Not a Map, a Person

“We do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”

That may well have been an awkward question. It’s the kind of question that might never have been asked for fear of embarrassing Jesus or revealing our own position. Thomas asks it out loud in the upper room, and tradition has not been kind to him for it: he becomes the doubter, the patron saint of deficient faith, the one who needed evidence when the others managed without it.

But read John 14 again. Thomas is not doubting here. He is naming the confusion honestly, in a room full of frightened people who are about to lose the person around whom their entire world has been organised. “We do not know where you are going”. And they don’t.

Jesus has been talking about going away, preparing a place, coming back, and none of it has resolved into a clear road-map of what comes next.

The answer Jesus gives is not a map. It is not a schedule or a set of waypoints. “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” Not: “here is the route”. But, “follow the person of Jesus”. And you already know him, “you already know his Spirit”.

This matters more than it sounds. We tend to read this passage at funerals as a text about destination: the many rooms, the prepared place, what comes after and the final destination. But the comfort John 14 actually offers is not primarily about accommodation or destination. It is about accompaniment. “Where I am, there you may be also” is a statement about presence, not geography.

It matters too because it shows us that the path of discipleship is right in front of us. That is not about some grand, difficult to know, master plan or destination. It is about a call to walk through our lives with open hands open eyes, and open ears, guided by the Spirit of God and the risen Jesus, through what lies right in front of us and all around us.

Philip pushes further, “show us the Father, and we will be satisfied”. It is pretty much what Moses was asking for in Exodus, and it links to Elijah’s experience on Horeb, “show me your glory”. Both then and here, God is not revealed in the, hoped for, spectacular moment. “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” The incarnation is not a temporary arrangement pending a more direct encounter. The person in front of Philip, ordinary, local, vulnerable, is the fullest revelation available.

And then this extraordinary commission, “you will do greater works than these”. Not later. Now. The ordinary, costly, sustained work of feeding people and sitting with the grieving and being present in places not yet flourishing. This is what that commission looks like when it is actually taken seriously.

Thomas was right to ask. The honest question gets an answer. And the answer turns out to be close to home: ordinary, local and vulnerable.