Many Mansions, the Only Way to God, and Other Problems and Confusions - Reflections on John 14:1-14

by John C. Holbert on Tuesday, March 17, 2026

         It might well be said that John 14 contains so many important ideas, and an equal number of so many confusing ideas, as to astound and perplex the most diligent Bible reader. I have performed many funerals and memorial services in my ministerial life, but I doubt I have done a single one without reading from John 14. I am a United Methodist clergyman, and this passage is assigned for funerals done in our tradition. I have invariably read it, and equally invariably have wondered exactly what the text is saying, and exactly what the hearers have heard when it is read. One brief essay will hardly solve these problems, but I can at least address one or two of those that are the most difficult and that have been the most seriously misunderstood.

         The text begins beautifully: “Let your hearts not be troubled; trust in God, and trust in me” (John 14:1). What better thing might be said as we face the yawning maw of death? Calm the pain and fear of your troubled hearts by “believing” in God and in Jesus. The Greek pisteuete, often translated “believe” might also be read, as I have, “trust.” The problem with translating “believe” could suggest that all are in the face of death confronted with a problem of right belief, rather than a question of trust, that is, an issue of reliance or conviction, not one of getting something right. I am convinced that the reading “trust” is closer to what the word may mean here.

         John 14:2 offers the first large problem. “In the house of my Father are many  monai.” Exactly what does that word mean? For many years, and after many gospel songs, we have been taught to hear the word “mansion.” After we die, it is said and sung, we will each get our own mansion in the sky; that is what Jesus is promising his grieving disciples as he speaks of his departure from them. A common reading is “dwelling place,” (NRSV) perhaps a more acceptable translation than “mansions,” but still not quite, I think, what John has in mind. The use of this word is central to John’s meaning in John 15. There in the vine and branch metaphor, John again and again uses the verb menein to suggest that in Jesus as vine we may all “abide,” that is live continually, both now and forever (John 15:1-11). Hence, we might translate the word in John 14:2 as “abiding places,” locations, both physical and spiritual, where we may find our connections with Jesus, who is himself fully identified with God, or as John has already said in John 1, Jesus is the very word of God. Thus, John does not promise each of us heavenly mansions, so much as assurance that nothing now may separate us from God, even death, as Paul so wonderfully enumerated in Romans 8.

         The second significant issue found in this chapter, and perhaps one of the most significant issues in all of Christianity, is John 14:6. After Jesus assures the disciples that he is leaving them, but in his leaving he will “prepare a place for you” (John 14:2). That place, as I have just described, is both a “place” to be seen, but also a “place” to be experienced, and it is not merely a future dwelling, but a present and future place of abiding with Jesus. Thomas, despite Jesus’s assurance that they do know “the way where I am going” (John 14:4), exclaims, “We do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” (John 14:5). Note the emphasis in Jesus’s proclamation and in Thomas’s question on the word “way.” Early Christianity often used “The Way” to describe the movement that became Christianity. And then in vs.6 Jesus utters a phrase that has been echoed down the centuries: “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me.” Those believers who have taken these words as “for all time” regularly stand on street corners with bullhorns and implore all who will listen to “believe in Jesus,” because there is no other way to God than through him. Even in Los Angeles, where I live, a place often termed deeply secular and inimical to church-going, has its share of these “preachers;” I heard one just last week.

         I must disagree with these would-be evangelists. John’s gospel in no way imagines that the words of Jesus must be discerned as for all time; they are for their time, the first-century time, and for those who affirm the Christian way. For the disciples of Jesus, who have followed him, and who will do the works he has done after his death, must of course see Jesus as the “way to the Father.” He has first-hand demonstrated what it means to find their way to God. That in no way at all implies that there are not other ways to God. After all, fully five billion of the world’s people are not Christians, and yet many of those billions profess belief in God in unique ways, or profess no strict belief in God at all, as millions of certain Buddhists announce. I have been raised in the Western world, have been trained in the ways of Christianity, and have proclaimed that faith in churches and conferences for nearly 60 years. I place trust in Jesus as the way to God, because that is what I know. To assume that that is the ONLY way to God is the height of arrogance and bigotry, reducing my God to a minimal figure at best, and a narrow being at worst, hardly worthy of anyone’s worship or trust. 

         John 14 is replete with further conundra that I cannot address here. Suffice it to say that these two issues—“the abiding places” and “the way to God”— present questions that still challenge us in our century, and are more than worthy of a sermon or two or a church school class. I urge you to struggle with them with your congregations as you wend your way toward the joys of Easter.