John 14:1-14 is a memorable passage
in the Gospels. How many of you would say this verse is one of your favorites,
“I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except
through me?” How many focus on the last verse, “Ask me for anything. I’ll do
it?”
Other writers say these verses are about a lot of
things. They are about Divine truth – hence the sentence I just read, “I am the
way, truth, the life.” It is about the spiritual world and the character of our
Founder, Jesus Christ, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places…I will
come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be
also.” Finally, it is about the name and
character of God. “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father…Do you not believe
that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?”
After reading the passage several times, I began
to wonder exactly what does this preposterous promise, “Ask me for anything.
I’ll do it” mean? The key clue to the meaning of the whole passage is this
peculiar promise, “Ask me for
anything. I’ll do it”.
I am convinced that scripture is almost entirely for
the benefit of the believer. It teaches us the way of living in the here and
now of real life. In the OT we call that way of living for the Hebrews “the commandments.”
We see laws to force behavior or encumber
punishment, but the Lord in Lev. 19:2 before any “commandments” are given makes
it pointedly clear these are not laws but actually describe the characteristics
of a person who is committed to live a holy life that emulates the Lord. The
Lord says, “You shall be holy because I am holy.” Then read Lev. 19:3-5, 9-18 Moses
emphasizes this point in Deut. 30:6,10-20,”(The Lord has) set before you life and
death, blessings and curses, choose life so you may live.”
The problem with the John 14:1-14, if there is
one, is that it is so loaded with messages about Truth, the Hereafter, God, and
Jesus we can miss the core message about choosing to live a holy life. The
first and last verses bookend that message. The first verse says, “Do
not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.” The last
two verses say, “so that the Father may be glorified in the Son, if in my name
you ask me for anything, I will do it.”
As in Leviticus, Jesus is telling the disciples (and
us) if we have faith in Him we ought to live holy lives. Let me explain, “ought
to live holy lives.”
Do you believe verse 1: “Don’t let
your hearts be troubled I’ve got a place for you, just believe in me because
then you believe in God?”
I would hazard a guess that in
spite of this assurance, many of us are worried or troubled right
now about what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, or about what happened
yesterday.
What about the last verse, “Ask me
for anything”? Most people react to such an offer with, “What’s the catch?” We
are more likely to respond with suspicion like poor Thomas, “Lord we don’t know
where you are going. How can we know the way?”
The real stumbling block is can we
be holy? Do we have faith in the outrageous claim and promise, “ the
one who believes in me will…do greater works than these If in
my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.” Do you really
believe it’s true? The crux is the
difference in faithful doubt, and doubtful faith. Let me put it in context of my experience in
urban ministry.
I lead, with the Lord’s help, an
urban ministry in downtown Chattanooga comprised mostly of homeless and
unemployed men. Many if not most are seriously troubled people. Some have drug
and alcohol problems and bad relationships. Many of them are just out of jail
on probation or parole, or running from the law. Some are elderly men or women
abandoned by all family after they are discharged from Joe Johnson Mental
Health.
An overwhelming majority of them
have a psychological issue such as paranoia, co-dependency, schizophrenia that requires
medication so they can think and act clearly and reasonably. Between drugs and
growing up in debilitating, mind-damaging poverty, often I find myself talking
to a grammar school or teenaged mind locked in an adult body. Yet even with all
that baggage, some of them can give me a run for the money with their knowledge
of the Scripture.
Sadly, for most, the ember of hope has
almost burnt out. Are their hearts troubled? Yes. They worry their time away seeking
short-term relationships with the wrong kind of people, finding money for
survival even if it is just a bottle of booze or crack that blinds them to their
troubled heart.
In a different way these people face
the same challenge you and I face: to understand that John 14:1-14 is a call to
faith and holiness. Our ministry challenges them to acknowledge that God has a
called all of us to a vocation, though some of my pastor friends suggest I
ought to use another word since vocation conjures up images of trade school or of
arcane religious theologizing.
I answer their objection this way. We
are all brothers and sisters in this calling (vocation) we call “Christianity.”
If we are chasing our dream vocation then we are as seriously committed to our
faith as the turkey is to Thanksgiving dinner.
I tell them about the calling of Jeremiah.
God knows each one of us, has always
known us even before we were born, and tells us, “I have called you to a way of
living, not to a job working for somebody at $5/hr. or $500/hr. That paying job
is there only to help you with the serious business of your calling…the most
important thing in your life. You can ignore that calling but you can’t escape
it.
