practiced by the mechanism of expulsion of the world, but the creative peace that brings into being the primordial peace of the Creator from the beginning."
- James Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong, pp. 188-190
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"In a telling inversion of the resurrection-exaltation sequence we find in the synoptic gospels, John presents Easter as the self-revelation of the *already* exalted Christ to his disciples. Jesus has already returned to the Father in glory upon his death. Now he returns in a risen body to his disciples in order to make possible for them participation in divine life. [...] There are thus two distinct, but related, moments in the paschal event according to John. The first is Jesus' glorification on the cross and his being “lifted up” to the Father. The second is the exalted Jesus' return to his disciples and the formation of a community that embodies the risen Christ in the world.
"If this interpretation is correct, [...] the resurrection narratives should not be thought of as tenuously related to a self-contained movement of descent and ascent that completes its cycle at the moment of Jesus' death. If Jesus' death does in fact coincide with his “going to the Father” (14:28; 16:10, 16), the resurrection remains absolutely central in John because it is that which allows *us* to participate in divine life.
"The resurrection of Jesus is his return to us as the possibility of our union with God, for our participation in the very life of God here and now. The Easter event opens up for us eternal life, a reality that is not just in our future but one that qualitatively transforms the life we are presently living."
- Brian Robinette, Grammars of Resurrection, pg. 327
[For further discussion and reflection on this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/easter6c/]
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