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1 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God ; believe also in me. 2 My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 4 You know the way to the place where I am going.” 5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” 6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” 8 Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” 9 Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. 11 Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves. 12 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. 13 And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it. (John 14:1-14 NIV)
I have lost tract of how often I have used this passage at funerals. It serves to comfort me as much as those grieving, for it is Jesus, the Son of God, our Lord and Savior, Who said these words after He shared with His disciples that He was on His own way to die. The disciples, especially Peter, did not take it well. It was not the end they anticipated. Some thought Jesus was truly the one who would overthrow the Roman presence in Israel; others thought He would establish a permanent kingdom of His own, with two disciples believing they would help reign with Jesus and so had asked for seats; one to HIs right, and the other to His left.
Jesus spoke these words on the night before He died. The disciples did not know what the next eighteen hours would hold — the garden, the arrest, the trials, the cross, the silence of a sealed tomb. But Jesus knew. And knowing all of it, He looked at the faces around that table and said: “Do not let your hearts be troubled.”
We read those words now from the other side of Easter. We know what happened next. We know the tomb is empty. And that changes everything about how these words land. What Jesus spoke that night as promise, the resurrection morning confirmed as fact. Every claim He made in this passage — about a place prepared, about a way to the Father, about works continuing through His people — the empty tomb has put its seal on every one.
This is an Eastertide word. Not just a word of comfort for troubled hearts, but a word of orientation for people learning, day by day, what it means to live in the light of resurrection. So let’s sit with three moments in this text, and let each one do its work.
Jesus opens with a word about a place. “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places… I go to prepare a place for you.” The word the NRSV translates as “dwelling places” is mone in the Greek — a word of settled permanence. Not a waiting room. Not temporary lodging. A home. And there is room. Many dwelling places. The Father’s house has not run short of space.
What gives us the right to believe this promise is real? The resurrection. Jesus said He was going to prepare a place, and then He would come again. He went — to the cross, into death, into three days of silence. And then He came back. If He could do that, we have every reason to trust that He can do what He said about the room.
The instruction “do not let your hearts be troubled” is not a call to manage our emotions or put on a brave face. The Greek word for troubled is tarasso — it means churning, agitation, like water being stirred up. Jesus knows the disciples’ inner lives are turbulent. He doesn’t minimize that. He addresses it with something solid: believe. Believe in God. Believe also in me. The antidote to a troubled heart is not a technique. It is a person — a risen, trustworthy, promise-keeping person.
The antidote to a troubled heart is not a technique. It is a person.
Whatever is churning in you today — whatever uncertainty or grief or unanswered question is making the ground feel unsteady beneath you — Jesus speaks this same word into it. Not “everything is fine.” Not “your feelings are wrong.” But this: I have been to death and back. The place is real. Trust me with this.
Thomas asks the question everyone else is probably thinking but won’t say out loud: “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” I have always admired Thomas for this. He refuses to pretend. He will not nod along in false comprehension. He asks the honest thing, and in return he receives one of the greatest sentences in all of Scripture.
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” Three enormous nouns, stacked in a sentence of breathtaking simplicity. And notice what Jesus does not say. He does not say: I will show you the way. I will teach you the truth. I will explain how to find life. He says: I am these things. The way is not a road or a method or a set of instructions. It is a person. The truth is not a doctrine or a proposition. It is a person. The life is not a condition to achieve or a reward to earn. It is a person. It is Him.
When Thomas met the risen Christ eight days after Easter and fell to his knees saying “My Lord and my God” — he was not discovering something he hadn’t known before. He was recognizing at last what had been true all along. The one he had walked with, questioned, followed, and watched die — that one was the way, the truth, and the life. The resurrection simply made it impossible to doubt anymore.
Philip follows with his own request, and it echoes across every generation: “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” He is looking past Jesus toward some other, bigger, more impressive revelation. And Jesus turns his face gently but directly back: “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”
Philip wanted to see God. So do we — especially in hard seasons, especially when faith feels thin. And the Eastertide answer is the same as it was in that upper room: open your eyes. The risen Christ standing before you is the face of God made visible. If you want to know what God is like — what He thinks of suffering, what He does with death, how He feels about the lost and the broken and the searching — look at Jesus. Risen, present, and fully recognizable as the one who bore our sin and walked out of the grave.
If you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus. The risen Christ is the face of God made visible.
The third moment in this text is the one most likely to catch us off guard. “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. The claim seems impossible until you understand what He means.
The key is “because I am going to the Father.” Jesus’ going — through death, resurrection, and ascension — makes possible the gift of the Holy Spirit. And the Spirit distributes the ministry of the risen Christ across not one body but millions. Jesus, in His earthly life, was geographically limited. He healed in Galilee. He taught in Jerusalem. But through His people, alive with His Spirit, the work of the kingdom has spread to every continent, every culture, every century. That is the greater works. Not a single person doing something more impressive than Jesus — but the risen Christ, multiplied through His church, doing what He did everywhere, across all of time.
This is the vocation we carry out of Easter and into the ordinary week. We are the people through whom the risen Christ continues His work in the world. Not in our own strength, not by our own cleverness, but in His name — which is to say, in alignment with His character and His kingdom purposes. When He says “I will do whatever you ask in my name,” He is not offering a blank check. He is offering something far better: the assurance that when we pray and work and serve in step with who He is, He acts. He is present. He is moving. The greater works are not behind us. They are still unfolding.
Here is what holds all three of these moments together: the resurrection. Without Easter, John 14 is a beautiful but ultimately heartbreaking set of promises made by a man who died two days after he made them. With Easter, it is the verified testimony of the living Lord — every word underwritten by the most astonishing event in human history.
He said He was going to prepare a place. He went through death and came back. The place is real. He said He was the way, the truth, and the life. Thomas’s knees hit the floor. Philip could see the Father’s face in His. The claims hold. He said His people would do greater works because He was going to the Father. The Spirit came. The church was born. The works continue, to this day, in this room, in this community, in your ordinary life this coming week.
Do not let your heart be troubled. This is not wishful thinking or pious sentiment. It is an instruction with the empty tomb behind it. The risen Christ has earned the right to say it. And we, who have heard the Easter story, have every reason to let it be true in us.
PRAYER: Risen Lord, You are the Way when we are lost, the Truth when the ground feels uncertain, the Life when we are running empty. Still our troubled hearts with the solid weight of Your resurrection, and send us into this week as people who carry Your presence and Your works into the world. Amen.
Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: This week, name your troubled place. Write it down or speak it aloud in prayer, and then deliberately lay it before the risen Christ — the one who went through death and came back and can be trusted with whatever is churning in you. Let the resurrection be bigger than your worry, just for today. Then do it again tomorrow.
I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me. The tomb is empty. The promise is kept. Do not let your heart be troubled.
Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.
