Saturday in the Fourth Week of Easter

John 14:7-14

Jesus said to his disciples: “If you know me, then you will also know my Father. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” Philip said to Jesus, “Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own. The Father who dwells in me is doing his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else, believe because of the works themselves. Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father. And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.”

Philip’s request, “Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us”, startles us in its presumption.  No one had ever seen the Father (cf. John 6, 46).  It was said of Moses that the Lord knew him “face to face” (Deuteronomy 37, 10), but when the Lord showed himself to Moses, he only allowed him to see his “back parts”, for, as God said to Moses, “You  cannot see my face: for man shall not see me, and live” (Exodus 33, 20). Moses, the man closest to God in the Old Testament, only saw part of God’s glory.  At least Philip shows that he knows Jesus has the power to reveal the Father to them.  

What he fails at, the presumption aside, is to recognize his (and every mortal human person’s) incapacity to “see” the Father: a blind man can tilt his head towards the sun but he will not see it.  He lacks the capacity to do so.  Jesus rebukes Philip: “How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?”  Back when he had healed the man born blind, Jesus had proclaimed, “The Father and I are one” (John 10, 20), and more than once he had used the sacred name of God to refer to himself (cf. John 8, 58).  Still, this was not “enough” for Philip, and so the Lord Jesus points him to the unprecedented miracles that only God could do: “Believe because of the works themselves.” Jesus is asking Philip, Would the Father permit me to raise the dead if I were claiming to be his Son and I were not?  The works that I do are the Father’s confirmation and seal on all that I have declared to you.

We tend to speak speak of “the Son of God” and say that “Jesus is Lord” rather calmly and even complacently but we ought to think hard about why it was so difficult for those who heard Jesus to understand what he meant when he made his claims, and then to accept them.  How different are our lives from those of the many people around us for whom these words have no meaning at all?