Sermon: Easter 5

May 22, 2011

Text: John 14: 1-14

I.       Introduction

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be always acceptable in your sight, O God our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.

II.      Consolation and Challenge: Preparation for Ministry

Today’s Scripture readings concern many things, as usual.  But certainly one is separation anxiety – changing jobs, moving away from family and friends, graduating from high school as so many will be doing this Spring. Change brings uncertainty, doubt, fear.  In Jesus’ farewell discourse, he prepares his disciples for the difficult times ahead. He knows they cannot bear what he will bear. He knows they will face devastation and doubt. 

But he also knows the disciples will go on to form Christ’s Church and he must prepare them. The challenge was not so much how to manage the deciples’ sadness over the departure of Jesus, but rather how to prepare them for the challenges of building a community of faith.  And like the disciples, we too face the challenge of building on our faith, of living into our belief in salvation through Christ crucified, and the challenge of building up our Church.

II.      The Way, The Truth and The Life

As always, Christ leads the way.  For God incarnate in the person of Jesus reminds his disciples that he is the Way, the Truth and the Life.  Jesus was not teaching about a road map, an empirical proof, or a medical prognosis. No, my friends, he was speaking about something else entirely.  About the essential stepping stones that enable us to come to the Father.  So let us approach, with our uncertainties, but also with open hearts, open to a way, a truth, a life that we might not expect.

A.     The Way.

The Way?  What way?  As Thomas asked, how can we know the way?  But Jesus’ way is not a road like the Roman Appian Way, along which offenders of Roman order were crucified. The Romans in fact deliberately conflated the terms for road and way so as to underscore that the road to Rome was also the way to civilization – and if miscreants were hung there to die, this just underscored the point for passersby that departing from the Roman road and the Roman way would lead to the same bad end. 

But Jesus’ way is different.  Instead Jesus adopts (as he was wont to do) a parallel path of resistance – Jesus’ way is not a set of directions, but a way of life. A way of life that permits encounter with the divine.  A way of relationship with God.  A relationship that knows no boundaries.  Recall how many, many times Jesus taught that this encounter with the Divine, this relationship with God, is not about the rule book, or about boundaries and barriers: 

The Sabbath is for people, not people for the Sabbath – theh formalitites and doctrines of worship exist to serve humanity’s need for relationship with God, but are not there to enslave us.  And so Jesus worked on the Sabbath, bringing healing and comfort to the world and encouraged his followers to do likewise.  And so we are advised not to worry too much about the boundaries of religion, and focus instead on relationship with God.

Pray in secret – the relationship with God is key, not the public formal expressions of that relationship.  And so Jesus often went off to a quiet place by himself to pray and commune with the Father, to gain strength for ministry.  And so we are cautioned to focus on relationship with God, and not to be too concerned about how others see us or what group we belong to.

Loving God and neighbor are more important that burnt offerings and sacrifices. And so Jesus commended the scribes who had the courage to open their hearts in spite of their lofty status.   And so we are invited to focus not on the formalities of ritual, but on the substance of faithful relationship with God.

And many more.  Jesus told his disciples and tells us that the relationship with God is more important that all the liturgies, all the piety, all the formalities of religion.  And so Jesus offers a way that is not imprisoned by formalities and boundaries, but rather a way that celebrates relationship with God for all.  A way that guides our lives away from the conventional priorities of this world.  Away from death.  Toward the truth of God.  Toward new life.

B.     The Truth.

Jesus also speaks to being the Truth. Our psalm today celebrates our redemption by the God of truth.  In the great prayer of St. Chrysostom, we plead for knowledge of God’s truth in this world.  The truth? What truth?  In the atrium of CIA HQ in Langley Virginia there is an engraved passage from John 8:32: “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” Regrettably, in recent years we have seen all to many abuses justified in the name of seeking truth – Guantanamo anyone?

But God’s truth is different. God’s’ truth, repeated throughout the Gospels, is that Jesus is the manifestation of God’s love for the world.  God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.  The Truth that runs to the core of the Way of Jesus is the truth of love.  Love your enemies. Love those who persecute you.  Love the stranger.  Love those who are different, about whom you are uncertain.  And as Paul reminds us in his letter to the Christians in Corinth, love does not insist on its own way.  The truth of the love of God for all the world is that God’s love does not insist on its own way, is that God’s love for the world is unconditional.  Indeed God loves the world in all its diversity, in all its conflicts, in all its disagreements. Can we not also consider building relationships of love with that world as well? Can we not build relationships of love for those strangers from different religious traditions and communities, those strangers in faith?

We hear many stories these days about conflict with the Islamic world.  In an environment where there are indeed folks intent on harming others in the name of Islam, we are invited to consider that the fundamental text of Islam – the Koran – has very different things to say about relations with the Christian faithful.   Passages like:

“Bear in mind God’s goodness towards you.  Is there any other creator who provides for you from heaven and earth?”  The Creator // 35:1

“We sent forth Moses with signs saying: Lead your people out of darkness into light.” Abraham  14:5.

