利用者:DenyseCudworth2297

You know where I am going, and you know the way", says Jesus (v. 4). "Lord, we don't know where you are going, so how can we know the way?" replies Thomas (v. 5), like a frightened child who has no idea what he will do if daddy isn't there!

Indeed, the whole passage reads like a dialogue between a parent and his children. The kids are asking, "Where are you going?", "when are you going to come back?", "who is going to stay with us while you are gone?"

Jesus 'disciples here aren't so much worried about what is going to happen to Jesus as they are about what is going to happen to them without Jesus. They are uncertain, confused, they aren't ready yet to face the world without their father, or at least, like all children who huddle around the bed of a departing parent, they don't think they are.

And Jesus speaks to His children words of comfort. He promises them indeed that He will not leave them alone but that He will send to them 'the comforter' and that through 'the comforter' He will stil be with them, and He promises too that He will go and prepare a place for them and that when he has gone and prepared a place for them that "I will come again and take you to myself, that where I am, you may be also!" (vs. 3) And you've heard those words before, I'm sure most likely at a funeral!

I have taken a lot of funerals and I have read those words at every funeral I have taken, and I have been to quite a few funerals that others have taken and these words have been read at most of them too (the handful of secular funerals I've attended being the only exceptions).

We find in these words both comfort and strength in the face of death, and that is fitting, as they were spoken by Jesus with a view to giving comfort and strength to His disciples in the face of His own imminent departure and death.

It is fitting that we read Jesus' words about the Father's house and its many rooms when distressed by separation and death. What is ironic though, in my view, is that we never add the words that Jesus followed these with namely, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me"  as these words were likewise calculated to give comfort and strength to the weak and fearful.

Maybe some people do add these words about Jesus being the way, the truth and the life to their funeral liturgies. I'm not sure They aren't included in the prayer book I use, and I suspect that they aren't included in many, for I must confess that almost invariably, when I hear this verse quoted, it's not to bring comfort to someone who is in distress, but rather it's being used hit somebody over the head with the supposed inferiority of their religion.

I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. This is the verse we throw at Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and Hindus. Jesus said that He was the way, the truth and the life. Therefore everything you believe is garbage!

John 14:6 is the favourite proof text of people like Pastor Terry Jones that character from Florida who tried to organise a Quran burning. "No one comes to the Father but by me", says Jesus. That means that nobody who isn't a part of the Christian fold (and, more specifically, a part of the doctrinally-correct, Evangelical, Bible-believing end of the Christian fold) isn't going to get to the Father! 改葬