John 14 is a foundational text for me. It is a bedrock of my theology. Parts of it are familiar to us, but you might hear something new. And that might make you uncomfortable or even angry. That’s okay. We’ll talk about that.

John 14 is situated in the Farewell Discourses which start in here and go until chapter 17. In Chapter 13, Jesus washes the feet of his disciples, foretells his betrayal, gives the new commandment to “Love one another just as I have loved you.” He tells Peter that he will deny him three times, which is very troubling. I can imagine Peter shocked into silence. But then Jesus says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house, there are many rooms and I go to prepare a place for you.”

What is he talking about? This is the only place in the Gospel of John where Jesus specifically mentions the afterlife and gives a little description of it. In my Father’s house/dwelling place/abode there are many rooms. Conventional Christianity is all about going to heaven, getting your ticket to heaven, but that is not what we find in the gospels. Remember the Lord’s Prayer, “On Earth as it is in Heaven.” The Good News isn’t that you’re going to heaven, it’s that heaven is coming to earth.

Don’t be troubled. Jesus will be there, and we will know the way to this place. Thomas speaks up, “We don’t know where you’re going. How can we know the way?”

Then comes the quote which is the center of the Gospel of John, the core conviction. “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” I love this. I agree with this. However, it has been used by Christians to show that we have the corner on God, that we’re in, we win, God likes us best, and the rest of you lot are damned. Yet let’s look where Jesus is and who he is talking to.

Is he proclaiming this on the Sermon on the Mount? Is he in public? No. He’s with the 12, in private, telling them goodbye. Telling them what’s going to happen. FOR THEM, for disciples of Jesus, there is no other way. It reminds us that way back starting in John 6:66, the crowd and many of his disciples who aren’t the 12 say, “’This teaching is hard, who can accept it?’ And they left him and went around with him no more.” People left Jesus. In droves. What did Jesus do? Did he curse them, damn them to hell? No. He turned to Peter and the 12 and asked, “Will you leave me too?” And Peter says, “No. You have the keys to eternal life.”

Essentially, Peter says, “We’re ruined. Who would take us? We’re all in, we believe in what you’re saying, Jesus, even if we don’t always understand it.”

I’ve mentioned that I studied Buddhism in college while my life was in disorder. After I left the Catholic church and what I thought was the church forever, I found the spirituality of Buddhism very freeing. I never really stopped believing in Jesus, but I stopped believing what the church was saying about him. I found comfort in the practices of yoga and meditation. I read a lot of books and wrote on the subject. I once claimed I was Buddhist, but that wasn’t true. I didn’t have a community, it was just me. Religion is a communal exercise always. Like Christianity, you can’t be Buddhist alone. Christ and Buddha were never alone, they always had people around them. They were always in community.

Then I met Kate’s aunt who is a real-life Nichiren Buddhist. She asked about my practice and my community. I spoke at length about it to which she said, “Your Buddha sounds like Jesus. You might want to get that checked out.” She said it in the same tone of “That looks infected, you might want to get that checked out.” I checked it out, and here I am. My Buddha is Jesus. I’m ruined. Where will I go, who would have me? For Jesus has the keys to eternal life for me. I have a hard time believing Jesus and Buddha would damn each other to hell. I think they would have a lot in common. The problem isn’t with the teachers, it’s with the students need for certainty.

Certainty speaks up in the form of Philip, “Show us the Father and we will be satisfied.” What Philip is asking for is a revealing of God, like in the Burning Bush.

Jesus answers, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still don’t know me? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?” Jesus and God, one in the same. This is the core of Trinitarian thinking. Jesus and God are linked and from them precedes the Holy Spirit, the Holy Trinity.

The Trinity is a mystery, how can three be one and one be three? It defies our logic! 1+1+1=3 not 1. Yet God never adds, God multiplies! 1x1x1=1. Jesus is the Word made Flesh! Yet the Trinity is a mystery, it shows that God is beyond our grasp but not beyond our touch. We cannot own or contain the God we find in the scripture. Even scripture can’t contain the God we find in our sacred stories. This God has no limits! This God is everywhere and in and through all yet beyond and transcendent. It is as Psalm 139 states, “Where can I go from your spirit?  Or where can I flee from your presence?  If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in the deep, you are there…” God is closer to us than our next breath.

Yet the Trinity is not just this incomprehensible mystery that we worship from afar. Check this out. Verse 12: “The one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, do greater works than these because they’re going to kill me.” We can do the same works as Jesus? We can do greater works than the Jesus, the Word Made Flesh? Jesus thinks so!

This leads me and some of the earliest Christians to believe in Theosis, “God Becoming.” We are to imitate Christ, to put on the mind of Christ and BE Christ to the world. The Eastern Orthodox Church speaks of the Trinity as three dancers moving so quickly and in sync that they are one. And we can join that dance!

Rob Bell reminded me of where Jesus was coming from. In his book Velvet Elvis, Bell writes, “The entire rabbinical system was based on the rabbi having enough faith in his disciples… A rabbi would only pick a disciple who he thought could actually do what the rabbi was doing. Notice how many places in the accounts of Jesus’ life he gets frustrated with his disciples. Because they are incapable? No, because of how capable they are! He sees what they could be and could do, and when they fall short, it provokes him to no end. It isn’t their failures that’s the problem, it’s their greatness. They don’t realize what they’re capable of.”[1]

God has an incredibly high view of people. God believes that we are capable of amazing things. Jesus leaves the work in our capable hands and says we can do even more! If we ask anything in his name, he will do it. He will send us the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, the Helper. But that’s a preview of next Sunday, so come back to hear more.

The life of a Christian is an attempt to do the things Jesus did. To live the way he taught. His life is an invitation to the imitation of Christ. Not to worship some abstract notion of the Trinity, but to enter into the dance of the Trinity. To seek divine union with God, to follow God’s guidance, to see one another as coming from the same source, to be in a mystic union that echoes Jesus’ prayer in John 17:21 “that they all may become one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”

Note what this changes: It changes how we live. It seeks connections to God and to our neighbors.

It doesn’t leave the Trinity in some abstract other, but it invites us into a relationship with God. One that’s affirmed by so many mystics in other religious traditions but is also uniquely Christian (but not exclusively so).  It is as Rev. Alan Jones said, “The Trinity is how you can be you and I can be me and we can be one.” He got this from the icon in the front of our bulletin today. It shows the Trinity, and each is pointing to one another except the one on the right, who is pointing down. Down to a box. A box that many have puzzled over. Some art historians did a chemical analysis on this area and found traces of lead and silver. This led them to believe believe once held a mirror, as mirrors had those elements from that time. Why a mirror? A mirror so you would see yourself in the dance of the Trinity. Theosis! You are in the life of God, the divine dance! You are invited to dance by God! Who could say no to that?!

This is Good News! Do not let your hearts be troubled. If this were not so, would I have told you so? We are participants in the life of God, through Jesus Christ, and in the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Thanks be to the Triune God. Amen.

[1] Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis, Repainting the Christian faith. Zondervan, 2005. Page 134.