If there is one thing about the disciples in that upper room that we can be sure about – it is that they were troubled. Jesus says as much. What were they grieved and troubled about?

1. Jesus was leaving them, apparently for good. He knows they will feel like orphans, suddenly deprived of a loved parent (14:18). If you’ve lost someone close like that – whether by death, or by marriage to someone far away – you will understand their anxiety and anguish.

2. Jesus was apparently expecting them to continue his mission – and in a context of hostility and persecution. This must have troubled them and made them afraid – especially in view of Jesus’ prediction of Peter’s failure.

3. They didn’t understand why Jesus was leaving them. For all his hints up till now, they could only sense his defeat – what had become of their expectation of Messianic victory and glory? They must have been puzzled and disappointed.

Are you troubled? At some stage in life we all experience sorrows, anxieties and fears. We lose those we love – we can be faced with demands and expectations beyond our strength – overall we can feel the world is uncaring, we lose hope, and nothing makes sense. If any of these fears are ours – then the words of Jesus here are relevant to us, as well as to his friends long ago.

The way of glory

Judas has just left the room – to betray Jesus – despite Jesus’ last loving appeal, by giving Judas the intimate gift of the bread dipped into the dish. Jesus alone has understood Judas’ decision. It means that ‘his hour’ has come, his destiny has been set in motion, that Jesus has known all along was his Father’s will.

For by his death God’s love for us will be powerfully displayed – that will be his glory. He will be making a way for us sinners to receive God’s pardon – a way back into fellowship with God that our sin has forfeited, a way to life, instead of our way towards death. So Jesus says, Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him. For Jesus, glory lies in letting God’s true character of love be fully known. When this is displayed in Jesus’ own person, at the Cross, it will glorify both Son and Father, for they are at one in this, and now it’s about to happen.

Very tenderly Jesus tells his friends of their coming separation. Knowing their troubled hearts, he tells them the one thing they are to do – that will most comfort them – distinguish them from all others – and enable them to be his witnesses. Love one another!

Why does Jesus call this a new command? Because such love as his for them has never been seen before. As I have loved you, so must you love one another. His costly love for us is both the reason and the pattern for our love to others, especially to our fellow Christians.

By such love the true character of God will be known. Jesus’ disciples are to be distinguished by it from all others, and by it Jesus’ mission will be authenticated! As far as the world is concerned, Jesus will no longer be visible, his cross will become ancient history, and his resurrection improbable. If the world is to believe, God must be glorified in our lives, by our love shown to one another.

But these words are lost on Peter. Overwhelmed by his pain and perplexity, he asks, Lord, where are you going? and Jesus replies, Where I’m going, you can’t follow now, but you will later. Why not? says Peter, I will lay down my life for you!

Such love for Jesus – but Peter isn’t ready for such sacrifice, he doesn’t know himself, or the power of the darkness about to engulf them. He’s relying on self, not on God. So Jesus, who does know Peter, rebukes his boast and reveals his weakness. Jesus knows it will be the same for them all (as it so often is for us). In ourselves we have no strength, we lack real love for Jesus, and we’re troubled and afraid.

The way of trust

So Jesus starts to tell, them and us, how we may overcome our anxiety and fear. The answer is trust. Trust in God and trust in Christ (for Father and Son are at one). The future is not so bleak and fearful as you imagine. It may seem the devil’s hour of triumph – but it is actually God’s hour. It’s God’s purpose that is being fulfilled. As Hudson Taylor said, ‘Have faith in God’ means ‘hold on to God’s faithfulness’. Look up! The future is assured.

With the homeliest of pictures, Jesus calls heaven his Father’s house. Here there will be rooms enough for all who love him. And his going there – by way of the Cross – will ensure our access. The hope of life beyond the grave is anchored in the truthfulness and trustworthiness of Jesus Christ, vindicated by his resurrection. And he will come back for us, to bring us to himself. Jesus surely meant – ultimately, at his return again in glory. But, of course, he also welcomes each of us, at our own deaths. (Phil 1:23; Acts 7:54-60)

His friends know, says Jesus, the way to this future life. Now it is Thomas who, in his honest perplexity, asks a question. Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way? He has failed to understand Jesus, and doesn’t mind saying so. Thomas is a man who wants things put in black and white, he wants things explained to him. Jesus answers Thomas with a wonderful and profound truth – the sixth of the great I AM statements recorded by John. I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

The way to the Father

Have we thought of the way to heaven as a weary road stretching endlessly before us, full of dangers, difficulties and troubles? (That’s a picture conjured up in my mind by a poster widely displayed when I was a young man!) Jesus changes the picture. He speaks of coming to the Father, of knowing the Father. And Jesus himself as the way to the Father.

