Our gospel text for the 6th Sunday of Easter comes from a section of the “Farewell Discourse” that focuses on Jesus’ departure and discusses the disciples’ relation to Jesus and their conflict with the world. Our gospel pericope falls at the end of this section.

The “Farewell Discourse” stretches over several chapters, seems to curl back on itself with repeated messages and promises – and to some extent it does exactly that. You have to remember that the disciples are in shock. Their trip to Jerusalem, the triumphal entry to the city, was not the prelude to the King Messiah creating the New Jerusalem, the New Israel.  He is leaving them. They are stunned and Jesus knows that the worst is yet to come. Within hours He will be arrested and the Passion will begin leading to death on the cross. What Jesus has told them now is not solace for the immediacy of Good Friday and Easter, it is for the “long haul” of mission to the world. When they will look back and remember why He spoke to them: “And now I have told you this before it happens, so that when it happens you may believe.”

As Gail O’Day notes: “One way to think about Jesus’ words in John 14 (and the rest of the Farewell Discourse) is as Jesus’ preaching to his gathered followers. Jesus offers his disciples the good news of the love of God and of the abiding presence of God with them, even when the circumstances of their lives would indicate otherwise.  In the face of the evidence that says that the battle is lost, that death will claim Jesus, and that the hope JEsus offered them is thereby nullified, Jesus speaks words of renewed hope and assurance, “Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not let them be afraid.” (14:27)… In the preaching of Jesus in the Farewell Discourse, that refrain thus summons the disciples to believe in a life shaped not by Jesus’ absence but by the enduring presence of God.”

Image credit: Christ’s Final Address to the Apostles | Bona Duccio di Buoninsegna, 1380 | from the Maesta Altar | Siena, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo | PD-US