Be Happy
John 14:1-14
Sunday May 7th, 2023
Rev. Rhonda Blevins
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “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.” Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves. Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.
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Hey Jude, don’t make it bad,
Take a sad song and make it better.
You may recognize this as the opening lyrics to the Beatles’ “Hey Jude” written by Paul McCartney. McCartney wrote the song for young Julian Lennon during his parents’ divorce in order to cheer him up. “Take a sad song and make it better.”
By the time we arrive at our scripture lesson today from the Gospel of John chapter 14, Jesus has shared a “sad song” with his disciples.
The setting of the text is the upper room, the setting of Jesus’ last supper. Jesus and his friends are gathered to celebrate the Passover, and during the meal, Jesus does something curious—he gets up from the table and begins washing his disciples’ feet. And after he has done that, he sits back down at the table, and the scriptures tell us that Jesus becomes “troubled in spirit.” He tells them that one of them will betray him. And then he tells his disciples, “I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’” Then he tells Peter, “before the cock crows, you will have denied me three times.”
The mood at the table is now quite somber. This isn’t the happy celebration they may have hoped for. Jesus was a first century “Debbie Downer.”
If you’re not familiar with “Debbie Downer,” it is a character on Saturday Night Live created and played by Rachel Dratch. In the comedy sketches, we usually see “Debbie Downer” in some social gathering like weddings or dinner parties—“Debbie Downer” always interrupts the levity with some negative opinion or pronouncement, followed by a sideways grimace, and a cartoonish trombone goes, “wah-wah.” Debbie Downer especially loves talking about feline AIDS, “Did you know that feline AIDS is the number one killer of domestic cats?” Wah-wah.
So as the disciples gather in an upper room for the Passover meal, they are probably hoping for a good time as they celebrate the festival. It’s a celebration of freedom of the Hebrews’ escape from Egypt, akin to the freedom from the monarchy Americans celebrate on the Fourth of July. It’s a happy feast. And Jesus goes all “Debbie Downer” on them and begins talking about his impending death. “Mazal tov! By the way, I’m going to die.” Wah-wah.
What we don’t see in the text, but we can infer from what happens next, are the pained look on his disciples’ faces. Jesus looks across the table and sees his disciples full of worry, dread and fear.
Worry, dread and fear. Oh my.
Don’t you wish we were immune to worry, dread and fear? Don’t you wish someone had created some sort of vaccine for worry, dread and fear? Of course, a lot of people self-medicate to assuage the worry, dread and fear. We load up on drugs, alcohol, sugar, work, exercise, screens—whatever it takes to find a little relief from worry, dread and fear.
This week I spent some time in North Carolina with a group of United Methodist clergy from South Carolina. You might be aware that the United Methodist Church in the United States is going through a split, like several denominations have gone through over the past twenty years or so. The retreat, on the surface, had nothing to do with the split, but rather training and equipping these leaders in regular transitions that United Methodist clergy submit themselves to as a part of itineracy. While the content the other retreat leader and I presented had nothing to do with the split happening in the United Methodist Church, what do you think these United Methodist clergy were talking about every time I joined them for breakfast or lunch or dinner? Yup. The split. There was no shortage of worry, dread and fear even among these faithful servants of God.
So Jesus looks across the table at the faces of his disciples full of worry, dread and fear, and he has compassion for them.
“Don’t let your hearts be troubled,” he coaxes. “Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many mansions. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”
Realism concurrent with hope.
Jesus strikes a beautiful balance between giving them a hefty dose of realism: “Look, I’m going to die,” and hope, “I’m preparing a place for you in the afterlife. I will come again and take you there with me.”
It seems to me that striking a healthy balance of realism and hope is difficult to achieve. A lot people I know lean toward one or the other. There are the “doom and gloom” kind of people who see the glass half empty. Then there are the Pollyanna folks who live life with their heads happily in the sand. Like Jesus in his upper room discourse, maybe some of us need to discover a healthy mix of realism and hope.
First: realism. There are scary things happening in the world. I worry about gun violence, given 200 mass shootings in our country since January 1.[1] I worry about inflation and the economy. I worry about health issues faced by people I love. I worry about what kind of world we’re leaving behind for my kids and my kids’ kids, especially in light of globalization and climate change and, and, and, and, and.
I worry, because at some level, I’m a realist. What kinds of things do you worry about?
Back to Jesus in the upper room: while Jesus laid a hefty dose of realism on the disciples’ plates that night in the upper room, he didn’t leave his disciples in the worry, dread and fear that realism evoked. Neither will I leave you there today.
As I look back over my life and think about all the things I’ve worried about throughout the years, I recognize that very few of the things I worried about ever came to be. Other things happened for sure, but rarely the things I worried about. How about you?
If you find yourself in a place of worry, dread and fear—it’s OK. You’re human. I’m human. We’re all human. I don’t believe God is sitting somewhere in heaven judging us for our very human experience of worry, dread and fear.
But thanks be to God we don’t have to live in that anxious state!
Here comes the hope . . .
Our NRSV translates John 14:1 this way: Do not let your hearts be troubled.
· The Contemporary English Version says simply: “Don’t be worried!”
· The Good News Translation says, “Do not be worried and upset.”
· The NET Bible reads, “Do not let your hearts be distressed.”
· The Voice says, “Don’t get lost in despair.”
· The Message says, “Don’t let this throw you.”
Two things strike me as important to acknowledge in all of these translations:
1. It’s an imperative. Jesus bids them to stop the activity they’d already started. Jesus doesn’t suggest that his disciples stop their worry—he commands it.
2. Jesus believes—he knows—that his friends have the power to stop their worry.
Here’s the thing I want you remember from my message today, it’s this: YOU CAN QUIT YOUR WORRY. You have the power to let go of the thoughts that cause your worry, dread and fear. I’m not suggesting that you go put your head in the sand and ignore the realities of this modern life. I’m not even suggesting that you can be immune from worry, dread and fear. Those emotions exist because evolutionarily speaking, those emotions helped us survive as a species. But you have the power NOT to stay in that emotional state. You can let it go.
How? Listen again: “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” (Here’s the how part) “Believe in God, believe also in me.”
I actually prefer the Contemporary English Version: “Have faith in God and have faith in me.” And especially the New Living Translation: “Trust in God, and trust also in me.”
God has carried God’s people throughout history. Think about it. Civil wars. World wars. Plagues. Recessions. Depressions. Genocides. The Holocaust. A global pandemic. Don’t you think God can carry us—carry you—through whatever it is that has your worried today?
Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Believe. Trust. Find God’s peace as you make your way home to one of the many mansions awaiting you in the reality of God’s abiding presence.
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/05/06/shooting-dallas-outlet-mall/70191696007/