“Making Reservations”
John 14:1-14
The best advice I can give y’all as graduates is to be prepared for anything. I read the following from a recent graduate: “No one told me we would be singing the school song at graduation, and I didn’t know that there were hand motions to accompany it. So, there I was, in the front row, when all of a sudden everyone, except me of course, started throwing up hand signs and singing in total unison. I felt like I’d accidentally walked into a cult meeting! I tried to catch up and mouth random words, but it was more than obvious that I WAS LOST!”
Several years ago now I made a trip up to Ohio on July 4th weekend. This was before there were like ten motels at almost every exit on I-75. Needless to say, when it came time to stop and get some rest there were no rooms to be had; so, I was forced to sleep in my car in a busy rest area, not a beautiful day in the neighborhood. Ever since then, when making trips that require overnight stays, with the help of a couple of phone apps I’m sure to make reservations. In other words, I try to be prepared.
John text
A well-known English preacher by the name of Leslie Weatherhead, told a story on himself. When he was a high school student, he had a very difficult examination, and he was having trouble studying. Then he discovered the last verse of today’s scripture, “You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.”
He believed that verse meant that all he had to do was ask and he would pass the exam. He told God he believed His promise and he wanted a good grade. The next day he took the exam, but when the grades were in, he had failed miserably. He was disillusioned. He rebelled and almost lost his faith. He concluded that the promises of the Bible were not good—all because God had not granted his wish for a good grade.
The next year he repeated the course. He worked hard and he passed. This time he decided that he didn’t need God—that he could get along all by himself.
After some years had passed, Dr. Weatherhead came to understand that his own powers and abilities were in reality the power that God had given him. He began to realize that God had already given him the power to pass the exam, but he hadn’t used that power the first go around.
The power is there for us to use. Not the kind of power that bails us out but the kind of help that shapes our lives. The kind of help that says I will strengthen your soul, so you learn not to worry when times are tough. The kind of help that doesn’t show us the way but rather becomes our way: He is our way—He is our truth—He is our life. The kind of help that doesn’t do the good works for us but rather teaches us and strengthens us to use our gifts and talents to do good in the world.
I was playing around on YouTube late last week and came across a video from an old movie titled “Evan Almighty” from 2007, a comedy film starring Steve Carell as Evan Baxter, a newly elected congressman who is instructed by God [Morgan Freeman] to construct an ark [acts of random kindness] in his yard. Before it’s all done, he even looks and dresses like Noah.
The scene from the movie that I saw was of his wife in a restaurant and God is her waiter. Obviously distressed God asked her if she is okay. She said it’s a long story and God said, “I like stories.” She goes on to tell him that she’s the wife of the New York Ark builder. She asks God his thoughts and He said He looked at it, building the Ark, as an opportunity. She looked surprised and He said, “If you pray for patience, do you think God gives you patience or the opportunity to be patient. If you pray for courage, do you think God gives you courage or the opportunity to be courageous.”
God is giving you, as graduates, the opportunity to go out in the world and make it be for you what you want it to be.
It should be of interest to us that the Gospel of John contains 21 chapters and five of them are used to describe the events around the dinner table on the Thursday night before Jesus was to die. Jesus wants His disciples to be ready—to be prepared—to be calm—to be free of troubled hearts. Jesus was putting His disciples at ease for what they were about to experience; the opportunities that were coming their way.
For all intents and purposes, the world as they, the disciples, knew it was coming to an end. Jesus has just enjoyed the Passover meal with them. He had washed their feet in an act of servanthood. He had foretold His betrayal and even whom it would be that would do so. He predicted Peter’s denial. And He has told them that He is leaving.
This was serious stuff—Jesus was leaving them—and they had no idea what their future held. But maybe even more serious was the possibility that their own faith in Jesus would prove to have been futile after all.
They had given up everything to follow this itinerant preacher from Nazareth. They left their jobs—their families—their security to follow Him because there seemed to be something special about this man. They had witnessed what He was capable of: the miracles—the healings—the raising of the dead. Surely, they hadn’t been wrong. Surely, they hadn’t wasted three years of their lives chasing after someone who wasn’t who He said He was.
Hardship has a way of getting our attention. Pain slows us down. Very few of us, after facing a trial, come out the same way we went in. Jesus understood this and is attempting to prepare them for the road ahead—and in all the heartache of His announcement He adds these words: “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” To which, if I would have been present in that Upper Room all those many years ago my reaction would have probably been: “That’s easy for you to say.”
As I read over our text for today and tried to come up with something to say I kept finding myself going back to one word that Jesus said: “Prepare.” Jesus was preparing His disciples for what was about to happen. And he told them that He was going ahead to prepare a place for them so that where He was, they could be also.
In his book titled Nearing Home, Billy Graham, in the introduction wrote: “This book, however, isn’t written just for old people. It is written for people at every stage of life, even those who never have thought much about getting older. The reason is simple: the best way to meet the challenges of old age is to prepare for them now, before they arrive.”
Jesus is the visible, tangible image of the invisible God. He is the complete revelation of what God is like. Jesus, in our text, explained to Philip, who wanted to see the Father, that to know Him is to know God. The search for God, for truth, ends in Jesus Christ.
Raising the dead is about as amazing as anyone can get; how could the disciples, and we for that matter, do anything greater than that? The “even greater things” would come because the disciples, working in the power of the Holy Spirit, would carry the gospel of God’s kingdom out of Palestine and into the whole world. Maybe you recall what I said last week about what I brought home from my recent New Room Conference in Nashville. Jesus said He could only do what He saw His Father do and He did it in the power of the Holy Spirit. We can do what we see Jesus do and we can do it in the power of the Holy Spirit!
Gordon Fee, a giant in New Testament studies, shares a true story in his book, Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God. He was in college, in his mid-twenties, and was asked to visit a vital member of their local church who was dying from a large tumor on his spine. He went to visit with fear and trepidation. He was scarcely twenty, knew little about death and dying, and certainly knew that he was too young to be of much comfort. But he went because the man was his friend, and he is Pentecostal, who believe that God heals the sick.
He wrote: “I have never forgotten my experience that day, for what happened to me happened to all who visited him. We went with due apprehension, not knowing what to say; but Stan’s own experience of Christ’s presence, what he was learning about God’s love, and his readiness—dare I say a kind of Pauline eagerness—to be with his Lord was so infectious that we all left Stan’s presence built up in our God. We went to comfort him; we left having been ministered to by him. He died three months later, a Pentecostal who also trusted to the very end that God might show him mercy through healing; but he died without disillusionment, because he was ready to enter his eternal reward.” “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.”
Ronnie Akridge—Paper cup with the two dollar bills in it [something better is coming on the horizon].
High School—the best years of your life—took me a while to realize the truth in that statement.
You can make the rest of your life the best. You can do what you want. You can be who you want. Opportunities abound for you all! The power of God is in you! Put it to work!
Eastman First Methodist Church 