Where I Am Going You Cannot Follow Now

Judas has just left the room. John tells us it was night. And in that moment, with betrayal in motion, Jesus speaks of glory. Now the Son of Man is glorified, he says, and God is glorified in him. It is a strange time to talk that way, unless the cross is the glory, which in John's Gospel it is.

Then Jesus turns tender. He calls the disciples his little children and tells them he will be with them only a little longer. He gives them the new command to love one another. Peter, as usual, skips past the command and fastens on the departure. Where are you going? Jesus tells him he cannot follow now but will follow later. Peter insists he will lay down his life. Jesus asks him quietly whether he really will, and then tells him that before the rooster crows he will disown Jesus three times.

Notice what Jesus does not do. He does not withdraw the promise that Peter will follow later. He does not take back the new command or exclude Peter from it. He tells the truth about the failure that is coming, and he keeps the future open on the far side of it. Both things are true at once. Peter will fall, and Peter will follow.

The one idea to hold is that Jesus knows exactly how you will fail and has already made room for it. This is not permission to fail. It is the reason failure does not have to be the end. Peter's problem was not that he loved Jesus too little but that he trusted himself too much. His confidence was in his own resolve, and resolve gives way under pressure.

The turn toward life is to let your confidence rest somewhere sturdier. If you have made promises to God that you have already broken, you are in Peter's company. Jesus did not stop loving him, and in the last chapter of this Gospel he restores him by a charcoal fire. Where you are going, you may not be able to follow now. Later is still coming.