Jesus alone is the Way of access to the Father, because he alone has made the way, by dying as our atoning sacrifice. He alone is the Gate (John 10:9). He has removed the barrier, created by our disobedience and disbelief, and taken it right out of the way. He is also the Truth. No other has ever revealed the true character of God, as he has done. He alone is the touchstone, by which we may test the supposed gold of other truths. He alone is the Life, for we may receive eternal life only through faith in him – it is to be found nowhere else. He is the Bread of Life, (John 6:35) who alone satisfies our human hunger, and gives everlasting life.

So Jesus adds, No-one comes to the Father except through me. It is an exclusive claim – that rules out any suggestion of there being other ways to God. As Peter said to the Jewish elders, Salvation is found in no-one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved. (Acts 4:12)

Then Jesus speaks of knowing the Father, If you really know me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you really are going to know him, and will have seen him. (John 14:7, my paraphrase)

This time it’s Philip who asks the question, Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us. Perhaps Philip wanted a theophany – an appearance of God in visible form (as, long ago, Moses and the 70 elders of Israel had seen God on Mt Sinai; or as Isaiah had seen the Lord in the temple – Exod 24:9-11; Isa 6:1-5). He didn’t know that had already been granted to him!

Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I’ve been among such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. Philip had voiced the longing of the human heart – to be embraced in a love that is all-encompassing, all-powerful, because it is the love of our Creator-God. And it is God’s promise, repeated many times, I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people. (Lev 26:12; Jer 30:22, 32:38; Ezk 37:27; 2 Cor 6:16; Rev 21:3,4) I will show my love to the one I called, ‘Unloved’, I will say to those called, ‘Not my people’, ‘You are my people’; and they will say, ‘You are my God’. (Hos 2:23) Jesus’s claim is beyond what any mere mortal man can possibly – or has any right – to say – but if Jesus is also the fullest expression of God himself, come among us, as we believe he is – then these are wonderful words of assurance of God’s love to this little band of men, so soon to be shattered and scattered – and to us, in whatever troubles we may find ourselves. Jesus now reinforces this claim, by speaking of the oneness of the Father and himself – and lays the foundation of his call to his followers to go out into all the world – in the strength of the Holy Spirit, which will be his continued presence with us, for ever.

Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say I am in the Father and the Father is in me – or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves.

When Jesus was talking to the Jews, he had expected them to understand this (John 10:38) – so he had expected his intimate disciples to have understood! Since he goes on to speak of his words, it must be his teaching that points to this truth of the unity and interpenetration of the Father and the Son. Both his words and his actions come from the Father and attest to his deity.

We are right when we say that, above all, Jesus calls us to trust him – but such trust is not empty of content, it is not blind credulity. He calls us to believe him when he says – he and the Father are one. (John 10:30) When we commit our lives, our trust, our hope in Jesus Christ, we do so on the basis of knowing who he really is.

The way ahead

Before Jesus goes on to tell them and us about the wonderful gift of his Spirit, who will be his presence with us for always – he speaks about the privilege of serving him after he has returned to his Father. It is a solemn statement, preceeded by his characteristic, Amen, amen – translated here simply as, I tell you the truth.

Any one who has faith in me... Jesus is speaking to those who are personally committed to him, not to some merely formal believer.... such will do what I have been doing. What was that? Representing the character of God before men and women; his holy love and truth, by action and word, so that these other men and women too may become personally committed to Jesus, as Lord and Saviour.

This will only become possible – indeed, even greater things will become possible – because Jesus is returning to the Father. For he is about to tell them, I will ask the Father, and he will give you ... the Spirit (John 14:16-17) Already, but indirectly, Jesus had spoken of this gift from his Father.

On the last and greatest day of the Feast of Tabernacles – when water from the spring of Siloam had been solemnly poured out in the temple (in memory of God’s provision in the wilderness) – and silence had followed – Jesus had stood up and said these words out loud for all to hear, If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him. John comments, By this Jesus meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. (John 7:37-39)

The Feast of Tabernacles was the last great Harvest Festival of the year (Exod 23:16; Lev 23:39-42) – and looked forward to that great ingathering of the nations when the Messiah comes at the end of time (Zech 14:9,16-21; Isa 25:6-9) , and the outpoured water was seen as symbolic of the future outpouring of the Holy Spirit. (Joel 2:28-32; Isa 44:3-5)

So it seems clear that those ‘greater things’, that Jesus’ disciples will do, refers to their witness, preaching in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem (Luke 24:47-49) when multitudes will be brought to faith in Jesus as Lord and Saviour. But this could only be done in the power of the Spirit – and He could only come when Jesus had completed his mission, and returned to the Father.

And that brings Jesus to speak of prayer. For it is as we ask in Jesus’ name – that is, in accord with his mind and purpose – that he does for us whatever we ask. It is in Jesus alone that we have the resources to live for him in this world, to be strengthened against temptation and this world’s hostility, to have that peace and inner joy that will carry us through all our outward troubles, and enable us to witness to others of God’s great love and salvation.

I have told you these things, said Jesus, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world. (John 16:33) Amen.