Nicoll (W. R.), The Lamp of Sacrifice, 155.
Parker (J.), Studies in Texts, v. 86.
Parkhurst (C. H.), A Little Lower than the Angels, 214.
„ „ The Pattern in the Mount, 227.
Smith (D.), The Pilgrim's Hospice, 97. Christian TForld Pulpit, xxix. 10 (Davies).
The Preparation and the Reception.
I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I come again, and will receive you unto myself ; that where I am, there ye may be also. — John xiv. 2, 3.
One does not wonder that the disciples were troubled when told that their Master was about to die. There is no anguish so sharp and desolating as that which bereavement causes. He who had been to them infinitely more than friend or brother, whom they had loved with a love having all the reverence of worship and all the intensity of passion, whose life had been their ideal of goodness, whose love had been their blessedness, whose Divine teaching and working had been their glory — He was about to be taken from them ; they are to be bereaved of more than affection ever lost before. Never had sorrow so great an occasion. The grief of bereavement is measured by the greatness of possession. Only those who had known Him could know what it was to lose the man Christ Jesus. Therefore "sorrow had filled their hearts," the depth of which was attested alike by the vehemence of St. Peter and the tenderness of St. John. His comfort for them was, trust in Him as the immortal Christ, who would go to prepare a place for them, and come again to receive them to Himself.
I.
The Preparation.
**I go to prepare a place for you."
These words are so simple that a child or an unlettered
peasant might understand them. Christ has gone to prepare a
place for us in the house of His Father; what more need we
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94 PREPARATION AND RECEPTION
know ? This is enough to give us the exhilarating hope and joy which are necessary for righteousness ; this is enough to invigor- ate the faith which is agitated by the mysteries that environ us ; this is enough to sustain the fortitude which is likely to give way under the recurring shocks of earthly trouble.
1. Tlie Going. — It is not so much the going as the preparation that is in His mind. Yet what a way was that by which He had to go. It was the way of Gethsemane, and the judgment-hall, and Calvary ; it was the way of the cross and of the grave ; the way of the resurrection and the ascending on high. It was thus He opened the Kingdom of heaven to all believers, and thus He rendered possible for us life in the Father's house.
(1) He goes because He first came. Christ came into this world not as a native but as a visitor, a messenger from another sphere. " I go my way," He cries, " to him that «ent me." He returns to His rightful place, as a voyager setting sail to his native shore, as a son wending his way joyfully homewards when the task on which he set out is finished. What poets and philosophers have sometimes imagined concerning man, that he has descended by the passage of birth from some diviner realm of which he brings dim recollections with him, that
Trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home, —
this was true in a sense deeper and grander than they had imagined, in the case of the Son of Man, our Lord Jesus Christ. He came from the bosom of the Father.
Nothing is more evident from the narrative of the Gospels than that Jesus made this claim ; nothing is more certain than the fact itself, if His words are in any wise true. Listen to Him : " I came out from the Father, and am come into the world ; again I leave the world, and go to the Father." Language cannot be plainer or more positive than this. The gates of birth and of death alike are transparent to Jesus Christ; through both He sees His Father's heaven.
(2) He goes because for our sakes He must go. It was necessary to part, necessary to leave them behind ; nothing else would have snapped the chain which held them to this visible life
ST. JOHN XIV. 2, 3 95
which they knew, and in which they had known their Master ; nothing but losing Him, and knowing why they had lost Him — that He had gone to prepare their place, the place where at last they should be with Him, and where He was with the Father for ever. He went up on high : and then with tears and with great joy they understood the lesson that to give Him up was not to lose Him. Then they knew that to have Him out of sight was to have Him none the less. Then they knew that they parted with Him on earth to have One whom they had followed and con- versed with, on the throne of heaven. Then they perceived that though their work and their sufferings might be for a while on earth, they themselves belonged to where their Master was gone ; the place prepared for them was nothing less than the unutterable and never-changing glory into which He was withdrawn.