John 14:1-14

The Fifth Sunday of Easter |  7 May 2022 | John 14:1-14 | Paul Bieber |

John 14.1-14 Revised Standard Version

14  Jesus said, “Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me. ² 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? ³ And when 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. ⁴ And you know the way where I am going.” ⁵ Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” ⁶ Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me. ⁷ If you had known me, you would have known my Father also; henceforth you know him and have seen him.”

 ⁸ Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied.” ⁹ Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? ¹⁰ Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father 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. ¹¹ Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me; or else believe me for the sake of the works themselves.

 ¹² “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father. ¹³ Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son; ¹⁴ if you ask anything in my name, I will do it.”

also

Acts 7.55-60

Psalm 31.1-5, 15-16

I Peter 2.2-10

Our Abiding Home

Grace, peace, and much joy to you, people of God.

As we make our way through the second half of the Great Fifty Days of Easter, our Gospels come from Jesus’ farewell discourse, given to his disciples in the upper room on the night in which he was betrayed. He is preparing them for his departure by way of his passion and death. The Church is preparing us for the annual remembrance of his departure by way of the Ascension, and for his gift of the Holy and life-giving Spirit.

We know these first verses of chapter 14 well; we have heard them at many funerals: “Let not your hearts be troubled.” Jesus goes to prepare a place for those who believe in him; he promises to come again and take us to be with him in the Father’s house. The baptismal catechesis of I Peter takes this one step further: Jesus is the living cornerstone of the Father’s spiritual house, and we are living stones built into the house: “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people.”

The word “race” is so fraught in today’s discourse that it is worthwhile to note that génos is more accurately translated as “family” or “a people.” But the “stone of stumbling” for so many in our age of religious pluralism is the “scandal of particularity”: Jesus’ “I am” statement in verse 6: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.”

On the one hand, part of me is desperate to explain this away. Pastoral sensitivity in situations where people do not confess Christ but have some belief in God; the questions about people in many times and places who have not heard the Gospel; a genuine desire to find common ground, a common good, with people of other faiths—all these make us want to qualify Jesus’ statement that he is simply the only way to the Father, to that promise of an eternal dwelling place.

But on the other hand, part of me is quite willing to be lumped in with the fundamentalists and literalists, and take Jesus at his word. Because if the Prologue to St. John’s Gospel, which we so love to hear at Christmas, is true, then what Jesus says here in chapter 14 is true. Of the Word who was in the beginning with God, who was God, the Prologue says, “In him was life.” (1.4) This “Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.” ( 1.14)

If the Son who is the Word made flesh is full of truth and has life in himself, and has made known the Father, the God whom no one has ever seen (1.18), then it makes sense that he is the way to the Father. To make him one of many ways would make his truth one of many truths and his life something other than the life the Father has in himself, the life he has granted the Son also to have in himself. (5.26)

To say that Jesus is something less than this is to break faith with those who have gone before us confessing this Name to the point of death rather than burn a pinch of incense to Caesar, or Hitler, or Stalin, or any worldly power that is scandalized by Jesus of Nazareth. Our First Reading sets before us this morning the first martyr, Stephen. When he said, “Look, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God,” the authorities knew perfectly well what he was claiming: Jesus is one with the Father and the Father with him, just as Jesus claims in today’s Gospel.

Stephen followed Jesus’ way. As Jesus on the cross commended his spirit into his Father’s hands in the words of today’s Psalm, so Stephen prays the Lord Jesus to receive his spirit. And as Jesus prayed the Father to forgive those who crucified him, not knowing what they did, so Stephen cries to the Lord Jesus not to hold their sin against those who stoned him to death.

The way in which Stephen confessed Jesus Christ as he died a martyr’s death answers another of the “stones of stumbling” in this Gospel: “Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it . . . if you ask anything in my name, I will do it.” If this is true, then anything I ask in Jesus’ name, he has to give, right? But to pray in Jesus’ name in to pray according to his will and his way. The point and power of prayer is not to get God to do my will, but for me to learn to pray according to God’s will. That is Jesus’ way.

The way of Jesus is the loving and complete gift of himself all the way to death. So for Stephen; so for all of his followers, who are called to be a holy priesthood, to offer ourselves as living sacrifices, our spiritual worship. This is the imitation of Christ. The whole biblical story turns on the chapter on Jesus Christ, particularly on his self-emptying, self-offering sacrifice for us on the cross. This is how God enters the human story to reconcile all people, all creation, disclosing the truth about God, about creation, about us, offering eternal life with God to all. The scandal of particularity is actually the scandal of universality: God’s gift freely offered to all—to all who will receive it.

There is no other way, because there is no other Gospel. There is no other truth, because the splendor of this truth shows alternative “truths” to be mere shadows. There is no other life, because the only life that finally matters is life according to God’s will, which is finally life forever with the Triune God in the Father’s spiritual house of many dwelling places, our abiding home.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Rev. Dr. Paul Bieber

San Diego, California, USA

E-Mail: paul.bieber@sbcglobal.net