“Jesus said, ‘I am the servant of God.  He has given me the Gospel and ordained me a prophet’.”  Mary 19:29.

The Koran contains many such parallels to the tenets of our Christian faith. When I was young, growing upin a Christian family with strong ties to the mid-East and living in Egypt and Iran, I often heard the phrase Hum d’Allah – God be praised.  God be praised indeed.  And who can forget the traditional Islamic greeting – Salaam eliekum (peace be with you) and the response – eleikum Salaam (and also with you). Is there room for understanding here?  Is there room for love?

The conflicts around Islam that we read about in the newspapers are matched by conflicts between Christians and Jews, in the Mid-East and elsewhere. And indeed the Gospel of John has been a source and justification for much of the anti-Semitism that has plagued our world for centuries. And, the companion idea (supercessionist theology) that Christianity has replaced Judaism as the ‘true faith’ is not an old or distant matter either – just look at the prayer for conversion of the Jews in the BCP!  Despite the frequent critiques of the Jewish authorities in the Gospel of John, it is worth remembering that the first five books of our Bible – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are in fact the Torah that is the basis for Jewish worship. As our Archbishop of Canterbury observed while in Jerusalem, “Our shared scriptural understanding [has] led us to reaffirm our understanding of the Sanctity of Life.”  Is there room for understanding here? Is there room for love?

In this paradise of Cascadia, we often encounter followers of Buddhist traditions.  There is a Buddhist monk I know who has devoted his life to preaching ways of peace, justice and non-violence.  Praying for the wellbeing of people in the world, this man invokes the person of Buddha, the teachings of Buddhist scripture, and the community of faith – not very far from the Lambeth Quadrilateral that considers scripture, sacraments, creeds, and a bishop-led community of faith to be the foundation of Anglicanism.  The monk’s daily prayer is as follows: “So long (as) space remains, so long as the suffering of sentient beings remains, I will remain, in order to serve.”  Not bad.  And not very far removed from Jesus’ command to us to love our neighbors, not far from Jesus’ instruction that what we do for the least in our community, we do for Him.  Is there room for understanding here? Is there room for love?

In light of these parallels but mindful of the contradictions, can we find here a basis for relationship with these and other faith traditions of the world? Is there potential for mutual understanding, for mutual respect? Is there room for love?  Perhaps by embracing Jesus invitation that the truth of God is love, we can begin to live into a truth that invites us to love all our fellow occupants of this planet – without regard to our differences.  God loves us all.  Cannot we do likewise?  Can we Christians be the ones who reach out, can we be the ones who extent the hands of compassion, can we be the ones who put love first. Who put love before judgment?

C.     The Life.

And so Jesus speaks to being the Life.  The life?  What life?  Do we consider life to be simply a continuation of our material existence? More of the same? An eternity of work, school, and play?  Life in God is different.  Jesus invites us to know that He is the bread of life, that he is the resurrection and the life.  Through Jesus we have eternal life – life abundant in the embrace of the living God.  The life that Jesus speaks to is also about our relations with God’s creation, our relations with all God’s creatures, our relations with each other. 

And so we have the privilege to seek life in our relationship in the world.  During a roundtable organized at UBC some years ago and chaired by Bishop Michael Ingham, much was said about seeking life in the world. The DL spoke about his struggle to seek life and dignity for the Tibetan people; the Iranian human rights advocate Shirin Ebadi spoke to the importance of seeking life in resisting religious extremism in Iran; first nations leader Jo-Ann Archibald spoke to traditions of her people in our province of British Columbia to seek life in all their doings; reformist Rabbi Shachter-Shalomi spoke to the timeless commitment of the Jewish community over the centuries to follow the words of Deuteronomy and choose life; and of course Archbishop Desmond Tutu  reminded us of the life that we all know is there for us through God – that as Augustine learned, our hearts are restless until they rest in God.  

And the life we speak of is not simply the life of this world, but a life in God that is both everlasting and immediate.  And this frees us from the bounds of sin, including the bounds that restrain us from seeking justice, that restrain us from spreading love, that restrain us from building righteousness. Freed from the bounds that keep us from the Kingdom of Heaven.  Now there is abundant life for us all.  

And so let us go forth from this place confident that we and all the world can come to the Father through Christ, through the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  Let us forth celebrating the Way of God in Christ.  Let us go forth comforted by the Truth of God’s love.  Let us go forth empowered for ministry by our faith in the Life promised in Jesus.  We are invited to appreciate that the Jesus offers a Way of Truth and Life that are in Christ and through Christ – salvation not only in the divine person of Jesus but also in the divine example of Christ, who put understanding before rejection, who put compassion before fear, who put love before judgment.  And through the Way, the Truth, and the Life that Christ offers, I hope that we might find understanding, I pray that we might find compassion and I expect that we will indeed find the glory of the empty tomb.

Let us pray:

Holy One, in these times of conflict in our Church and our world, where differences of faith divide and threaten to draw us away from you, grant us the faith to follow your way, the courage to know your truth, and the grace to embrace your life eternal.  We pray in the name of the One who taught us to love, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen