Acts 7.55-60; Psalm 31.1-5,15-16; 1 Peter 2.2-10; John 14.1-14

SOME words of wisdom from the NHS: “Separation anxiety is common in young children, but it’s a normal part of children’s development and they usually grow out of it.” It can be “a sign your baby now realises how dependent they are on [those] who care for them”.

The disciples are anxious about separation (John 14.1). For years, they have eaten, worked, travelled, and lived with Jesus. Now he has just told them: “Where I am going, you cannot follow me now” (13.38). There comes a time, early in every human life, when the reality dawns that we are fragile and vulnerable, and that we depend on others to care for us and support us. Ideally, every one of us would have parents who offer that comforting, dependable presence.

Separation anxiety in an adult person, unless there are reasons based on cognitive impairment or physical frailty, is more problematic. Growing up is meant to be a liberation from that kind of dependence. The closest bond in childhood should be between parents and child. In adulthood, another type of close bond forms — that between life partners. The job of a parent is to help their child grow into independence, to become self-reliant. But a life partnership has different parameters. It requires a more complex balance between demands and satisfactions, between support given and support received.

In the case of Jesus and his disciples, neither of these relationship models is a perfect fit. A friendship situation may unfold on a different plane in terms of the levels of demands made and satisfactions received (reciprocity). After all, friendships take place outside the framework of a formal, long-term commitment. The disciples could have walked away from their friendship with Jesus at any time. We know this because, at the Passion, that is exactly what they did. Words and promises (“Show us the Father and we will be satisfied,” John 14.8; “Even though I must die with you, I will not deny you,” Matthew 26.35) were not powerful enough to overcome fear. Yet.

Every kind of relationship which human beings experience is imperfect. Augustine of Hippo was right in his development of Paul’s view that we cannot reach goodness through personal effort, but only by God’s grace. Some may object to original sin as a theological concept, but as a practical observation about human nature it is undeniable. The disconnect between ideals and realities is a flaw running through all our human relationships, whether between equals (life partners, friends) or within a hierarchy (parents and children, humankind and God). One of the things that make it difficult to evaluate the disciples’ actions is that their relationship is both the friendship of equals and also, somehow, a hierarchy of goodness between divine and human.

The miraculous sign that is the resurrection does not resolve this tension between the human and the divine. There is no neat conclusion: “Ta-dah! Sorted — Jesus is definitely divine.” But, however untidy this tension may seem in terms of theory, we have in practice always been able to inhabit it, naturally and fruitfully.

It may come as a surprise that this Gospel has been seen as problematic because Jesus makes a promise, which seems not to be fulfilled (John 14.3), to return for the disciples. But, yes, that verse has caused much scholarly puzzlement, and has generated a lot of theological ingenuity. Fair enough: another stage of childhood development often includes the determination to understand the world, encapsulated in questioning everything: “Why?” “How?” I still take it for granted that, when I die, Jesus will somehow bring me home with him to God, as, I believe, he has every one of my Christian forebears.

There is a good reason for separation anxiety. We do not want to be cut off from the people whom we love. It is perfectly reasonable to fear the ending of relationships, whether life partnerships, friendships, or that most powerful bond, the bond between parent and child. A small child has no sense of the passing of time or of how it is an individual person embedded in the wider human sweep that we call “history”. But, as we grow, we learn to see ourselves in context. With physical development come self-awareness and even the recognition that not all our sources of support are visible; for God is our parent, too, and Jesus is our brother and friend, a “tower of strength from the face of [our] enemy”—1 Corinthians 15.26 indeed.