The Opposite of Trouble

The most pastoral words Jesus ever spoke were not come to me, all who are weary. They were not blessed are those who mourn. They were not even it is finished.

The most pastoral words Jesus ever spoke were these:

"Do not let your hearts be troubled."

He said them on the night before the cross. In a room thick with fear. To eleven men whose world was about to come apart, and who were just beginning to suspect it.

It is worth remembering what had just happened in that room.

Jesus had been at table with his disciples. He had washed their feet. He had broken bread. And then, in the middle of that meal, he had told them that one of them — one of the twelve who had walked with him for three years, who had left everything to follow him, who had eaten this bread with him — was about to betray him. The disciples did not know whom he meant. They watched Jesus give the morsel to Judas. They watched Judas take it and walk out of the room into the night.

And then Jesus turned to Peter. The strongest one. The one who had just declared he would lay down his life for Jesus. And Jesus told him: Before the rooster crows, you will deny three times that you ever knew me.

Imagine the silence after that line.

And into that silence, into that room, into the place where the disciples were sitting in the wreckage of an evening they had not seen coming, Jesus speaks.

"Do not let your hearts be troubled."

That is pastoral care. Not the absence of trouble. Not a promise that the trouble is unreal. Not a minimization of what they have just heard. Jesus sees the room. He sees what his own words have done to it. And he speaks into it.

Notice what he does not do. He does not tell them they are wrong to be afraid. He does not say get over it. He does not promise that everything is going to be fine. He simply tells them what to do with the trouble.

"Believe in God; believe also in me."

In John's Gospel, belief is not primarily an intellectual act. It is trust — the kind of trust that rests its full weight on the one being trusted. The opposite of trouble, in this passage, is not calm. The opposite of trouble is trust.

That word — believe — appears three times in the verses we are reading. Verse 1. Verse 11. Verse 12. It runs the length of the passage like a thread. Trouble is what the disciples are feeling. Belief is what Jesus is asking of them.

And the rest of the passage tells us what belief in Jesus actually looks like.

It looks like this. Two disciples in this passage speak. Thomas and Philip. Both of them ask the wrong question.

Thomas asks the direction question. "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?" Tell us how to get there, Jesus. Give us directions.

Philip asks the vision question. "Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied." Show us God, Jesus. Then we will be okay.

Both disciples are looking for something outside Jesus — a map, a vision, a piece of information that will steady them. They are doing exactly what we do when we are afraid. They are reaching past the person in front of them, looking for something more reliable than him.

And Jesus answers them both — with himself.

To Thomas: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." The way is not a route. The way is a person.

To Philip: "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father." You are asking me to show you God. You are looking at him.

This is the move the disciples cannot quite make yet, and it is the move every disciple has to make. We keep asking Jesus for things outside himself. He keeps answering us with himself.

The writer of Hebrews puts it this way:

Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. He is the reflection of God's glory and the exact imprint of God's very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word. (Hebrews 1:1–3)

The exact imprint of God's very being. That is what Philip was asking to see. That is what was standing in front of him.

Jesus is not pointing to God. Jesus is God-given-to-be-seen.

That is who he is — and then, having told them who he is, Jesus tells them what is about to happen next.

"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."

Greater works than Jesus.

What can he possibly mean? No disciple raises the dead by his own authority. No disciple feeds the five thousand from a boy's lunch. What does greater works mean if it does not mean bigger miracles?

It means greater in reach, not greater in kind.

Jesus' ministry was confined to a few square miles of Galilee and Judea, over three years, in one body. But he is going to the Father. And when he does, he will send the Spirit. And the disciples, empowered by that Spirit, will carry the same mission to every people, every century, every language, every corner of the earth.

The works are not different. The works are the same — making the Father visible, doing what the Father does — but the reach is greater because Jesus is no longer confined to one body in one place. The mission of Jesus does not end at the cross. It does not end at the resurrection. It does not end at the ascension. It continues — through us — to the ends of the earth.

The works themselves are his. The reach is ours.

But the mission has a method, and this is where we have to be careful, because the next two verses get misused more than almost any others in the New Testament.

"I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it."

These verses get pulled out of context and turned into a blank check. Whatever you want, just say "in Jesus' name" at the end.

That is not what Jesus is saying. Two things in the text correct that misreading.

First — the phrase in my name does not mean with these words attached. In the ancient world, to act in someone's namemeant to act with their authority, in alignment with who they are, on behalf of their mission. To pray in Jesus' name is to pray as someone participating in his mission. Not to use his name as a password.

Second — read verse 13 all the way through. "I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son." That is the criterion. The whole point of asking in Jesus' name is so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. It is not for our agenda. It is for the mission.

So verses 13 and 14 are not a blank check. They are a commission with a method. The mission continues — that is verse 12, greater works. The mission has an instrument — that is verses 13 and 14, asking in his name. The disciples do the works of Jesus by asking the Father, in Jesus' name, to keep doing through them what he did through Jesus.

And so we come back to where we started — to the upper room, on the night before the cross, with eleven men sitting in fear.

Jesus does not promise them that there will be nothing to be troubled about. He gives them something stronger than the absence of trouble. He gives them himself — as the way, as the visible Father, as the one who sends them out to do greater works in his name.

That is what we have been given.

The opposite of trouble is trust. And he will do this through us.