The Fifth Sunday of Easter

Preached by Dean Robert Neske at Saint Mark’s Pro-Cathedral, Hastings, April 20, 2008

For many years our Gospel lesson was the second lesson read as part of the Burial Office in the 1928 edition of the Book of Common Prayer and is still one of the suggested readings for that service. The truly interesting thing is that the reading isn’t so much about death as it is about faith, which lies at the heart of mystery that is the resurrection.

We need to recall the setting and the circumstances; it is Maundy Thursday and Jesus has been speaking to the disciples about his coming passion. The only thing the disciples have picked up on however, is that Jesus is about to leave them, an idea the disciples find unsettling to their faith. Peter has, (not surprisingly) been especially vocal in protesting Jesus departure from them and has been verbally taken to task by Jesus for his lack of understanding.

This explains the softer tone of our Lord’s words: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.” The Lord’s use of the word ‘believe’ in this instance meaning more than having an intellectual faith, but rather citing two important things; the first, in calling the disciples to put away their fear and the second, in calling them to have faith in God and therefore in Jesus himself.

We then have this shift in the discussion; Jesus goes from speaking to the disciples’ faith to speaking about “dwelling places. “In my Father’s house are many dwelling places” although the word in the Greek menien literally means ‘abiding place,’ the emphasis of the text is not on the accommodations, but on the word ‘many.’ The point is that there is room enough for everyone.

Still it is an odd shift in the conversation, except that we have to remember that Jesus is speaking of going away. What our Lord is saying is that for those joined in faith, any separation is temporary; there will be reunion, and in reunion there will be room for everyone who shares the faith, and none will be left out, because the whole purpose of abiding is to be reunited with Jesus. Naturally the disciples don’t get it.

Jesus then says to them: “and you know the way to the place where I am going” which results in utter confusion because they don’t understand that he is speaking of his passion and death. It is left to Thomas, to say what the rest of them are thinking: “Lord we do not know where you are going, and how can we know the way?”

Which is was true; at that precise moment, the idea of Jesus death lacked all reality for the disciples, never mind the idea that his death upon the cross would become the way of salvation for the people of God. The truth is that they had no idea as to what Jesus was saying to them. Jesus’ reply to Thomas goes well beyond the scope of the question. After all Thomas was only looking for directions; Jesus gives him the fullness of revealed truth: “I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”  

The emphasis is on the words “I am the way…” which is an unusual metaphor to apply to a person, but made clearer when ‘truth’ and ‘life’ are incorporated into that person. Yet this is the point, Jesus takes those who believe in him into the Father, and it is out of this experience that we understand truth and enter into the fullness of life. St Augustine saw Truth and Life together as a goal unto themselves, to be sought by the individual follower through our relationship with God which is the ‘way.’ But the text doesn’t treat truth and life as separate entities, the Way, the Truth and the Life is all Jesus; they are all found in the person of Jesus and realized in our relationship with Jesus, which is why no one comes to the Father except through Jesus.

In the current climate of religious relativism, where people are expected to reject and dismiss any belief system that dares to claim to have the Truth and not merely a truth one of many, or to be the Way to God, not merely a way, one of many ways to God. The boldness of this morning’s Gospel makes many in our society and even in our own Church profoundly uncomfortable, because it points to another embarrassing fact; the Christian Faith is not inclusive, one of the buzz words we hear all of the time

Yet this is one of the great falsehoods permeating the Church; that the Gospel, which has been reduced to a vague and undemanding notion of ‘love’, accepts everyone as they are, meeting them where they are in their journey, with nothing more is expected or required. Nothing more is expected because in contemporary spirituality there is no such thing as objective Truth or revealed Truth; there are simply many truths and many ways to God, we decide what is truth, we decide what is of God, we get to define God and so, there are no moral imperatives or requirements of our lives except ‘love’ and this is a lie.

The Christian Faith demands belief, it demands faith, it demands the commitment of a person’s life to God and God’s Christ, and this demand excludes many from entering into the faith. The Christian Faith requires conformity; in short, that our life and conduct reflect Christ; and reflect his purpose and his will as revealed to us in Scripture and the teaching of God’s Holy Church for the last two thousand years. The love revealed in Christ is neither vague nor undemanding, but sacrificial in nature necessitating for those who would follow Christ the daily offerings of compassion, forgiveness and charity. To borrow a phrase from a former Vice President: “It is an inconvenient truth.”

The Gospel of Jesus Christ like the person of Jesus Christ has always been for the world at large, an inconvenient truth. He is an inconvenient man. The problem with the housing metaphor is that it creates the impression that heaven is a separate realm unrelated to present existence. The power of the resurrection is that it opens the door to heaven now; not in some distant moment, in time but now. Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life and as such leads us to the only destination that matters, which is our relationship with God. When we believe in God, when we trust in God’s presence, and follow in God’s way that is all that matters, because the relationship guides, directs, nourishes and sustains us. In our life in Christ Jesus, this life we share within the context of the Church, we begin to touch heaven however imperfectly, in the love shared in Jesus name, and heaven begins to touch us.