NOTES for Joh 14:1-11
At the Last Supper, Jesus tries, for the last time during His earthly ministry and in as much detail as possible, to explain to His disciples what the Kingdom He has brought into the world is. And they struggle to understand Him: even after the Resurrection, their ideas about the Kingdom remained practically the same as those of their contemporaries. He tells them that there is room for everyone in the Father's house, while they are probably imagining a magnificent palace in an earthly kingdom, perhaps even miraculously appearing out of nowhere, where there really will be room for all their Teacher's followers—and, of course, for themselves too. He tells them: you know where I am going, meaning that they have already seen and know what the Kingdom is, for they have spent more than a day with Him, and He has spoken to them more than once of the death that awaits Him, as well as of the resurrection that will follow. Yet they probably still think that He intends to leave and go into hiding so that He can prepare in secret for that final messianic war which, they were sure, was about to begin, and in which they themselves would have to take the most direct and immediate part. And they also long, at last, to see God face to face. For afterwards, after the victory, the new Kingdom founded by their Teacher will undoubtedly be the Kingdom of God Himself, and they, as their Teacher's closest disciples, will at last see the God He calls His Father as closely as He Himself sees Him. If only they could see His Father right now, before the final, hardest war, and before the victory! There would be nothing more to wish for; then even dying would hold no terror, for after such an encounter there would be no doubt left about their own resurrection. But He speaks in riddles again; He says: whoever has seen Me has seen the Father. And again there is bewilderment: Who, then, is He, after all? Where is His Kingdom? And how will all the things He speaks of come about? The Last Supper is full of riddles and bewilderment. And no wonder: Jesus' disciples have not yet understood the main thing. And the evangelists were candid enough to describe the situation as it was at the time, without embellishing anything. So that we too, as we read these lines, would understand: apostles are not born, they become apostles. And not all at once. And only by grace.