I suggest to them that our vocation
ought to be front and center in everything we do. It ought to be our dream. It
ought to be the first thought when we wake up as we thank the Lord for a new
day; and the last thought before we sleep after another wonderful day living our
vocation.
I use a simple process that disrupts
their normal thinking. First I ask them to think about why a friend or family
asks them for help. What value do others see in you? Following that, I ask them
to look at themselves and tell me what they see is their best attribute. Why
would someone ask for your help? Then after I remind them of Jeremiah’s
vocation, I tell them that the sky is the limit, no boundaries, and I want them
to tell me what is their dream.
Most of these men have never
thought that way, or dreamed at all. It
is off-putting and sounds so simple that the natural question is, “What’s the
catch? ”
It’s especially off-putting when I put
my caveat on the dream and ask them to tell me how fulfilling that dream is going
to help their friends, enemies and family, i.e., how is it going to glorify God?
I then tell them that if they are committed to that dream, to name the primary
barrier keeping them from it. We spend their rest of their time discarding
false barriers and taking down real ones, one barrier at a time. All it takes for a person to fulfill their
dream, their vocation, is keeping the faith in the dream and taking the first
step. I tell them the dream may get re-written as they work on it, but they can
realize it.
The catch is you have to stop long enough to think about your
life as a vocation called by God because that question can be frightening. The
catch is they have spent their whole life running from that kind of question,
using drugs, alcohol, sports, money, any physical excess in life they can find
to avoid thinking that way. The catch is, do you dare to “ask for anything
that glorifies God?”
They are afraid to ask the Lord for
anything like that because if they do, they have to look into their own naked
self, at their weaknesses, their mistakes, their fears of responsibility, give
up control of their life (as if we had control of it to begin with). They have
to confront doubt and make a choice, “Do I have faithful doubt or doubtful
faith? Will I listen to God so I know my vocation? Do I want to make God’s reality
my reality, or let my doubt be stronger than my faith?
I know this process works in the
face of faithful doubt but not in doubtful faith. The very action of taking a
step, working to make the dream a reality, of asking the Lord for anything
needed to get there, is the enabling event.
It takes only faithful doubt. Do
you remember in Mark 9:14-29, the faith of the father of the boy who had
seizures and fell into the fire? The father said to Jesus, “If you are able, please heal my son.” Jesus
exclaimed in consternation, “If you are able! All things can be done for the
one who believes.” Immediately the father cried out, “I believe; help my
unbelief!” and Jesus healed the son. The problem is not the faithful doubt of
the father, but doubtful faith that leads to not even asking the question.
Jesus says, “All things can
be done for the one who believes.” In John he says, in v14: “If in my name you
ask for anything, (and he leaves unstated but pointedly implied: to glorify the
Father), I will do it.”
In
Matthew, Jesus gives the great commission, go into the world so the world will
know me. (My version of Matthew 28:19-20.) He says, when you live your life so you can
faithfully say you know Me, then you are saying to the world by your own action,
“If you want to know who God is, know a Christian. If you know me, you know a
Christian.” Is that at all different from Lev. 19:2, “You shall be holy because
I AM holy?”
The point of this sermon and my
work with the homeless boils down to verse 7: “If you know me you will know my
Father also. And verse 12, “I tell you, the one who believes in me (who has
faith) will do the works that I do and in fact, will do greater works than
these. Ask me for anything and you will glorify God.”
So
the question before all of us here and in every congregation in this city, in
this state and world is, “ what is your dream (vocation) and are you pursuing
it?” Jesus tells us the thing that sets
us free is making God’s calling our dream. To do that we must know God, and if we
want to know God, know Jesus. [hold up bible] It is quite a daunting responsibility
to tell your neighbor to know you if they want to know God. Everything else is
secondary.
It
is beautiful how all four Gospels as different as they are, fit together in a
common message about faith and action. In Matthew Jesus says go into the world,
teach and baptize them in my name. In Mark
he says to the women at the tomb, Go and tell the others I’ll meet them in
Galilee. In Luke 24:49 Jesus says, I am sending upon you what my Father
promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from
on high.” And here in John, Jesus says, “The only way to be a Christian is to
do greater works than these that I did.”
The
only way you can do that is by two faithful actions. Put one foot in front of
the other and start living the dream that answers this question in the
affirmative, “When your neighbor gets to know you, do they know God and Christ?”
To do that you must accept this offer: “Ask me for anything.” If we can do
these two things, we have everything we need to glorify God. Everything will be
fine.
My
good friends, are you ready to ask for anything? Amen.
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