Show Notes
I’m troubled about my nation. I’m troubled about broken personal relationships. Mostly I’m troubled about being troubled; I don’t feel at home in myself or in the world around me.
It wasn’t that way in 1969. I lived with people who knew me before I even knew how to impress them or disappoint them. I was getting picked on by kids at school — but if I could just get home and sit on my father’s lap, I could rest and be who it is that . . . I am.
I hope my nine-month-old grandson, James — who lives with his mom and dad at my house — is starting to feel at home. I think he does; he doesn’t even know how to put on an act. He has no pretense and no private life but seems to be very much at home. The cover picture for this message is James on Easter Sunday in our cry room at church, reaching for me on the TV as if I belong to him.
Recently, praying with my wife in our kitchen, I told the Lord, “Everything here just feels so strange...” After a time, Susan said, “Peter, I just heard Him very clearly. He said, ‘Of course it feels strange. This isn’t your home.’” And strangely, I didn’t find that troubling.
By the end of John 13, Peter must have been quite troubled.
John 13:36-38, “Simon Peter said to him, ‘Lord, where are you going?’ Jesus answered him, ‘Where I am going you cannot follow me now, but you will follow afterward.’ Peter said to him, ‘Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.’ Jesus answered, ‘Will you lay down your life for me? Truly, truly, I say to you, the rooster will not crow till you have denied me three times.’”
Peter was troubled by his nation; they wanted a king (messiah), but not Jesus. Peter was troubled by his personal relationships; Judas had just been possessed by Satan and then left to betray Jesus. But mostly, Peter was troubled about himself: Not long ago, just after Jesus said that he would build His Church on Peter, Jesus looked at Peter and said, “Get behind me Satan”; Jesus had just washed Peter’s feet, when it should’ve been the other way around; and worst of all — when Peter publicly vowed his undying allegiance to Jesus, Jesus informed Peter that he would deny Him three times. If I’m Peter (and I suppose I am), I’m bracing for a massive rebuke at this point, like, “You should be troubled as hell! How am I to build my church on you?”
John 13:38b-14:1a, “... The rooster will not crow till you have denied me three times. [NEXT VERSE (The chapter divisions were added 1500 years later)] Let not your heart be troubled.”
“Let not... be troubled” is in the imperative tense; it’s the Commandment. …And I find that to be quite troubling. I’m a pastor; I’m supposed to be Mr. Peace and Patience. However, when I’m encountered with troubling situations, I not only “don’t let my heart be troubled,” I trouble it until I attain more knowledge, have applied that knowledge to the situation at hand, and have no more troubling situations. Troubling my heart is how I get things done! And weirdly, John has just informed us (John 11:33, 12:27, 13:21) that Jesus was troubled, after three years of seeming to be so untroubled.
When I’m troubled, I feel forsaken by Logic (I don’t know how to make things work), Goodness (I don’t know what’s good), Life (I think someone might die), Truth (I don’t know where it is), or the Way (I don’t know which way to go). I feel forsaken by “I Am”; I feel that I am not enough.
On the tree in the garden, Jesus cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” That’s troubling. Yet, Jesus is “I Am that I Am” in human flesh. And Jesus is quoting David in Psalm 22. So, if you feel forsaken, and you tell God that you feel forsaken, maybe it’s Jesus in you, feeling forsaken with you, and helping you talk to His Father — the way He talked to His Father through David, 1000 years before He died on the cross. He’s made all of our troubles His own.
St Augustine wrote: “If there is faith in us, Christ is in us. For what else says the Apostle: ‘That Christ may dwell
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