(2) The second remarkable thing about the text is that the Divine being, God the Son, should ever have occasion to " prepare " anything. To prepare may signify to get ready, to put things in order, to look after arrangements, appointments, and the like, so as to have all things in due proportion and relation, that the eye may be pleased, that the ear may be satisfied, and that all our desires may be met and fulfilled. Jesus Christ talks in the text as if there were a good deal of work for Him to do somewhere, and He must make haste and get it done. Go to prepare ? Can ^ R. T. Light for Life's Evervtide, 27. ST. JOHN (2) — 7
98 PREPARATION AND RECEPTION
He who fills infinitude and breathes eternity have anything to do in the way of arranging and ordering and getting things ready for His servants. He accommodates Himself to our modes of thinking. He does not always " throw the infinite at us." He often steps out of His tabernacle of glory and talks our own speech, — makes a child of Himself that He may be understood in this little rickety nursery of a world. He knows we are all in the cradle still, that the mightiest speaker among us is only a lisping babbler, and that He must continually break up His words, in order that He may convey the very dimmest hint of His unutterable meaning !
^ There are some things which only the Master can do. Will you go and prepare summer for us ? You might try. You have seen half a hundred summers : now you go and try to make the fifty-first ! Come ! You are an artificer : you have the organ of form largely developed ; you have an eye for beauty ; you can buy oils and paints and colours and canvas and brushes of all kinds. Why don't you go and prepare summer for us? The great Master, looking down upon this little under-world of His — this basement-storey of His great building — says, "I am going to pre- pare the summer for you." And He makes no noise. He makes no mistakes in His colours, never gets things into discord. He continually renews the face of the earth, and not a man in all the busy, boastful world can do it ! If the servant cannot prepare the summer, how could he prepare heaven? If the saint exhausts himself when he lights a candle, how could he fill the great heavens with the morning that should never melt into sunset ? *
II.
The Eeception.
" I come again, and will receive you unto myself ; that where I am, there ye may be also."
" If I go, I come again " (He uses the present tense, not the future), " that where I am, there ye may be also." There is the Father's house, there is the place prepared, and there is the coming of the Christ to take us to our place. He will not leave His disciples to find their own way ; He will come again and receive them to Himself, that they may abide with Him for ever. The
' J, Parker.
ST. JOHN XIV. 2, 3 99
going was preparatory. It was with a view to returning, and the returning, again, is with a view to the final reunion of all with Himself. " If I go, I come again."
1. The Coming. — There are many comings of Christ to the world, and to the individual. The words no doubt refer to the Second Advent, but the promise must not be limited to that one coming which is the consummation of all comings. In many ways and times Christ has come and is coming. From the day He ascended to His Father, He has been continuously coming, manifesting Himself as the risen Lord and the life-giving Spirit to the Church and the world. The signs of His advent are every- where around us. Christ has come again already, and come to dwell. His is an abiding presence. " Lo," He said, " I am with you all the days, even unto the consummation of the age." Especially is there one coming of Christ to us which we all await with mingled feelings of awe and fear and hope. May we not say that death is for each individual a true coming of Christ, that through it Christ's words, " I receive you unto myself," have a true fulfilment ?
When our Lord departed, to confirm our assurance He returned again for a little while, with the keys of death and the grave hung at His girdle ; He " shewed himself alive after his passion," Master of both worlds, "Lord of both the dead and the living," and moving as He would this side or that the veil. By the resurrec- tion of Jesus Christ we know that there is an exit from the grave, and that our holy dead live unto God. Paradise is no fable then ; the celestial hills gleaming beyond the dark river are no cloudland born of our wishes and our fancies. When Jesus speaks of His Father's house. He does not invite us to a castle in the air, to some palace in the fairyland of childhood, but to that which is the most certain and solid as it is the most glorious of realities. It is this world that is unsubstantial, that is the realm of dreams and shadows. " The things which are seen are temporal : but the things which are not seen are eternal." The earth beneath our feet is but a little flying dust, the everlasting mountains fade and dissolve as the morning mists that cover them ; we look for " a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God."