Recently, I told a guy, “I’m Andrew’s dad.” He said, “I see the resemblance.”

I look like my dad. Hope looks like me. Apparently Andrew looks like me, too. And I think Hope looks a little like Nancy (which is a very good thing).

But no one has ever said that because they have seen Andrew or Hope they’ve seen me.

Jesus was trying to connect the dots for his disciples that last night. He says,

“If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”

He’s talking to people who desperately are interested in seeing God, in knowing God, in being connected to God. They are people who have been waiting to hear from God for 400 years. They are people who have followed him for three years.

When he’s talking with these eleven guys, Jesus isn’t trying to convince people who know nothing of him. These guys have seen in in every possible situation (except wrong). These guys will see him hanging bleeding in less than twenty-four hours. He is explaining that he and his Father are inextricably linked.

I’m not sure he was assuming that they would understand. In fact, the conversation that night, the night right before he was killed, was full of disciple uncertainty. Jesus knew they didn’t understand.

I think he was providing the explanation so that when they were on the other side of the resurrection, when they were aware that their friend was actually back alive and unlike any other formerly dead person they knew, when they were looking for explanations about who Jesus was and how this possibly could happen, these words of Jesus would explode like fireworks in their minds.

“Whoa, wait a minute. You really are God.”