Easter Five

Fifth Sunday of Easter – Easter Five (Revised Common Lectionary) – May 10, 2020 | Sermon on John 14.1-14 | by Carl A. Voges |

The Passage

“Let not your hearts be troubled.  Believe in God; believe also in me.  In my Father’s house are many rooms.  If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.  And you know the way to where I am going.”  Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going.  How can we know the way?”  Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.  If you had known me, you would have known my Father also.  From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

 

Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.”  Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip?  Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.  How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?  Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?  The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works.  Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the words themselves.

 

“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do, and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.  Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.  If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.”                                               [English Standard Version]

 

“You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”                                                                                                                          [1 Peter 2.25]

 

In the Name of Christ + Jesus our Lord

 

We’re eight weeks into this virus – How is everyone doing?  There are concerns and prayers for the medical people who are dealing with it directly; there are sympathies and prayers for those who are infected by it.

 

These weeks have revealed how messy and sloppy is the world’s life, leading us to ask –

Are we really at the mercy of a life run by feelings (describe your favorite) or politicians (take your pick) or the world’s versions of love and hatred (again, make your selection)?

The twistings of the world’s life are brutal and merciless; they have disrupted the usual observances of Mother’s Day on this weekend!

 

Thankfully, today’s Gospel gives us an uplifting and terrific glimpse of the Holy Trinity’s Life.  It is relief, then, to come into today’s Liturgy, recognizing that the Lord’s people are beginning the fifth week of its seven-week Easter season!  This means that the realities of the Son’s resurrection are continuing to push into our lives and the life of this world!  We are grateful for these realities because the virus is still seeking to swarm highly vulnerable people, freezing nearly everyone into fear and anxiety.  Making our way into today’s Liturgy, our Lord pries our eyes and ears, our minds and hearts, loose from the realities of this virus so we can be reminded that Easter’s Great Fifty Days are still pulsing around us.  These Great Days assure us that the Lord’s Life continues to storm into ours through the Son’s crucifixion, resurrection and soon to be observed ascension eleven days from now on 21 May.

 

The Life of Holy Trinity is described well in today’s Gospel.  Many of us are familiar with the first section of the passage because it often serves as the Holy Gospel for the Burial of the Dead.  Today this passage strikes us even more because we also get to run on into its second section!

 

The passage opens with Jesus encouraging his disciples to not be troubled – Why is that?

The Greek word for “trouble” has been used earlier to describe Jesus’ reaction to the word of the death of his friend, Lazarus.  Jesus was stirred powerfully within himself because death belongs to Satan’s life (the life naturally expressed in the world and sometimes unleashed in devastating ways!).  Putting Jesus to death on Good Friday is the final act of hostility on the part of the world and Satan, its leader.  Because of Jesus’ death (and our Baptisms into it), hostility will remain between the world and the followers of Jesus that does not go away until we pass through our own deaths.  Thus, the troubling of the disciples’ hearts is not simply a sad or sentimental emotion, it reflects the  struggle between Jesus and the world’s leader, Satan.

 

Jesus is speaking these words from John 14 on the night of Maundy Thursday and its momentous events are beginning to unfold.  The disciples are eating the Passover Meal with Jesus (the Meal that is being transformed into the Lord’s Supper).  They sense something ominous and mysterious is occurring – Judas has slipped off into the night; Jesus has given his disciples a new commandment of loving one another as he loves them; and Peter has promised that he will never deny Jesus.

 

In the following verses Jesus reminds us that belief in the Father is the same as belief in him.  Jesus’ demand that his disciples have faith in him is more than a request for a vote of confidence.  The disciples’ faith conquers the world by uniting them to Jesus who is conquering the world!  In Jesus’ death the leader of the world is thrown out, a victory made obvious by Jesus’ Spirit to those who have faith.  When the world is facing death triggered by this virus, fear is the instinctive response; when the Lord’s people are facing death, such fear is replaced by faith in him!  When this virus slams trouble and affliction into our lives, we tend to let it pull us away from the Lord’s Scriptures and Sacraments.

