Do Not Let Your Hearts Be Troubled

 

We are taught to read literature as though it is newspaper. Time is sequential and one–dimensional, in which the words on the page are an assemblage of letters to communicate information in real time. What you see on the surface is literal and is in black and white. This is not the case with reading the Gospel, especially John’s. 

Brother David Steindl-Rast writes: “to understand John’s word images in the way they were intended, we need to develop a sense for poetic language. These images speak to us through an intuitive dimension beyond the literal…Tuning in to this language requires an acquired ability to read between the lines.’” Marcus Borg writes “John invites his hearers to know in a radically new and different way. He appeals to the imagination, to a place deep within, which invokes a palpable sense of knowing outside the bounds of any anatomical natural human sense.” 

When John writes In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God (verse 1)…And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us, he announces the incarnation of God in Jesus. By extension, he informs us that that the Word becomes flesh in us too. “The Word speaks to us in a place deep within that we intuitively sense and know.” 

So in (John 14:1-12) as Jesus is preparing his apostles for his departure, he comforts them and says: Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe  also in me. Trust me. Trust God— you have seen God in me. I am enough. Trust that you will find me in the community as we come to see God in one another. 

Andrew Prior writes: “I do not think we can overstate the love and the intimacy of the household of God and our place in it. What we can miss, however, is that it is not a geographical place at a certain time. It is a relationship in eternity into which we can enter; in which we can place our trust. We will not be left alone, or orphaned.” 

We know that Jesus was killed for political reasons: he violated the “status quo” of the prevailing Jewish law that caused the Judeans, not all Jews, to want him removed. The Judeans were those who aligned themselves with Rome to maintain “control” of their “religion” and maintain their “status quo.” As such, their religious leaders collaborated with Imperial Rome to have Jesus “removed.” 

Throughout his life, Jesus made it clear that he resisted the man-made rules of “organized religion” as they existed. I wonder what he would think about the religions of today.  How different are some of its members from the Pharisees who resisted change? History reminds us that Jesus was not the last to be persecuted for bucking the “status quo.” Leave things alone I’m comfortable with the way things are; hey, I read the scripture and preach the Gospel; isn’t that enough?  But where is the Love that was Jesus? 

Gary Wills tells us that “Jesus opposed any religion that is self-righteous, quick to judge, wallows in gossip that destroys and divides the community in order to serve its own purpose and not God’s.” And how do we relate to Jesus’s words in our Gospel: Do not let your hearts be troubled…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.