The “upper room discourse,”
comprises chapters 13-17 of the “Gospel of John,” and has no real equivalent in
any of the other Gospels. It is by far
the most extended conversation between Jesus and his disciples found in any of
our four canonical Gospels. By style and
content, this dialogical discourse clearly appears to be a composition by the
author whom we know as “John.” The man
wrote the discourse out of his mystical experience of the presence of Christ to
him, with him, in him. If one doubts the
origin in a mystical union, read the passages slowly and prayerfully, and see
if they do not speak to your own union with Christ; they cannot be understood
by private, secular, inner-worldly “reason,” but are communicated by the Spirit
to a man or woman attuned to “the Spirit of truth.” Apart from spiritual attunement (which is a
living union with God), these words make little or no sense. A truly spiritual human being from any
tradition who reads these words will feel at home in them. They are one of the mystical masterpieces in
all of literature.
That the discourse is set on the
verge of Christ’s death is highly significant:
they are presented as his parting words, his final conversation with his
inner circle of disciples—and hence with those of us who are his intimate
friends, living on the edge of eternity.
And these words have much meaning to a man or woman who is aware of
existing between time and eternity, and
striving to live in communion with Christ, with the divine reality that
he makes present. If your heart and mind
are set primarily on fulfillment in this present life—possessions, wealth,
status, family—these words will sound like “double-talk,” or “nonsense,” as I
have heard one clergyman characterize them.
Again, what is engendered out of communion with God must be understood
by someone living in that same spiritual tension—life stretching into eternity
beyond death. Otherwise, they are only words to be believed or not, rather than
an analysis of existence in Christ—that is, of a genuine spiritual life.
The discourse spoken and heard
between time and eternity leaves no doubt that the genuine Christian life,
lived in accordance with the spirit of truth, the holy Spirit, is not what is
often peddled by the churches: “If you
believe in Jesus, you are saved; if you do not believe in Jesus, you are going
to hell.” The variations of this
over-simplification and distortion of spiritual truth depend on the particular
denomination; the Catholic variety is more often “receive the Sacrament, and be
saved; miss Mass and be damned.” If
verses in John’s Gospel can be lifted out of context and be used by peddlers of
a vulgarized Christianity, the dialogical discourse spoken by the Word within
the attentive, loving mind serves to reground the disciple in the truth of
divine-human communion: “Yet a little
while and the world will behold me no more, but you will behold [or, gaze upon]
me, because I live and you will live. In
that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I in
you.” The word “behold” or “gaze upon”
is not a seeing with bodily eyes, but an inner awareness of divine
presence. The mutual indwelling or
communion of the divine with the human is accomplished not by “religious
beliefs,” or even by faith alone, but by mutual love. On the human side of the partnership, this
love is not a sentimental feeling, but utter obedience to will of God: “He who has my commandments and keeps them,
he it is who loves me…If one loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will
love him, and we will come to him, and make our home with him….”
God is at home in the one at home in
God. The dwelling place of God is in the
soul or consciousness of the faithful-loving disciple, who humbly contemplates
the word of Christ, who keeps his word, doing God’s will. The cult of worshiping God in the Temple has
been replaced by the simplicity of reverencing God in one’s heart through
listening to the Word and incarnating the word in the world through loving
action. The Creator-God is also the
Saving-God, at home and at work in the obedient disciple, through whom Christ
continues his transforming Presence in the human community. Truth is not a collection of doctrinal
formulations, but a process of becoming one in faithful love with the one who
“loved us to the end.”