But, for the Lord’s faithful people, that same trouble and affliction turns us into his Scriptures and Sacraments.

 

Jesus points out that there are many dwelling places in his Father’s house.  While the picture of a huge building is a rich one (remember that the eternal city, Jerusalem, is

described in Revelation as a cube that is fifteen hundred miles high, wide and deep!), the Father’s house is better understood as a permanent union with the Father in and through Jesus.  Jesus is on the way to be reunited with the Father in glory, making it possible for others to be united with the Father.  His Cross is how he prepares for this union.  His return to the Father after the resurrection and ascension is so he can take his disciples into

union with himself and with his Father!  Now he prepares his people for that by making them understand how it is to occur through the Cross.

 

Our Lord initiates this understanding after Thomas complains that they don’t know where Jesus is going and they don’t know the way.  The Lord’s Cross reveals that he is the Way, the Truth and the Life.  He is the Way because he is the only avenue of salvation for the world’s people – sorry, world, your attempts to do salvation on your own just don’t work!

He is the Truth because he is the only revelation of the Father who brings about such salvation – sorry, world, your idea of different religions all leading to the same God is not based in authentic reality!  He is the Life because he is the real Life that he gives to those who believe in him – sorry, world, your insistence that your life is the real one just does not square with reality!

 

Since the Son lives in the Father and the Father lives in him, he is the conduit through which the Father’s Life comes to the world’s people.  Jesus pleads with his disciples to believe that he is in the Father and the Father is in him.  By uniting the followers with Jesus and the Father, belief gives them a share in the Lord’s power.

 

The greater works in this passage refer to the actions that take place after Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.  In the Gospels there is a significant difference between what the disciples did before the Cross and after his resurrection and ascension.  Before, those actions were pointing to the Cross; after the Cross, the actions are revealing Jesus’ glory!

 

Jesus’ followers will share in his judgment because he is giving them the power over sin and is giving them his Spirit who will prove the world wrong about its assumptions.  The world always insists that its way of self-centering is the only way, but it will be proved, now and in the Last Days, that it is totally wrong.  Jesus’ followers also have the mission to bring his Life to others.

 

The most extraordinary part of the passage’s second section is the promise that asking in Jesus’ Name will always be granted!  Because the follower is in union with Jesus and Jesus is in union with the Father, there is no doubt that the follower’s request will be granted.  If we attempt to offer up a prayer outside that union, then prayer is not going anywhere except to converse with ourselves (for example – asking for a good parking space outside Lowe’s or Home Depot!).  But that’s what happens when we blurt out prayers without being immersed in the Lord’s holy places of the Scriptures and Sacraments.  This union with Jesus also implies that the requests of his followers are for the heavy realities of life (for example – asking for the deepening of faith and trust in the Lord God when your life is being squeezed and broken down).  Such requests continue the work through which Jesus glorified his Father during his ministry.

 

This passage, then, lets us know clearly that the only Life worth living is the one given us

by the Lord God at Baptism and sustained by his Scriptures, Forgiveness and Supper.

While the world continues to swarm us with its instinctive realities of illness and death, our Lord pries our eyes and ears, our minds and hearts, loose from the realities of the world’s life so we can be reminded that Easter’s Great Fifty Days are still pulsing around us!   While the world used to put this weekend together to honor its mothers, the Church gathers today to acknowledge that, because of the Lord’s grace and mercy, the mothers in its parish communities are able to imitate Jesus ‘ mother, reflecting the Life, the Love (that is, Agape) of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.   Easter’s Great Fifty Days are reminding us that the Lord’s Life continues to storm into ours through his crucifixion, resurrection and ascension because it is only the Life that rescues!

 

Now may the peace of the Lord God, which is beyond all understanding, keep our

hearts and minds through Christ + Jesus our Lord

 

Pr. Carl A. Voges, Columbia, SC; carl.voges4@icloud.com