John 14:28 Meaning You Heard How I Told You

Sorrow at the leaving was love bent back on itself, wanting His presence more than His good. Joy would have been love grown up: the going is glory for the Son and opens the way home for those who follow.

Greater has long been used to make the Son less. The Father is the source the Son comes from, greater the way a spring is greater than its stream, first in order and not larger or better. It fits the flesh He took, flesh that grew tired and could die, and in that flesh He goes to the Father.

Going away and coming again is one movement inside a person, not a departure across distance. The awareness that says I am withdraws from the image it now wears, sinks back into the formless sense of being, and returns wearing a new form. That formless awareness is the Father, and it is called greater because every self a person can name is only an office it has taken on for a while. The self that walks and speaks is the lesser one, sent out to play a part; behind it stands the one who sent it, and the two are one being wearing two faces.

So the sorrow at any loss is misplaced. Nothing that seems to leave is destroyed; awareness has merely dropped one state to enter another. To love this teaching is to be glad when a state ends, because its ending is the return to the source from which the next form is drawn.

Sadness at his going is attachment wearing the clothes of love. Attachment wants the form kept, the familiar face and voice within reach; love wants the beloved to arrive wherever he is going, even when that arrival leaves an empty room behind.

The father here is the whole, the ocean a drop is about to enter, and greater means vaster rather than higher up some ladder. A disciple who understands stops clutching the body of the master and looks toward what he was moving into, which is equally close to wherever anyone sits.